By its 2019 Climate Act, New York has officially embarked on a great energy transition to Net Zero by 2050, with statutorily-dictated interim mandates along the way.  The first of those mandates is 70% “emissions-free” electricity by 2030, only 6 years from now.  This is far and away the biggest government-directed project that the State of New York has ever undertaken.  However, to date, relative to this project there exists no environmental impact statement, no feasibility study, no prototype, and no demonstration project to show how this can be done, let alone any detailed cost analysis to show how much it will cost.   

Implementing the enforced energy transition is the responsibility of an alphabet soup of state agencies that makes the federal labyrinth of bureaucracies look simple and rational by comparison.  Multiple overlapping departments, councils and authorities that have staffed themselves up with climate zealots take charge of pushing the transition forward — things like the Climate Action Council, the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the NY State Energy Research & Development Authority.  

But meanwhile, there remain a couple of vestigial agencies tasked with keeping the lights on, notably the Department of Public Service and the NY Independent System Operator.  Those two held something called the Zero Emissions by 2040 Technical Conference back on December 11-12, 2023.  After all, somebody has to look over the minor “technical” issues along the way to our lofty climate goals for 2030 and 2040.  Look as I might, I can’t find any reporting on, or reference to, this conference in any of the local press at the time or in the months since.  However, my friend and partner in crime Roger Caiazza (the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York), has tracked down information on the conference on various agency websites and on YouTube.  On April 7, Roger posted a lengthy blog reporting on the first panel at the Conference; a somewhat different version of that post also appeared on Watts Up With That at about the same time.  The slides for all the presentations at the Conference can be found as Item 72 on the public docket at this link.