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Neighbors rallied on Sunday against National Grid’s plan to expand their natural gas plant in Greenpoint, which comes as the energy company awaits a decision on their final permits.
National Grid is seeking to build two new liquified natural gas (LNG) vaporizers at the Greenpoint Energy Center on Maspeth Avenue — currently the home to older vaporizers that the company says are less efficient.
According to the project’s website, the vaporizers liquify and store gas not being used during off-peak times — namely, the warmer months of the year. When temperatures drop and customers crank their gas heaters, the vaporizers turn their stored gas back into a vapor and send it back into the system.
Declaring that utility ratepayers shouldn’t be investing in harming their own communities, state Senator Michael Gianaris is calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to look into a recent decision by the Public Service Commission (PSC) to allow National Grid to raise rates in their downstate region to “build on their fossil fuel infrastructure.”
In his letter to the governor, Gianaris argues hiking rates to build this infrastructure run afoul of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), the nation-leading climate law passed in 2019.
“Ratepayers should not be investing in yesterday’s infrastructure to address tomorrow’s challenges. That’s why the Senate led the way and enacted the CLCPA. The PSC’s decision does not comport with the goals that the governor and the Legislature share,” Gianaris said. “I am asking Governor Hochul to review the PSC’s decision because frontline environmental justice communities should not pay for the same infrastructure that caused the havoc we’re already experiencing.”
A second federal agency is kicking off a civil rights probe into the approval of part of a natural gas pipeline snaking through Brooklyn.
The U.S. Department of Transportation will investigate whether the state Department of Public Service violated of federal discrimination laws when the Public Service Commission gave thumbs up to National Grid’s North Brooklyn Pipeline in August, according to a letter from DOT sent Friday and obtained by THE CITY.
The investigation is the second of its kind in response to a complaint filed in August by lawyers on behalf of several Brooklyn community groups. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is examining the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s actions in a related probe announced in October.
“We’re really glad the DOT is investigating because it’s a terrible precedent and really harmful for these communities, and it’s just kind of another way that state agencies skirt the law to allow infrastructure to be built in communities of color without adequate protection,” said Anjana Malhotra, a lawyer at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, who filed the complaint.
She added the results of the probe could snag the last phase of construction of the pipeline, which is set to stretch from Brownsville to Greenpoint.
Still a stupid idea with a high price tag for something that is inefficient and with high externalities. It's ridiculous that the line of argument that would have to be used to shut it down would be civil rights when it should simply be accounting and efficiency.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation extended their deadline to make a decision on issuing air pollution permits to the proposed expansion Greenpoint Energy Center to Feb. 7, 2022, two months after their most recent deadline of Dec. 6 and seven months after they filed their first request for an extension last summer.
National Grid is planning to build two new Liquified Natural Gas vaporizers at the Greenpoint Energy Center on Maspeth Avenue. To do so, they need Air State Facility permits from the DEC to replace the existing, more restrictive Title V permit.
In a Dec.1 email to National Grid, DEC permit administrator Stephen Watts said the department is still working on a “responsiveness summary” addressing comments submitted during the project’s public comment period, which ended in December 2020, and at public hearings held in March.
“To enable the Department sufficient time to adequately evaluate and address the public comments, we respectfully request National Grid’s mutual consent to extend the time frames,” Watts wrote.
Activists hope the most recent delay means the permit application is likely to be denied come February.
At the end of the day, even leftist hipsters need energy. I like seeing them lining up in hipster areas of Brooklyn at the grocery store whenever there is an impending crisis.
At the end of the day, even leftist hipsters need energy. I like seeing them lining up in hipster areas of Brooklyn at the grocery store whenever there is an impending crisis.
Right, which is why this idea is so incredibly stupid. Natural gas is a very specific form of energy, and while useful, isn't all that useful for final point of use in most cases and certainly not for just about any use case that makes sense within the city and this climate. NYC obviously imports energy from elsewhere and the energy with the easiest distribution, largest array of sources possible, and most diverse use cases is electricity by every single measure. Natural gas doesn't even rate for heating anymore compared to electricity, at least not for the climate here, since modern heat pumps, even solely air-source heat pumps, in the temperature bands NYC is in still have such a higher COP than natural gas's asymptotic COP limit of 1 that even when you consider conversion loss in a natural gas generator and then transmission losses, the heat pump is still going to be overall the lowest energy used for the most usable heat.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to people fighting this on environmental and local emissions grounds, but I think people focus on that so much that they don't realize that even larger reasons for why this plan is so egregiously stupid and is supported by some of the frankly more scientifically illiterate people among the layman are on economics and engineering grounds.
I think doing research and pilots in a lot of different promising technologies is good, but this doesn't seem too promising to me.
On a fundamental engineering and physics level, for NYC's climate band, even current modern air source heat pumps are a lot more efficient overall than heating provided by combustion and that's with combustion being close to its theoretical efficiency limits of a COP of 1 while current heat pumps have real world higher COP ratings even for temperatures that are the worst of NYC's recorded historical temps and with a theoretical efficiency much higher than that. They also use utilities (electricity!) that generally already have the capacity for such because if a person's home does or can use air conditioning, then that building is most or all of the way to having the transmission and distribution hardware for efficient heat pumps as there's not much draw difference between peak draw needed for the heat pumps in dead of winter versus peak draw needed for cooling in the peak of summer. You're unlikely to find anyone who is willing to live somewhere where there is no electric utility hook-up, so that hardware is going to be a given for any new construction or renovated housing (or just housing in general). So with that, there's little reason to expand the natural gas network in the city even if the natural gas is sourced from renewable natural gas sources and hydrogen. Either of those are better spent used in other capacities, including potentially as feedstock for electric generation plants.
There are also questions surrounding the use of hydrogen gas in existing natural gas infrastructure with answers that so far aren't quite that promising even if it were "green" hydrogen rather than via steam reformation of natural gas. Hydrogen is a much lighter gas than natural gas, has some corrosive properties and the smaller molecules are easier to leak so utilizing existing natural gas infrastructure has thus far only been doable to a limited extent with some pilots (though with slightly different infrastructure than here) finding that about 20% of the mix as hydrogen gas is about as good as it gets so far to retain usage of existing infrastructure and appliances.
Of course, National Grid is in a bit of tough position here because of course they don't want future profits to be capped just because other technology has come along and especially not since they have a very large body of knowledge and investments in natural gas. It's a hard pill to swallow and pivoting is also immensely difficult at that scale.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-26-2022 at 01:32 PM..
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