Given that all energy sources have environmental impacts and risks, people have to accept that while none is perfect some are better than others. Natural gas, solar power, wind and (waste disposal aside) nuclear are less damaging and less risky than coal, with its massive environmental impact, and oil, with its significant impact and politically uncertain sources of supply. And with hostility to the United States in the world, hostility to the Northeast in the United States, and hostility to New York City (and, by connection, the rest of Long Island) in the Northeast, Downstate would be wise to meet its own energy needs to the extent possible, and to diversify sources of supply otherwise, even at a somewhat higher cost (which would also encourage conservation) and despite some impact and risk. For New York City, relying on Upstate New York for additional electric power is a bit like relying on countries where Osama Bin Laden is popular for oil.
Therefore, Indian Point should be kept until the end of its useful life, the Long Island LNG terminal should be built. Perhaps another LNG terminal should be built as well, in Lower New York Bay. If resources would have to be expended to protect these facilities from accident or attack, spend them; if a big berm would have to be built in the harbor to screen the terminal from the shipping lanes to prevent an accident, then it should be built. And the pipe from an LNG terminal in New York Harbor should go into Brooklyn, not into New Jersey. There are already pipelines between the states, and if they don’t want more capacity in, we don’t want more capacity out.
Moreover, unless it could be shown that doing so would lead to mass extinctions of birds, rather than just lots of individual losses, windmills should be installed from Montauk to Tottenville. If they are ugly, have the government pay for a masonry bottom and large medallions or other decorations to make them look better. With a little imagination, and a little increase in cost, there is no reason why in 20 years they cannot become an accepted and even prized part of the landscape that NIMBYs will fight to preserve. After all, such people are fighting to preserve former power plants and sugar refineries in Williamsburg.
The most likely source of hydrogen, in the short run, is a refinery that removes the carbon from hydrocarbons, the simplest of which is natural gas. Perhaps, rather than building an electric power plant on the ExxonMobil site in Greenpoint, the City and State should try to get the site put in use for a hydrogen generating plant instead. The additional natural gas coming in through the LNG terminals could be used, in part, to make hydrogen.
For hydrogen to be of any use, hydrogen pipes would have to be laid from the plant to locations throughout the city, duplicating the natural gas pipes. This would probably not be cost effective in low density areas for the foreseeable future. But it might be cost effective in the Manhattan CBD, in the dense and developing residential and commercial areas on the Long Island side of the East River, and in certain outlying centers such as the airports and hospital complexes. There, fuel cells could be installed in place of back up diesel generators, and could be run all the time instead of just during blackouts. Those fuel cells, and the existing large plants, should be able to provide enough power to Manhattan, the dense areas close to it, the neighborhoods they are sited in, and the electric rail transit system (if it could be isolated from the rest of the grid, and it should be) for the indefinite future.
What about the rest of the city, and the suburbs? My question is, how small can a gas-turbine power plant be and still be reasonably energy efficient? Because perhaps the solution is not to find some neighborhoods to stick with a few more big plants, but require all neighborhoods to accept one small one – or suffer the consequences if they do not. Even if such small plants were not as economically efficient, they would be more politically efficient. Every community would be responsible for its own power, and none would be the patsy.
There is some precedent here. At the turn of the century, when there were several competing streetcar companies electrifying former horsecar lines, Brooklyn had small power stations at Second Avenue and 52nd Street, 39th Street at the bay, Smith and 9th Street, Third Avenue between 1st and Second Street, south of Park Circle on Coney Island Avenue, and in Ridgewood. These plants, together, had 25,000 kilowatts of power.
All over the boroughs, there are small manufacturing districts mapped in 1961 and earlier based on the location of pre-existing industrial facilities surrounded by residential neighborhoods. Park Slope is near manufacturing-zoned land in Gowanus, Windsor Terrace has some southwest of the Prospect Expressway, Kensington as some near 39th Street, Flatbush has some near the hospitals. Why not locate small plants there?
Outside of high-rise areas, solar could also be a big part of the solution. Power companies look down at it because it is a high cost source of power. That is still true on an average cost basis. But solar panels produce maximum energy at times of peak demand, when power from other sources is far more costly than average. And they produce it close to where it is used, taking pressure off the fragile electric grid. A neighbor had panels installed on half a 20 by 50 roof, and they provided double that family’s modest needs (they are also conservationists) in the summer. Installation over the entire roof, therefore, would have been enough for four families with similar electric usage. And solar panels continue to get better.
Currently, New York has net metering, allowing the meter to run backward if solar power is produced, providing a credit when power from the grid is needed in turn. But the value of the power is the same all the time. If New York were to follow the lead of California and some other states, and require the utilities to install meters that allow different prices to be charged at different times, then the added value of solar panels – production at peak times — would be reflected in the power credited and charged – and the incentive to install solar cells would be greater.
Today there is no reason to install more solar capacity than is required for one’s own needs, because the utilities never have to repay an excess credit. Perhaps they should be required to, if not at the retail rate, then at the wholesale rate. Again, that wholesale cost to be paid to the solar cell owner would be higher in mid-afternoon in July than at midnight in March. If many people produced their own power, would that deny Con Edison and LIPA the revenues it requires to maintain the electric power grid? Not if the basic service charge was set properly to cover it.
With solar, small gas turbine generation stations, and conservation, non-high-rise areas have the potential to become self-sufficient at peak times. What the residents of one community wanted to crank up the air conditioning, didn’t want to install solar panels, and didn’t want a gas turbine generating station in the neighborhood? No problem. The utilities could just be required, by law, to blackout those areas with the greatest peak net demand per capita whenever the demand for power exceeded the supply. In other words, communities that didn’t take responsibility for their power needs would accept the impact of their decision. As long as the major business areas and the rail transit system retained power, there would be little economic impact for the region as a whole. Local decisions with local accountability would make the power shortage for others go away. The tragedy of the commons wouldn’t end, but it at least would be localized to an area represented by a single pandering local pol. Perhaps such pols would stop pandering and start solving problems as a result.
In the short run, all of the energy sources listed above would be more costly than electricity produced in a huge coal-fired power plant located somewhere else, with power transmitted through someone else’s communities. It would be more costly than power produced using oil from the Middle East. But it may not be more costly if all the externalized costs (like pollution and the risk of disruption) were included, and may not be more costly in the long run even so. The large number of poor people in New York City aside, this is a rich region, and one that uses relatively little power per person. It can afford a slightly higher cost of power today to get a payoff tomorrow. But why debate it? With the NIMBYs in charge outside the region (see prior post), we may not have any choice.