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The National Grid plan does have support from a broad coalition of academics, elected officials and business groups, including the Business Council of New York State, the Partnership for New York City and the Association for a Better New York. That’s my biggest criticism of this plan. “The name of the game right now is insulate and electrify. “National Grid is, of course, a company very much reliant on natural gas right now, and its plan in many ways reflects that,” said Wagner, who is on leave from New York University. Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, called National Grid’s vision “not all that ambitious” and said elements of its plan, such as increasing energy-efficient retrofits for buildings and expanding access to heat pumps, should be pushed further.

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“They need to really start planning how to decommission gas infrastructure,” Bambrick said, “and not come up with ways to continue to invest in that infrastructure when we know that it’s going to be obsolete.” “By continuing to rely on combustion for heating and buildings, you’re still going to get the pollutants that we’re looking to eliminate.”īambrick said the supply capacity for both renewable natural gas and green hydrogen is “a long way off,” and urged National Grid to focus on proven renewables. “From my perspective it misses the mark,” said Conor Bambrick, director of climate policy at Environmental Advocates NY, which is part of NY Renews. Regulators will begin implementing the plan by 2024. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature by 2023.

The council is required by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act to submit a plan to Gov. Both fuels, they say, are at odds with a proposal from the state’s Climate Action Council that seeks to electrify the heating systems in nearly every New York building by 2050. NY Renews, a coalition of environmental groups, calls renewable natural gas and green hydrogen “ false solutions” and a way for gas companies to push back against going all electric. About 25% would heat their home and office with fossil-free gas, the company predicted, while the final quarter would rely on a combination of both.īut some green energy advocates are skeptical. “Is there a way of decarbonizing the fuel that’s coming to them so it’s no impact to that customer? That’s what brought us to this hybrid approach: retaining customer choice giving affordability,” Wynter said.īy 2050 roughly half of National Grid’s 4.2 million New York customers would rely on all-electric heat, the company projected (currently 10% do). Rudolph Wynter, president of National Grid New York, called the plan “a hybrid solution.” The change, National Grid argues, would allow the state to cut its carbon emissions without fully relying on electricity. By relying on fossil-free gas, the company said, it would give customers the freedom to decide whether to invest in replacing their gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. National Grid, which services a large swath of the state, from Niagara Falls to Long Island, would ramp up energy-efficient retrofits to buildings and help convert some customers to electric heat pumps-a greener alternative to furnaces and air conditioners.

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The vision, which National Grid spelled out in a new 32-page report, would rely on what the company calls “fossil-free gas,” or a combination of methane captured from landfills, farms and waste treatment plants, plus hydrogen produced by solar and wind power. National Grid plans to eliminate fossil fuels from its New York gas networks by 2050-mostly by switching to renewable natural gas and green hydrogen, the utility giant said Tuesday.

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