New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson speaks at a hearing | AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Council Speaker Corey Johnson's office is defending a change to the city's landmark emissions law, despite criticism that it would benefit a fossil fuel-based technology sold by a Silicon Valley company that has lobbied Johnson’s office for more than a year.
The amendment, which may get a vote this week, would facilitate the use of natural gas fuel cells over other technologies as the city tries to cut emissions from city buildings, New York’s largest generator of greenhouse gases. The emissions cuts were enshrined into law last year with the adoption of Local Law 97.
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But the singular treatment of a fossil fuel-based technology has irked environmentalists and others who say the measure defies the intent of the hard-won legislation — to cut down on the amount of heat-trapping gases produced by buildings.
“It opens up a large loophole for a fossil fuel technology that’s highly polluting to be built in more buildings in New York City,” said Pete Sikora of New York Communities for Change, who sits on an advisory board created to implement the law by setting standards to measure energy usage. The new bill would create a unique standard for fossil fuel cells outside of the board’s work.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office, too, is not pleased, saying the amendment undermines the work that advisory board has been doing.
While environmental chair Costa Constantinides is on paper as the bill's primary sponsor, Johnson, a potential mayoral candidate, appears to be driving the bill, according to lobbying records reviewed by POLITICO and a source with internal knowledge of the amendment, Intro 1982.
Bloom Energy is a publicly traded company based in San Jose, Calif., that specializes in the niche, fossil fuel-based technology it has long touted as clean and affordable: fuel cells, or large batteries, that can store and generate electricity from natural gas with no combustion. For more than a year, the company has been lobbying the Council and Johnson’s office in particular on emissions legislation, fuel cells and the amendment itself.
Proponents of the technology say its emissions levels are much smaller than typical generators. The cells also store energy from solar and wind to help deploy those technologies when the sun is not out or there is no wind.
“The thing that we must realize is that actually achieving a zero emissions goal is a little more complicated than the popular thinking understands,” said Jack Brouwer, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine.
But fuel cells emit similar levels of greenhouse gas as any other natural-gas based technology, according to some experts.
Don Winston, a sustainable technology engineer who worked on One Bryant Park — one of the city’s most sustainable buildings — said the level of emissions produced by fuel cells would be tantamount to “burning an equal amount of natural gas” in the combustion process.
“The law already had an emissions factor for natural gas. And there's no need for there to be a separate factor for fuel cells. You just use the existing factor for natural gas,” he said.
So it is baffling to many who’ve worked on the bill why the Council would make a special arrangement for one specific technology that uses natural gas when environmentalists, and some Council members, are pushing to end the use of natural gas infrastructure altogether.
“Clearly someone thinks [the amendment] would help them a lot,” Sikora said. “Because they wouldn’t be going through all the trouble of writing the specific legislation to amend Local Law 97 if they didn’t think it would help their industry.”
Bloom Energy has been lobbying the Council aggressively since Local Law 97 was adopted.
The company spent $160,000 lobbying city officials with a special focus on the Council between March 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020. The discussions, detailed in publicly available lobbying records, marked the beginnings of a campaign that spanned more than a year.
The speaker’s chief of staff, Jason Goldman, and the Council legislative director, Jeff Baker, had meetings with a Bloom Energy lobbyist between March 1 and April 30, 2019, around the time the Council approved Local Law 97. A steady stream of meetings between Bloom representatives, Goldman and Baker continued until June 30, 2020. The fuel cell amendment emerged in the Council on June 25.
The original law took years to pass and was hailed by the Council and mayor as the most comprehensive of its kind in the U.S., despite facing criticism for allowing too many exemptions. So environmentalists are bristling at the idea of giving special treatment to a fossil fuel-based technology with the latest amendment. Even some who criticized Local Law 97 at the outset have been reticent to embrace the measure.
The advisory group created by Local Law 97 is charged with creating a system to measure energy and emissions from technologies (including natural gas), with recommendations due by Jan. 1, 2023.
Intro 1982 proposes an emissions factor for fuel cells divorced from the advisory board altogether — basing it on a standard published by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
“Intro 1982 is simply intended to incorporate the widely accepted marginal emissions accounting methodology used by leading experts,” said Bloom Energy spokesperson Justin Saia in a statement.
Supporters of the fuel cell proposal said the NYSERDA standard would act as a temporary fix until the 2023 recommendations are released. Fossil fuel-powered fuel cells are not considered renewable under state climate law.
A senior member of de Blasio’s climate policy office spoke against the proposed amendment at a recent Council hearing, claiming fuel cells would be given more advantageous footing.
“We believe that all technologies under consideration in LL97 should be treated consistently,” said Ke Wei in testimony against the bill. “If this approach is ultimately successful, the work of the Advisory Board will be undermined, … and the result will be that this fossil fuel based technology will be given preferential treatment.”
Jennifer Fermino, a spokesperson for Johnson, echoed the sentiments of Bloom Energy.
“This bill corrects an oversight that left owners and operators of fuel cells without the means to measure their compliance with Local Law 97,” she said in an email. “That was holding up the adoption of this particular technology, which was never the intent of the bill.”
Environmentalists who pushed for the bill’s passage say the intent was always to prevent the adoption of certain technologies — those that use fossil fuels.
“Natural gas fuel cells aren’t good for our environment either way,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, executive director of the labor and environmental group, ALIGN.
Asked to comment on the amendment, the mayor’s office said only that it was adhering to the timeline established in Local Law 97.
“As LL97 states, the timeline for this was Jan. 1, 2023, we expect it to have these rates for all technologies well before then,” said Julia Arredondo, a spokesperson for de Blasio.
But even critics beyond the realm of traditional environmentalists have decried a separate standard for the technology, still powered by natural gas.
“In my opinion, this would create an unnecessary carve-out for the use of fuel cells, which is in contradiction with the original stated intent … of the legislation,” said Winston, the engineer who, aside from One Bryant Park, has consulted on large sustainable energy projects including 4 Times Square and The Helena.
The proposal to amend the emissions law in favor of the natural gas fuel cells only has three sponsors, and was introduced by Constantinides in late June.
Brouwer, of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, said there should be a practical view when looking at fuel cells: He argued they played a helpful role in integrating wind and solar technologies, and could be particularly useful to hospitals in need of round-the-clock power. He advocated for them as an alternative to diesel generators, technology that could negatively impact patients with Covid-19.
Natural gas fuel cells, for now, still emit a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, which Local Law 97 has set aggressive benchmarks for curbing starting in 2025 with the ultimate reduction — 80 percent — by 2050.
Johnson has not yet publicly endorsed or criticized fuel cell technology, but he has previously emphasized the importance of renewable energy and the need to move away from fossil fuels.
“The mayor laid out some big plans on the environment. I do think we need to move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable — solar, wind, hydro, geothermal — all things we need to focus on,” he said during a February appearance on NY1’s Inside City Hall. “But again, the details on this plan matter.”
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After a year of lobbying, Johnson backs fossil fuel bill over green objections - Politico
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