Meeting the state’s ambitious climate goals is less about climate change than it is about energy flows. 

The math doesn’t make it easy: New York is seeking to retire aging fossil fuel plants that provide the bulk of energy to the New York metro area, while growing its energy demand through electrification and transitioning to less consistent renewable sources. 

“For every megawatt of old fossil fuel we lose, we need to add three megawatts of intermittent renewables.”

Kevin Lanahan, a senior vice president at the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)

NYISO, which manages the state’s power grid and electricity markets, in recent years has been issuing warnings about the threat to the state’s energy reliability as demand increases and old sources of power are retired. 

A reliability study NYISO released last year warned the state’s electric system “faces an era of profound reliability challenges.” Around 25% of the state’s generating capacity comes from fossil fuel plants at least 50 years old that frequently break down or fail to deliver the expected energy to the grid.   

“We are not adding enough supply to make up for what we are seeing in retirements,” Lanahan said at the annual Adirondack Research Conference on Thursday. “We are not connecting enough new capacity.”

Lanahan said it was good to see fossil sources leave the grid and cleaner energy sources come online. But he also pointed out that many projects NYISO had given a green light to connect to the grid were being delayed in the construction phase. 

He said NYISO had approved around 14,000 megawatts of renewable energy generation since 2019, but that only about 3,500 megawatts had been connected to the grid.

“Something is happening between getting approval and putting steel in the ground,” he said. “We think it’s the supply chain, inflationary pressures, geopolitical pressures that impact electrical supply equipment.”

Communities inside the Adirondack Park have seen a handful of solar projects proposed and approved and are facing a growing debate over battery storage facilities. The majority of energy projects in the Adirondack region, though, are happening outside the Blue Line

NYISO approves both new generation facilities producing at least 50 megawatts of energy and facilities seeking to pull a significant amount of energy from the grid. Data centers and semiconductor manufacturing facilities, along with a push to electrify buildings and transportation networks to replace carbon emissions, are the main drivers of demand on the energy grid. 

Lanahan said that within the Adirondack Park counties there are 19 pending projects looking to draw at least 10 megawatts of energy from the grid, including five data centers proposed in St. Lawrence County. 

“We are running the system on the ragged edge of resources available to serve that consumer demand,” Lanahan said. 

Energy policy planners and elected officials hope that a new underwater and underground transmission line connecting Canadian hydropower to New York City will help ease pressure on the power grid.

During the research conference, Andrew Rush, a representative for the Champlain Hudson Power Express project, said major construction on the transmission line was completed earlier this year and that it was on schedule to go into service next month.

The power line, which will draw from Hydro-Quebec’s vast network of reservoirs and dams, was laid at the bottom of Lake Champlain, covering nearly 100 miles in the lake.

Rush said the barges designed specifically to transport and install the cables in Lake Champlain had left the lake. The barges had been prowling the lake’s waters during the past few summers slowly installing the underwater cable. 

The transmission line will deliver up to 1,250 megawatts of power to a converter station in Astoria, Queens, helping to meet the energy needs of an estimated 1 million New York homes.

“We call it the most powerful project you’ll never see,” Rush said. 

Camille Warner, a senior project manager with the clean energy siting team at NYSERDA, defended the safety of battery storage facilities during a presentation at the conference.

A spate of battery storage facilities within the park have raised local resistance and even spurred a handful of communities to adopt moratoriums on their approval. 

“A lot of fear, a lot of misinformation has been spreading,” Warner said. 

A state work group that examined battery storage safety and a series of fires that have occurred both in New York and other states found that the facilities did not present an unusual safety risk and proposed revisions to the state fire code that went into effect Jan. 1.

Warner said misinformation was most likely to spread in communities “when developers don’t engage communities early and often.”

State officials and other proponents highlight how battery storage facilities can help smooth out demand pressures on the power grid and provide backup energy sources to communities in the event of outages or other emergencies. 

“It bridges the gap between where energy is made and where it’s needed,” Warner said. “It helps keep the lights on during storms and emergencies.”