BILL NUMBER: S2478
SPONSOR: PARKER
 
TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the public service law and the public authorities law,
in relation to establishing a clean and resilient energy program
 
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
The purpose of this bill is to establish, within the Clean Energy Fund,
a program to encourage the development of resilient, behind the meter,
distributed energy resource projects that will ensure uninterrupted
electric power at facilities that provide services to the public in the
event of an extended outage of one or more of the electric distribution
systems in the state.
 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1: The public service law is amended by adding a new section
66-u.
Section 2: The public authorities law is amended by adding a new section
1020-nn.
Section 3: This act shall take effect immediately.
 
JUSTIFICATION:
The bill is intended to ensure community continuity during long term
outages of the electric grid. New York has experienced increasingly
severe weather in recent years. Scientists predict that our changing
climate can be expected to increase the frequency, intensity, and dura
tion of extreme weather events that result in outages of the electric
grid. In addition, the state's energy infrastructure is the target of a
growing threat from cyber criminals and hostile foreign governments. Our
dependence upon an uninterrupted supply of electricity has never been
greater and that dependence increases with each passing year. We rely on
uninterrupted access to electricity for our communications, social
networks, financial transactions, transportation, and public and
personal security. As the State increases its reliance on resources that
are located far from the state's major urban load centers and simultane-
ously increases its reliance on the electricity system for transporta-
tion and heating, the societal and economic consequences of a long term
outage become more severe. In fact, the present trend in New York energy
policy is to promote reliance on more remote sources of power. In the
April 2016 Order Adopting a Clean Energy Standard (CES) the Commission
determined that behind the meter distributed resources would be ineligi-
ble for the CES and could not generate Renewable Energy Credits
(RECs),instead focusing singularly on grid-connected resources. Further,
the Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) proceeding has yet to
extend to any locational, temporal, environmental, capacity, avoided
distribution, avoided transmission, or other system and/or societal
benefits to behind the meter distributed energy resources, again focus-
ing singularly on grid-connected resources. While grid-connected
resources are worthy of state support, an April 2019 report, from the
national energy experts at the National Association of Regulatory Utili-
ty Commissioners (NARUC) highlighted the critical importance of incen-
tivizing the development of additional resilient distributed energy
resources to address the increased risk of electric
grid-connected resource failures.
In advance of future weather events or terrorist attacks, this bill will
work toward the goal of ensuring that there is no such thing as a "wide-
spread blackout" of key community services in the future. Instead citi-
zens will know that certain types of facilities that provide important
public services during outages of the electric grid will have electric-
ity and will be available to serve the public. This bill is purposefully
not limited to "shelters" and similar public facilities but instead
intentionally includes the types of organizations and private businesses
that serve a public need during outages of the electric grid. For
instance, private telecommunications providers serve both citizens and
emergency service workers during public emergencies. Insulating multi-
family residential buildings from outages could enable more low-income
communities to be pre-positioned for successfully riding through storms.
An open grocery store can be a critical community resource during an
outage of the electric grid, especially a long term outage. Large retail
stores can serve as pre-positioned supplies, of food, clothes, water,
building supplies, and equipment necessary for storm preparation and
recovery efforts. The bill is intended to encourage behind the meter
systems that are at the intersection of clean energy and resilient ener-
gy. New Yorkers, especially those residing and working in urban areas,
are chronically exposed to unhealthy combustion-related air pollutants,
including oxides of nitrogen (Nox) and Particulate Matter (PM) that
traditional forms of back-up and/or resilient on-site power generation
(i.e. Diesel, Fuel Oil, etc.) increase. The environmental standards
adopted in the bill exclude these traditional resources by setting very
high standards and that require both the virtual absence of local forms
of air pollution as well as technologies that will produce significant
avoided CO2 emissions. The resiliency standard of 24 hours of uninter-
rupted electricity supplies to the qualifying end-use customer is
intended to ensure that the subject projects are truly capable of
"riding through" an outage of the electric grid that lasts for at least
an entire day rather than for a few minutes or hours.
 
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2023-24: S4946- REFERRED TO ENERGY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
2021-22: S3333 - REFERRED TO ENERGY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
2019/20 S6587A - AMEND AND RECOMMIT TO ENERGY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS /
PRINT NUMBER 6587A
 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:
None.
 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediately.