Adirondack landowners deliberate over state climate law
By Gwendolyn Craig
Landowners with some of the largest inholdings in the Adirondack Park are concerned the state’s climate laws disregard their rural, sometimes off-grid camps, or the forest preserve surrounding them.
The Adirondack Landowners Association’s (ALA) members collectively own over 200,000 acres in the park, a 6-million-acre patchwork of private and public lands. About 2.7 million acres are constitutionally protected forest preserve where transmission lines, substations or other infrastructure may not be built without a constitutional amendment. Amendments are difficult to accomplish.
In 2019, lawmakers passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and no less than 85% by 2050.
To help reach those goals, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a statewide ban of natural gas hookups in new buildings seven stories and under starting in 2026. The ban was part of the state budget deal and alarmed park landowners, whose camps are off-grid and run on fuels such as propane. Some are connected to the grid, but they lose power and often for days. Fossil fuel-powered generators are backups. Others are already running camps on solar and hydro power, but rely at times on fossil fuels. The ban applying to new construction could make future camp buildings a challenge.
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James Gardner, of the Adirondack League Club in Old Forge, said there is a “tremendous disconnect” between downstate and upstate New York. He pointed to the deadly Buffalo storm in December that dumped over 50 inches of snow and how some needed their gas stoves to stay warm. Winter is a way of life in the Adirondacks, he added.
“The expectation that in 10 years we’re going to have better technology, frankly, is cold comfort,” Gardner said.
Erin Griffin, of the Adirondack North Country Association’s Clean Energy Hub, said many residents feel like they’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
“I want to acknowledge there aren’t going to be perfect solutions right now,” Griffin told a group of ALA members convened on Saturday in Blue Mountain Lake. “Existing conditions are not adequate, I don’t disagree.”
ALA members held a meeting with presentations from ANCA, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, the Empire State Forest Products Association and High Peaks Solar to brainstorm renewable energy transitions.
Sameer Ranade, a climate justice advisor for NYSERDA, assured the state was not banning propane and was experimenting with cleaner liquid fuels.
John Bartow, executive director of the Empire Forest Products Association, said NYSERDA is ramping up work with its innovation team to experiment with new ways to get power. He did not think, however, that lawmakers had park residents in mind with the pace of some of the climate legislation.
Ranade also spoke of the beginnings of a state Cap-and-Invest Program. The program will require large-scale greenhouse gas emitters to purchase allowances for their pollution. The state would put about 30% of those proceeds into a Climate Action Fund to mitigate decarbonization costs for state residents.
Kevin Bailey, of High Peaks Solar, said he has installed a number of off-grid systems in Vermont. The cost of solar panels has come down significantly, he said. He has seen individual systems use a combination of solar panels, small wind turbines and wood pellet stoves or heat pumps. Heat pumps can both heat and cool a home by transferring outside air indoors. Although they require electricity, they generate more energy than they use.
Some park landowners are already experimenting with a suite of renewable energy sources and shared their experiences, which have been mixed. Nathan Potter, of Brandreth Park Association in Long Lake, has a heat pump installed in his camp. It generally works well, he said, but some days it does not keep the house warm enough on its own. Many camp owners rely on wood stoves for heat.
Griffin said “the most affordable and cleanest energy is the energy we don’t use,” and suggested upgrades that better insulate existing buildings.
Jim Townsend, counsel for the ALA, said the discussions were productive and that his group and the state share a common goal of finding solutions. Wilbur Rice, of the Adirondack League Club and president of the ALA, said he no longer feared the energy transition, after learning more from the panelists and ALA colleagues.
“I think it’s going to be extremely difficult, but I think a lot of smart people are trying to work on it,” he said.
I have an all electric house — two solar systems (13kw total), heat pump HVAC, heat pump hot water heater, EV car, good insulation and more.
Solar is so poor from clouds, short days and low angle in the winter that we generate about two days worth of electricity over the ENTIRE MONTH of January. December and February are better, but not by much. And that’s cleaning off the panels regularly from snow. The low angle requires having numerous trees cut to the south to prevent shading.
Everyone wants to think heat pumps are the solution, but on the coldest of days — when you need heat the most — they are marginally better than resistance heat strips. Long term stored energy is needed — fossil fuels, wood, etc — if you want to be off grid or some resilience in the event of a power outage.
Thanks for sharing, Greg! Just curious to know if your house is in the Adirondacks? And do you live in it year-round?
NY taxpayers need to decide what they want the Park to be. It is a simple fact that trees and forests are not particularly compatible with wind and solar generation, and electric transmission lines. It doesn’t make much sense to tout the forests as carbon sequestration sources while at the same time opening up forests for transmission lines and solar farms.
My personal thought is to keep the Park as forested as possible and keep open-space projects in areas of the state where there is more available open space and patchy forests where transmission lines can be routed with minimal impact.
If the state wants the Park to be populated in forested, remote areas, fossil fuels are about the only way to realistically accomplish that. I live in a hamlet along Lake Champlain that has been inhabited for over 200 years. A natural gas pipeline has never arrived, and our unreliable electrical grid is so regularly compromised by trees falling that more of us every year invest in whole-house generators. Of course, these run on some type of fossil fuel – typically propane. So it seems to me like fossil fuels will maintain a strong foothold in remote areas until we figure out a modern way to transmit electric power to those areas. That is a LONG way off!!
It doesn’t matter that they are not banning propane. Under this plan something like that would eventually become so expensive only folks like the Adirondack League Club members could afford it. Once you get rid of the vast majority of the gas appliance market it will all go away. That is the point. Many Adirondack homes will need multiple heat pump or geo thermal set ups – only wealthy people can afford this. They never think of regular people when they do things like this. Good for those of us with money and means that can make it work. Poor people always get the shaft. Most of them can’t afford even a car with todays prices. Certainly not an electric one. The only alternative for many lower income adirondackers will be electric baseboard heat. Their bills are going way up, especially when they ban wood burning which you know is being discussed and coming soon.
Since when does government and in particular our current governor and administration think anything through prior to enacting anything? To put any solar on my property I would have to drop at least a dozen trees. And then due to solar angles required said system would be completely insufficient to meet my needs. Geothermal still requires electrical power which is not only unavailable but even if it were is unreliable. I heat with wood and there are already rumblings about restrictions on doing so. Change for the sake of improvement is fine. Change without forethought and without addressing consequences is asinine. But that word pretty much sums up our political situation.
What are the fossil fuel alternatives for rural camp owners?
Your alternative is WOOD !Lots of it
thanks for this good info