New York Metropolis hit a significant milestone this month by fully converting its heavy-duty automobile fleet to renewable diesel gasoline, making the nation’s largest metropolis additionally the primary on the East Coast to implement this inexperienced expertise at such a big scale.
The transition, which took practically a yr, consists of 12,500 automobiles, encompassing every little thing from rubbish and fireplace vans to ambulances, snowplows and different specialised tools.
Make little doubt about it, this can be a main accomplishment. Changing the municipal fleet to renewable diesel is a big step ahead that may scale back emissions, enhance public well being and function a bridge till the town can totally electrify its fleet to satisfy its 100% zero emissions automobile objective.
The reality about full electrification is that we’re simply not there but. The attendant price, disruption, infrastructure investments, and technological developments will take time to beat. Because the then-Metropolis Council majority chief told NY1 when a invoice establishing the 2038 zero emission fleet objective was passed, “it’s going to need to be a course of to get there” and “we’re not going to bankrupt the town doing this.”
Whereas the town is working towards its electrification, renewable diesel is decreasing emissions proper now — progress that’s important as a collection of challenges, from the cancellation of renewable era initiatives to international provide chain disruptions, has compelled the state to rethink its decarbonization timeline.
New York’s climate law requires the state to acquire 70 p.c of its energy from renewable power sources by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2040. However a current state report determined the primary goal will possible be delayed till 2033. As well as, a state comptroller’s audit found the Public Service Fee (PSC) isn’t successfully working to satisfy the 2030 and 2040 targets and lacks a backup plan in the event that they aren’t met.
The magnitude of New York Metropolis’s success rises within the face of those challenges. That accomplishment was made doable by renewable liquid fuels, about which there are some misconceptions that want addressing.
Opposite to some critics’ misleading claims, the biomass-based diesel being deployed within the metropolis’s heavy-duty automobile fleet is made out of waste, resembling used cooking oil, rendered animal fats and inedible corn oil.
These similar critics have additionally questioned the importance of the transition on decreasing particulate matter by misrepresenting research commissioned by the state company main New York’s clear power transition.
In actual fact, the 2021 research commissioned by the New York State Power and Analysis Improvement Authority (NYSERDA) determined that using renewable diesel might result in a discount of as much as 40 p.c of particulate matter in older engines not outfitted with diesel particulate filters.
Finally, the conversion of the town’s fleet to renewable diesel gasoline will forestall 162 million pounds of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from coming into the air yearly. At a time when the way forward for the town’s congestion pricing program — and its promised environmental advantages — is unclear, our capability to decrease automobile emissions via different means has taken on heightened significance.
Essentially the most fervent environmentalists reject all choices of decreasing emissions, save the fast electrification of every little thing — from private and non-private transit to heating and cooling programs. This isn’t solely logistically not possible at current, it’s irresponsible, as it will preserve the established order till the change will be flipped, unnecessarily exposing New Yorkers to harmful emissions ranges as a substitute of doing what we are able to to scale back them in actual time.
The state’s electrical grid proper now merely can not deal with the elevated masses full electrification will entail, according to the New York Unbiased System Operator (NYISO), which has repeatedly warned about thinning reliability margins that enhance the town’s threat of doubtless harmful energy outages. Making the investments to the grid to accommodate rising demand pushed by electrification whereas additionally hardening it in opposition to excessive climate occasions pushed by local weather change will take time and hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
Reaching the town and state’s clear power targets is a objective all of us share. However reaching these targets is a course of that requires utilizing the instruments presently at our disposal. Letting good be the enemy of the nice solely serves to derail our progress.
— Rocco J. Lacertosa is CEO of the New York State Power Coalition, Inc. Kris DeLair is Government Director of the Empire State Power Affiliation, Inc.
