Solar panels (photo via ny.gov)
On Thursday, June 12, California set a record for the use of solar power generated by large-scale sources. Over 8,000 megawatts, enough to power six million homes, was flowing through the state’s grid a little after 1 p.m. that day. Yes, it was a very hot day. And they do say that the sun always shines in California. But those aren’t the only reasons for this landmark achievement. The state has made a firm commitment to reducing the use of fossil fuels, both to fight climate change and to control energy costs, and this is a result.
New York is also increasing the presence of solar on our grid, thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s NY-Sun initiative. Just a few years ago, there was less than 50 megawatts (MW) of solar power in the mix. Today, that number is up significantly, and is expected to grow to over 3,000MW. But it’s going to require the use of long-term contracts, called power purchase agreements (PPAs), if New York’s emerging solar industry is ever going to reach its potential.
And the sun isn’t the only source of clean, renewable power making its way into the homes and lives of New Yorkers. Our use of wind is also growing. In 2004, when the state Public Service Commission (PSC) launched the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to meet the goal of generating 25% of our power with renewables by 2013, there was 48MW of wind on the grid. Today, we are at 1,754MW, with more than 3,500MW queued up in the regulatory process. So we are heading in the right direction. But the RPS did not meet its target and we are concerned that the state will also miss its next ambitious goal of generating 50% of our electricity with renewable resources by 2030 (50 by 30).
The 50 by 30 goal is a leadership position among states. Cuomo has asked the PSC to develop a plan that gets us there. It is called the Clean Energy Standard (CES), and will be a key part of the Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) currently underway. REV has attracted national and global attention as a new approach to incentivizing renewables and managing the grid. The CES will be officially established by the Commission in early August, the most important energy policy decision in the state this summer.
The benefits of renewable energy are well-known: reducing carbon emissions that cause global climate change; promoting local economic development; diversifying the electricity supply; avoiding the air pollution that contributes to smog and acid rain; providing long-term energy price stability because fuel costs are zero; and keeping energy dollars in-state. The more renewable energy we use, the better off New York is.
As the industry trade group representing large-scale renewable generators, as well as energy efficiency and conservation groups and companies, the Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACE NY) is seeking a PSC decision requiring utilities to enter into some long-term power purchase agreements in order to make the Clean Energy Standard actually work.
If the goal is to invest in and encourage the growth of non-fossil fuel generators, which are emerging as the future of energy in New York, requiring utilities to sign power purchase agreements with renewable energy generators provides the surest and most reliable path forward. With signed PPAs, wind, solar and other renewable companies can get the financing they need to build the state’s energy future. It also means that for the next several decades, wind and solar generators will be a consistent and steady source of price-stable, cost-effective power.
The state’s own analysis shows that this approach is considerably cheaper than the one used for the last 10 years, which featured a state agency subsidizing renewable energy through the purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) -- but not buying the energy itself -- known as a REC-only contract. This analysis (Clean Energy Standard White Paper - Cost Study) showed that the 50 by 30 standard can be achieved through mandated PPAs with a negligible 0.03% overall impact to ratepayer bills through 2030. The same analysis projected that an approach using REC-only contracts would have a much greater 1.84% impact on bills over that same period. Power purchase agreements send a much needed long-term market signal to retain and attract renewable energy developers, companies, and investors at the lowest possible cost to New York State taxpayers and ratepayers.
According to the state public service law, and as noted in a recent filing in the CES proceeding by the Natural Resources Defense Council (a member of ACE NY), the PSC “must abide by several statutory requirements in carrying out its regulation of the State’s utilities, including the requirement that it must render decisions that are consistent with the most recent State Energy Plan, and the requirement that it must encourage the State’s utilities to carry out long-range programs to preserve environmental values.” So there should be no legal barriers to including PPAs in the Clean Energy Standard.
The diverse renewable energy industry – including wind and solar power, hydropower, fuel cells, and bioenergy companies – stands ready to invest to help meet our renewable energy and climate change goals. Doing so will position New York as a center of clean energy development. In order to do this effectively, PPAs must be part of the Clean Energy Standard. We don’t know how the state will meet the Governor’s 50 by 30 goal without them.
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Anne Reynolds is executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. On Twitter @ACE_newyork.
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The author, center
I’m lying awake at 4 a.m. wondering if our calls for justice will ever be answered. The evening before I was marching in midtown, protesting the tragic killing of Alton Sterling. It’s been 17 months since the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and two years since Eric Garner’s death by suffocation at the hands of police. Even with cell phone cameras making this deadly reality no longer something we can ignore, justice remains elusive.
Lying awake, scrolling through Instagram, I noticed a lot of people liking and re- posting a graphic that’s the focal piece of Beyonce’s redesigned website. The redesign is dedicated to the killing of black people by law enforcement in this country over the past two years. It provides a stark picture of our condition. It’s simple enough: a black background with all the names of the murdered typed in white. I looked for my childhood friend’s name. He was killed by Florida law enforcement around the same time as Eric Garner. Not a highly publicized case, so I thought it might have been overlooked. But no, there it was.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how parents feel when their sons and daughters are killed. The horrible grief family members endure. I felt sick. And why shouldn’t I? What if my own father stepped outside his home and didn’t return? Seeing all of this death, having our voices ignored and justice denied time after time, I felt truly demoralized in a way I had never before in my life.
