Selling Off Vehicles

Ithaca Carshare does not rely on public funds for its general operating budget. While grants help pay for conversion to electric vehicles and support equitable car-sharing access, membership and usage fees pay for the service, vehicles, fuel, insurance, repairs, and maintenance. Liz Field, Ithaca CarShare Director, said that the service has already sold four of its oldest vehicles in June, reducing the number of vehicles in the fleet from 30 to 26. If the bill is not signed this month, more vehicles will start being sold off. 

According to Field, “every day that passes without [Governor Hochul’s] signature is another day our staff is furloughed and members who rely on car-share can’t meet their transportation needs. We don’t understand what the hold-up is at this point.” Field said that even if the bill is signed into law today, it still imposes a six-month waiting period before it would allow Ithaca CarShare to reopen.

“We planned for a six month pause on May 19, so if [Governor Hochul] signs the bill this month, that’s effectively a nine-month pause for us,” Field said.

During the press conference, State Senator Webb said, “Ithaca Carshare provides critical access to transportation for my constituents, many of whom can’t afford to buy a car or choose not to in order to cut down on their carbon footprint. I urge Governor Hochul to act swiftly and sign the Ithaca Carshare bill.” Webb continued, “The pause in operations has been difficult for Ithaca Carshare staff who have been furloughed and for community members who rely on their services.”

Assemblymember Kelles also called on the governor to sign the bill, stating, "We need to ensure this critical transportation option remains available for community members who rely on carshare for basic needs like getting to the grocery store and doctor’s appointments.”

Carsharing Reduces GHG Emissions

Kelles added that carsharing has been one of the solutions identified by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to combat greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. If the bill is not signed into law, it will result in the closure of several other nonprofit car-sharing organizations throughout the state, undermining New York’s goals for reducing emissions.

NYSERDA has invested $3 million in carsharing services throughout the state in an effort to reduce emissions. However, this funding will be lost if car-sharing services like Ithaca CarShare are forced to close permanently because they can’t receive insurance. According to Field, other carsharing services in the state have expressed interest in becoming nonprofits but haven’t been able to because they wouldn’t be able to receive insurance as a nonprofit under current state regulations. The bill would allow Risk Retention Groups (RRG’s) that are not domiciled in New York State to provide auto insurance to nonprofit organizations, making it possible for more carsharing services to become nonprofits.

“Time is of the essence,” said Tompkins County Legislator Anne Koreman. “I, with my colleagues at the Tompkins County Legislature, call on Governor Hochul to immediately sign this bill so reliable, affordable, and equitable transportation is again available to our residents as soon as possible."

Next TCCPI Meeting

Friday, September 29, 2023

9 to 11 am

TCCPI meetings have moved online. Contact Peter Bardaglio, the TCCPI coordinator, for further details at pbardaglio@gmail.com.

Electrify Ithaca! held its official launch at the South Side Community Center.

And solar development companies have struggled to collect payments for the energy they’ve produced, with the potential to disrupt contracts with customers as well as investors, Christian’s letter notes.

“Most importantly, these issues have led to unnecessary customer harm and skepticism in the state’s CDG programs,” Christian writes.

PSC threatens utilities with fines over billing issues

The state created CDG eight years ago, touting it as a popular way for low and moderate-income residents to help New York achieve its climate goals without having to install solar panels on their roofs. Instead, customers tap into energy generated nearby, typically in a field of solar panels, and get a discount on their bills.

Towns across the state promoted CDG to their residents, helping to turn it into a $250 million program. New York now ranks among the top community solar markets in the nation. But over the past year, several towns have withdrawn their support for CDG while the billing issues are being resolved.

Christian sent letters to several of the state’s large investor-owned utilities — Con Edison, New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG), Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E), and Central Hudson — on July 7.

Over the past year, NYSEG, RG&E and Central Hudson have been criticized by the PSC for billing miscues that have led to overcharges and late bills.

The PSC says if the CDG billing issues are not resolved by the end of the year, more investigations, with the potential for hefty fines, could be on the way.

“Should the utilities fail to meet the deadline, the Department (of Public Service) and Commission will review the utilities’ actions to resolve these issues and consider corrective actions, which could include the negative revenue adjustment mechanism referenced in the letter,” PSC spokesman James Denn said.

NY utilities respond

Several utilities say they’ve already gotten the message and are moving swiftly to resolve customer complaints.

NYSEG and RG&E, both owned by Avangrid, are now submitting more than 94% of its CDG bills on a regular two-month schedule, the company says. And complaints during the second quarter of the year were down 50% from the first quarter.

The company expects to automate all CDG billing by the fall.

“With the initial implementation of CDG, applications expanded rapidly across New York State, posing significant challenges for the companies’ billing systems and customer service operations,” the company said in a statement. It went on to note RG&E and NYSEG have made "tremendous progress" toward automation, and are moving forward to address complaints and issue more timely and accurate bills.

