ACE New York director tells Senate committee renewables are cheaper, members press over battery safety and local siting
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Summary
Marguerite Wells, ACE New York executive director, told the Senate energy committee renewables have fallen sharply in cost and can hedge volatile gas prices; committee members pressed her on battery thermal-runaway fires, decommissioning of solar on farmland, recycling and whether state siting authority should override local control.
Marguerite Wells, executive director of ACE New York, testified before the New York State Senate Standing Committee on Energy and Telecommunications that clean energy has become cheaper than conventional sources and that New York must modernize its century-old electric grid to meet growing demand. Wells cited large declines in technology costs — "the cost of a power of a utility scale solar farm has dropped 84% since 2009; cost of battery systems has dropped 90%" — and argued renewable energy provides a hedge against volatile natural gas prices that set marginal electricity costs.
Wells told the committee that developers must post cash decommissioning funds in a town escrow account before construction, allowing municipalities to remove installations at developer expense if a project fails or the owner disappears. She said decommissioning plans include restoring agricultural land, including removing concrete to a depth of four feet when that is part of the requirement.
Committee members pressed Wells on battery storage safety after citing recent incidents, asking whether thermal-runaway fires can contaminate air or water and whether the state should require on-site or community air monitoring. Wells said New York has among the nation’s most rigorous codes for battery storage and that interagency fire-safety review has been applied to prior incidents; she added that battery projects contain sensors and response plans and that state fire officials can deploy monitoring equipment in the event of an incident. "Battery fires are not actually any different in terms of contaminants than your average house fire," Wells said, adding that improvements in engineering and codes reduce risk compared with earlier facilities.
Wells acknowledged alternative long-duration storage technologies are under development — for example, compressed-air storage — and said the committee’s storage legislation is technology-agnostic to allow for innovation. On siting and oversight, the witness said the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) often participate jointly in proceedings depending on whether a project is generation, storage or co-located; she also described developer concerns about redundancy across permitting agencies.
Members seeking consumer-protection and community-safety measures asked whether developers should be subject to penalties or required to maintain proactive community air monitoring; Wells favored remediation and cleanup where problems occur and argued that codes requiring rapid response (including company personnel on site within hours) and state monitoring capacity are the primary protections. Several members said they remain concerned about siting near schools, volunteer fire departments and densely populated areas.
The committee followed the witness with additional questions about protecting prime farmland, incentivizing rooftop or parking-lot solar rather than ground-mounted arrays on productive soil, and ensuring recycling pathways are in place as panels and turbine components age. Wells said recycling capacity is expanding and that decommissioning and reclamation requirements are part of project approvals.
The committee did not vote on policy tied solely to the testimony but advanced pending bills on the agenda and signaled it may hold subsequent briefings with ORES and other agencies to resolve outstanding technical and jurisdictional questions.
