New York State could begin solving its energy problems immediately through conservation programs so ratepayers spend less for energy while being more comfortable in their businesses and homes, said the new chairman of the state Assembly Energy Committee. Kevin Cahill, a Democrat whose 101st Assembly district encompasses Kingston and Rhinebeck, said with rising costs, possible energy shortages and increasingly serious implications of climate change, the state needs to move quickly to avert economic and environmental troubles.
Cahill said new sources of energy are required in a mix of both conventional and renewable sources. “What we should be doing is diversifying, our energy supply” he said of the state”™s energy portfolio. He said New York is already more diversified than most states, but he lamented the lack of an official state energy plan.
“I have a mantra and that is, we need a comprehensive state energy plan and everything else follows,” said Cahill. He said the state Legislature this year appropriated $2 million for the plan. “If we had a plan we would have a framework to discuss what to do.”
He said the state”™s current ad-hoc system discourages private investments in the state, because companies are unlikely to risk millions or billions of dollars on building power plants without knowing how the state plans to manage the power being supplied. “If we have a comprehensive plan, responsible investors will come.”
The state has not built enough new power supply sources in recent decades to meet projected demand, and Cahill said the free market had in effect failed New Yorkers.
Citing 24 pending applications for new power plants filed in the last decade in the state that never materialized because they were connected to the defunct energy company Enron, he said, “When it disappeared, so did their likely financing.”
Currently New York has six regional utilities that maintain the natural gas and electricity infrastructure but are not generating any power of their own. Instead they purchase power at an open market on a daily basis under the aegis of the New York Independent System Operator (ISO) a nonprofit corporation set up for the purpose in year 2000, when New York state dismantled its 100-year-old system of regional regulated monopolies that produced and distributed the state”™s power.
Five of New York”™s former utilities are still investor-owned energy companies and one, Long Island Power Authority, is a nonprofit municipal utility that in 1995 replaced the Long Island Lighting Company. But LIPA also does not produce its own power. Cahill said two influential state Assembly members are introducing measures to re-regulate the state”™s energy supply and perhaps reunite supply and transmission of energy, but he did not say whether he supported the idea.
Cahill strongly supports the idea of allowing businesses to do “net metering,” that is to install a solar energy grid or wind power array on their rooftops or properties and sell power to the utility grid, thus rolling their own meters backward. This is potentially a source that would produce maximum power during peak summer hours when it is most needed and thus eliminate, or at least delay, the need for a traditional large power facility.
But Cahill said the price paid by utilities for the power needs to reflect their costs of maintaining the infrastructure that moves the power. And while there is an appropriation of about $6.5 million in the state budget to develop solar energy, with significant money earmarked for The Solar Energy Consortium centered in Kingston, he said the state must subsidize solar and other renewable energy resources for the foreseeable future to develop them as practical, cost-effective supply options.
Cahill said the idea that energy conservation means sacrifice is wrong. “We can actually improve our lifestyle with energy conservation, while saving money and conserving energy.”
Cahill said the state in effect has no choice but to start conservation programs. He said under a best-case scenario it takes six years to bring a conventional power plant on line, but noted that the state energy ISO had estimated that the lower Hudson Valley, New York City and Long Island could begin suffering power shortages in about five years, because while some sections of the state have energy surpluses, those areas are looking at rising use and no new sources. He said that prospect is another argument for net metering on commercial buildings.
Cahill was appointed to the energy chairman post in January as was his counterpart George Maziarz, chairman of the Senate Energy committee, shortly before Gov. David Paterson took office. The new leadership has an opportunity to stoke the state”™s economy and set a global example of wise energy policy, Cahill said, which will provide jobs and reduce the threat of global climate change. “Unless we do something to reduce (greenhouse gases), we will destroy the way of life we treasure.”