NYSEG has 873,000 electricity customers in central, eastern, and western New York while RG&E’s 371,000 electricity customers are in and around Rochester.

Of the 16,000 Central Hudson customers subscribed to CDG, 9,500 receive automated bills, the company said in a June letter to the PSC.

Program changes will be needed so the remaining customers receive automated bills. In the interim, the company has come up with a solution to ensure bills are timely and accurate.

The company has 300,000 electric customers and 84,000 gas customers in the mid-Hudson River Valley, mostly in the suburbs north of New York City.

Kate Daniel, the northeast regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access, which represents solar developers and nonprofits, says Christian’s letter is “an important step” toward resolving the billing issues.

“We are glad to see that the Public Service Commission will not tolerate poor performance from the utilities, especially when it harms customers and creates distrust in the state's clean energy programs,” Daniel said. “There is more work required to make sure that the utilities improve their performance, however.”

She said it’s been a year since the PSC recognized the need for including CDG billing issues among the measures used to measure utility performance. “We eagerly await the DPS Staff Proposal on that matter and look forward to working with DPS and the utilities to implement appropriate systems to improve the CDG customer experience,” she said.

It’s been a record-shattering summer, and from the looks of it, we’re well on our way from climate crisis to climate chaos. Historic heat waves, wildfires, and floods have struck the U.S., Canada, Europe, China, and India, among other places. No doubt the return of El Niño has temporarily exacerbated the frequency and intensity of recent extreme weather events, but climate scientists are clear that the major factor at work is the continued burning of fossil fuels.

The world has not yet passed a tipping point into runaway climate change, say these scientists, but we’re getting closer. They warn that, as unnerving as this summer has been, even worse impacts are sure to come if we don’t move fast to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “Climate science’s projections [have been] pretty robust over the last decades,” notes Professor Malte Meinshausen of the University of Melbourne in Australia in a Guardian interview from earlier this week. “Unfortunately, humanity’s stubbornness to spew out ever-higher amounts of greenhouse gases has also been pretty robust.

Flooding in Vermont, July 2023. Photo by Nicolas Erwin licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Hottest July Ever

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced this month that July 2023 was the warmest July in its 174 years of recordkeeping, and the global surface temperature of the January-July period ranked as the third warmest ever. For the fourth consecutive month, global ocean surface temperatures hit a record high.

“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared last month. “Leaders must lead. No more hesitancy. No more excuses. No more waiting for others to move first. There is simply no more time for that.”

Climate Inequality

The disproportionate impact of climate destabilization has never been more evident. A report on climate inequality released by the World Inequality Lab (WIL) earlier this year found that the top 10% of the world’s carbon emitters were responsible for almost 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the top 1% of global emitters generate more emissions than the entire bottom half. Agricultural productivity has declined by 30% in many low-income regions due to climate change, thus making poverty and food insecurity even worse.

The IPCC Sixth Assessment synthesis report issued in March concluded that climate change impacts are already more far-reaching and extreme than anticipated. Global warming of 1.1°C (1.98°F) has already set off unprecedented changes to Earth’s climate, and 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people currently live in countries highly vulnerable to climate impacts. According to the report, the death toll from extreme weather disasters is 15 times as high in vulnerable nations as it is elsewhere.

A window still exists to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the report points out, but it is a narrow one. To limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F), greenhouse gas emissions need to peak before 2025 at the very latest, get cut in half by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050. The global consumption of coal must fall 95% by 2050, oil use must decline by 60%, and gas by about 45%. The annual investment in clean energy investment worldwide needs to increase between 3 and 6 times by 2030.

Fossil Fuel Subsidies

It’s in the context of these findings from NOAA, WIL, and the IPCC that an analysis of global fossil fuel subsidies from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) strikes with special force. Total subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2022 surged to a record $7 trillion (a rise of $2 trillion over two years), costing the equivalent of 7.1% of global gross domestic product.

As the IMF observes, that’s more than governments spend annually on education (4.3% of global income) and about two thirds of what they spend on healthcare (10.9%). Another way of putting these hard-to-swallow facts is that fossil fuels were subsidized in 2022 at the rate of $13 million a minute. The biggest subsidizers of fossil fuels were China, the U.S., Russia, the European Union, and India. The G20 nations cause 80% of global carbon emissions, yet they spent a record $1.4 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022.

The cognitive dissonance generated by the juxtaposition of recent extreme weather events, on the one hand, and the enormous undercharging of fossil fuel costs and their environmental impacts, on the other, could hardly be more head splitting. In the words of the IMF, scrapping fossil fuel subsidies “would prevent 1.6 million premature deaths annually, raise government revenues by $4.4 trillion, and put emissions on track toward reaching global warming targets.” To put it bluntly, ending these subsidies must be at the center of any effective climate solution.