Two years ago, protesting the Garner tragedy, I took part in my first civil disobedience action on the Upper West Side. Soon thereafter, I found myself engaged in community organizing with an organization called Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), searching for peaceful ways to effect positive transformation. I then became JFREJ’s representative to Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition made up of dozens of organizations working toward ending discriminatory policing practices in New York City and beyond.
My main focus and energy has been working to support the passage of The Right to Know Act. This is important legislation that reinforces Fourth Amendment rights on the ground and has the potential to improve relations between the police and communities of color. It’s composed of two bills: the “ID bill” requires an officer to identify him- or her-self when having an interaction with a civilian, and the “consent to search bill” requires officers to inform citizens of their right to withhold consent to be searched where probable cause is absent.
Passing and implementing this legislation would go a long way toward normalizing police-community relations in this city and will allow us to take a step toward the justice that communities of color so richly deserve.
Sadly, the City Council Speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, is currently unwilling to bring this groundbreaking legislation to the Council floor for a vote, even though a majority of the Council has signed on to both bills. Instead, she made a backroom deal with Police Commissioner Bill Bratton - the architect of discriminatory Broken Windows policing - and scrapped this bill in exchange for adding a watered-down version to the NYPD patrol guide.
The compromise eliminates any guarantee that individuals will be notified of their right to refuse a search when there is no legal basis for one and discards the requirement for officers to identify themselves in most instances, including when individuals are questioned without reasonable suspicion. This strips the teeth from what is outlined in The Right To Know Act and delivers none of the reforms that President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended.
The bottom line: we need The Right To Know Act to become law. We know from a long and painful past that administrative prohibitions or protocols do not serve as true agents of change. For more than twenty years chokeholds have been prohibited by the patrol guide, yet this did not stop officers from using that technique resulting in the killing of Anthony Baez in 1994 and, more recently, the killing of Eric Garner in 2014. Effective? I think not. There also happens to be legislation making police chokeholds illegal (except, of course, in life-threatening situations) that is opposed by Commissioner Bratton and has not moved through the City Council.
Would passage of the Right to Know Act be the cure to police brutality? No. More is needed. Education, training, strict enforcement of NYPD rules, and real accountability instead of mere lip service, would also go a long way to eliminating police violence against citizens.
It’s also true we may never be able to eradicate all racial bias, and that some people can’t be educated or trained to be different. However, enacting laws that genuinely require the police to respect black people through proper communication will, in the process, respect everyone’s life, including the lives of police officers. The Right to Know Act would be a positive step on that road to de-escalation and reconciliation.
Let’s demand the Right to Know Act be brought to the City Council floor for a vote. True democracy requires nothing less.
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Jason Salmon is a community organizer for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and owns Treehouse Recording Studios in Brooklyn. On Twitter @JasonASalmon.
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State Senator Kaminsky voting
I grew up in a country where most elections were fixed, voting made no difference, and the political process was a dull affair run by a party whose politics were as odious as its leaders. In that country I was able to live and vote without joining the aforementioned party, although I had to withstand poll workers knocking on my door until I exercised my civic right and duty.
This past March, living in a country that prides itself on its democracy, I had to join a party in order to exercise my right to vote. What communists never forced me to do, the world’s oldest democracy did. In fact, I was lucky that I could vote at all. The 27% of registered New York voters not aligned with the Democrats or the Republicans who wished to vote but did not meet the change-of-party deadline six months ahead of the state’s closed primaries had no such luck.
It may go without saying that no one knocked on my door to remind me to exercise my civic duty.
Closed primaries are one of the most damaging aspects of a regulatory scheme that breeds civic apathy. “For members only” is the principle on which these taxpayer-funded primaries operate -- as if they were club elections whose outcomes mattered to members only, and not to all American citizens. But even if you are willing to become a member, obscure deadlines and procedures, which neither party nor the government makes any meaningful effort to explain to the public, will likely put that option out of reach.
And what if one wishes to vote Democratic in the presidential primary, Republican in the congressional primary, and for some other party in the state primary? Not such an unlikely scenario, considering, for instance, the 2095 Bernie Sanders write-ins in the New Hampshire Republican primary and the fact that 7% of voters in the Ohio Republican primary were Democrats. But even short of this type of movement, why should an “unaffiliated” voter not be able to choose a party primary to vote in? Why not allow someone registered with one party to decide that there’s a candidate of another party who really speaks to them?
What if your favorite candidate utters an insult that makes you doubt his or her fitness for public service a week before the primary (not unheard of), and your second choice belongs to a different party? The list of “what ifs” could go on, though all have the same answer: party affiliation in closed primary states can easily become a forced marriage the main benefit of which is best described with the term coined by the disgruntled 2008 Hillary Clinton supporters: PUMA -- Party Unity, My...you get it.
The cost is shutting millions out of elections, perpetuating the political establishment’s grip on our civic life, and voting for our affiliations at the expense of our best interests and convictions. If that is the price we pay for party unity, should we be surprised that party politics is becoming the butt of the joke and an object of scorn to an increasing number of Americans, much as it was to my countrypeople in the last days of the Soviet Union? We would be well-advised to learn from the past mistakes of parties, where civic life was replaced with a party line, lest we suffer similar consequences. As for closed primaries, I say, open them up!
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Gennady Yusim grew up in the Ukraine. He is currently a Programming & Outreach Librarian at Queens Library.
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