LeBrun: Energy fantasies meet utility-bill reality
We’re told New York is in crisis, an energy utility debt crisis.
In truth, we’ve been in one since the pandemic, only instead of getting better now that we’re supposedly back to normal it is getting worse. In growing numbers, ordinary New Yorkers can’t afford their utility bills. Here in upstate, National Grid is the major utility server and is currently showing 234,000 residential customers in arrears by at least 60 days. That’s $309 million unpaid. All the other utilities, from Con Ed to Rochester Gas and Electric, are showing comparable numbers.
We’re in record arrears territory, and growing. That’s bad news on its face, and fodder for why as a state we continue to hemorrhage population. But worse, it is hard to see the cost trend flatten or drop as we sail into our energy using future, no matter what our governor legislatively proposes in terms of keeping our energy costs affordable. All the available factors point to bigger and bigger energy bills for decades to come. The why of that, I will get to in a minute.
Then again, I suppose much depends on how you define affordable. Nobody has for anyone above low-income thresholds as far as I know, nor defined acceptable environmental risk, or defined what constitutes necessary or appropriate energy availability or dependability.
Sure, we’re experiencing a brutal winter. We need more heat, which equates to more cost. It is not news that we now live with extreme weather, and we can expect brutal summers and winters. Sometimes we’ll get lucky, sometimes we won’t. With recent winter storm Fern that impacted 200 million Americans cross dozens of states, New York was extraordinarily lucky. We got the snow and the cold, but we did not get the ice or the wind. Power outages, compared to the mid-Atlantic region, were low. The lights mostly stayed on. We have a utility bill crisis. We do not have an energy crisis.
We were lucky too because the Hudson River and East River, which isn’t really a river, did not freeze over so that diesel-burning tugs could barge down fossil fuels, to be delivered by diesel-burning trucks, to New York City and Long Island. Downstate is our greatest vulnerability concerning energy availability, because the generation system close at hand is mostly 50 to 70 years old and in desperate need of renovation.
Which brings us to why those bills will keep going up. New York and the rest of the country will always have challenges keeping energy prices from soaring, particularly with international pressure on energy sources like natural gas. Supply chain problems. Inflation. Donald Trump, who has totally derailed our transition to low-emission energy production. Sadly, this will hold us back for a generation. We can in some ways ignore the Trump implications, and pretend they won’t haunt us in our pursuit of a sustainable energy future, which is what we are doing.
Or accept reality. New York is currently handcuffed by a climate law that has stymied timely repowering of aging infrastructure on the premise that we will no longer need fossil fuel generation, when in fact we will desperately need fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. It is written in law that a transition will occur to zero-emission generation on a timeline that post-Trump is totally unrealistic and is not going to happen. We need to adjust. [It was no less unrealistic pre-Trump.]
The sum of fantasy meets the new real is New Yorkers will just have to pay more because the state Legislature doesn’t have the stomach to rewrite what has become a bad law. Currently, up to nearly 10% of your residential utility bill (and more for businesses) are requirements set in the climate law for circumstances that have changed. Utilities are forever petitioning the Public Service Commission for hefty ratepayer — customer — increases driven by the need to make upgrades and improvements to delivery infrastructure, and to prepare for climate law anticipations that aren't coming. They are getting approved because they should, and so rates continually rise, and will for some time.
A byproduct of clinging to the climate law seems to discourage investment in anything but low- to no-emission alternative energies by regulating state agencies like the DEC, even as the governor is touting an "all the above" philosophy of keeping all energy options open. There seems a disconnect here.
I’m not blaming the governor. It’s an election year. She has to appease lots of different interests. And there are oversight options she says can temper utility ratepayer increases. Good, let’s see what she can pull off. California and several other states have tapped into various pots o’ cash to make direct payments to voters, I mean ratepayers.
So, if you want a little treat on a chilly morning like this one, go on the Independent System Operator website (www.nyiso.com) and plug into their nifty dashboard and get a real-time look at energy creation and use across the state. Note the sources. Wind, solar and other alternatives, under 5% of the total, and before the sun comes up, well below that. An epitaph of sorts for a noble idea. For now. [and beyond.]
Columnist
Fred LeBrun has held nearly every newsroom role over his long career at the Times Union: suburban beat reporter, city editor, arts editor, restaurant critic and, for two decades, metro columnist. He retired in 2008 but continues to write regular political columns. You can reach him at flebrun@timesunion.com.
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