Very good post, and I’m glad it’s strategically unpaywalled. But this is my first encounter with the “skinsuit” metaphor and it kind of creeps me out.
ETA: this is a very widespread problem. On the transpo and infrastructure projects I work on, there are all kinds of procurement rules as well as rules governing the hiring of consultants like us (eg, a percentage of women- and minority-owned subconsultants on the team). Most people know this—I knew it before I worked in this domain—but to see it in action is truly remarkable, and not in a good way. The problem is so big and so enmeshed in the system that it seems impossible to unwind. Earlier this year, I nurtured a tiny ember of hope that the wanton destruction would open up an opportunity to build a better system, but per this post that doesn’t seem likely.
Matt wrote an excellent and terrible column. Y’all have covered the excellence, and I think lindamc gets at the terrible aspect with this insight:
- “The problem is so big and so enmeshed in the system that it seems impossible to unwind.”
Indeed! That’s because “the problem” isn’t distinct from democracy itself. Interest groups aren’t parasites on politics — they are politics. Some, like the master plumbers, have a revenue interest. Others, like environmentalists, have policy interests. Matt and his readers, including me, are what power brokers used to derisively call “goo-goos”: advocates for good government who weren’t adult enough in their view to confront reality.
By calling out the interests opposed to needed change, Matt does some good. The real work (as Matt often notes in the context of housing) is assembling the coalition which can advance the change. In other words, to push through improvements that require accepting tradeoffs, we will have to ... build a coalition of partially aligned groups which force us to accept tradeoffs on our accepting tradeoffs ;-). The next question is “how do we turn the broad diffuse constituency for General Improvement into an effective coalition of concentrated interests?”
This is why I think the “abundance” movement garnered so much pushback from the left. Abundance and affordability mean efficiency. Unions are anti-efficiency by design. Zero big city dem politicians want to be seen as anti-union. Hence, I am extremely skeptical dems are able to actually enact anything that lowers any costs at a local level. I hope I am wrong.
It's true that zero big city mayors want to appear anti-union. But that doesn't mean that all big city mayors just bend the knee to the unions on every issue. Some do (Brandon Johnson in Chicago). But look at more reform oriented mayors like Mike Johnston in Denver and Daniel Lauri in SF — they've picked some fights.
I found this article depressing because there’s no reason to think Dems will take on unions. If the master plumbers are getting their bed’s feathered 48-1, a great deal of progress could occur and they would still win 27-22
Hochul has no choice but to try, at least to some extent. She scraped by 53-47 in 2022 against the broom puppet named Lee Zeldin. Elise Stefanik is substantially more formidable, and the state has only grown more conservative since - at the exact moment that everyone’s favorite Great Socialist Hope just ascended to the NYC mayoralty, where he can really destroy Democrats’ brand with Long Island swing voters. Hence her supporting the pipeline that’s infuriating the environmental losers. And hence her still not having signed the bill locking in makework for the TWU indefinitely.
Hochul is going to get a very good election environment for Dems. She's not going to face a serious challenge from the right. Maybe in the primary though
It’s especially frustrating that the pro-union aura extends to plumbers. Plumbers! You know, the people that you, as an individual, hire as individuals. This isn’t a Gilded Age mining concern with monopsony power and Pinkertons and all that, this is you needing a new stove put in. It’s a goddamn medieval guild, not a union!
I think you're giving the abundance pusher-backers too much credit by rationalizing their irrationality. They are a clique and reject anyone who doesn't wear pink on Wednesdays, or whatever their in-group signaling measure of the moment is.
Democratic officials would respond “hey Matt, your examples are category errors; those votes are meaningless. We’re just taking legislature votes that won’t amount to anything as long as the executive governs like an adult.” Leaving aside that this is not at all reliable - see Cuomo passing the 2019 housing price explosion law - I would respond with the SlowBoring commonplace that these votes do register in the background for voters, that they reinforce the Democratic brand of consisting of a bunch of totally unserious people, and that no amount of paid media showing Kamala Harris making constipated faces at the camera while touting her economic centrism can overcome Democrats hammering home the message, over and over and over, to voters that they simply do not live in a reality with material constraints.
One themes here is how often politicians are bullied by weak and badly funded lobbies. I can understand folding when faced with environmentalists but why fold when pressured by master plumbers?
Right, the political cost of any one of these votes is low. I doubt many voters were aware of this. But these financial costs pile up like sediment, and then Dems are wondering why life is "unaffordable."
If you have a class-oriented worldview, then why would you take the other side of a (in this case plumber) union? Unions represent the working class, so those opposed to them are inherently on the side of the capitalist oligarchs.
Only about 25% of plumbers belong to unions. It’s not plumbers in general.
The biggest unions are teachers, government workers, service employees, and then the Teamsters. Blue collar workers are not a majority of union members.
Here is the problem that environmental groups pose for affordability.
Green Organizations care far more about the planet than humanity. They do not care about the costs to humans.
They think of humans as lint or dust. Something that exists but provides little benefit to the planet. In fact, I have zero doubt that they would prefer to see the extinction of humanity.
The lawyers they employ have one job: to stop everything. Just to shut it down.
I would like to register my disagreement than the Sierra Club wants to kill all humans. They are counter productive, certainly, but let’s not get hysterical.
I can't believe Ben Krauss liked this. Suggesting that issue advocacy groups would "prefer the extinction of humanity" is a text book example of bad forum behavior.
It’s easy to paint characiatures of antis but the world has plenty of moderates everywhere. Not the ones on flotillas in the medeterranian I’ll grant you.
IMO the most egregious case of this is environmental groups in Maine fighting to prevent Quebec hydropower from being delivered to MA because they had to tear down forest cover. Opposing pipelines I could af least understand as it's "dirty" so they're obviously not going to like it, but hydro is clean!
Luckily it seems to be going ahead anyways, but they're 4 years behind schedule now.
“Politicians are interested in policies that sound like they can bring costs down purely by sticking it to unsympathetic actors, but this is rarely the actual situation.”
At the peak of Inflation Discourse, I’m pretty sure people angrily posting about $100 chicken soup thought you could bring costs down by abolishing people who study and report on inflation indicators.
"Bharat Ramamurti, a very smart economic-policy guy who worked in the Biden administration and for Elizabeth Warren, says that “targeted price controls, alongside aggressive measures to boost the supply of things like housing and clean energy, may be the least worst option out of the cost-of-living crisis we’re facing.”
Er... if he were _very_ smart he woud know that price controls by supressing supply _increse the costs of the controlled good or service. Has he just ignored the experisnce o NYC's 70 year experiment witn rent controls?
This is a good example of "affordability" eating itself, why "affordability" is a good excuse for good policy (like scrapping RPS's) but a poor guide for policy.
the article seems to view price controls as a second-best policy measure in a world where voters have to be appeased in order to expand supply.
argument seems to be that voters demand short-run insurance against price shocks, and in a supply-inelastic world subsidies won't do a good job providing that since suppliers eat up all the surplus, so you need huge taxes to pay for it. but in a supply-inelastic world price controls are less costly, right?
price controls also arent very good as SR insurance against price shocks but have a different downside of shortages rather than high prices. voters might find this preferable for some reason? certainly ones who expect to pay tax in subsidy-world but also expect to be costlessly allocated goods in price-control-world will be happier with price controls. in the context of rent control for existing apartments this might reflect a pretty powerful bloc of voters.
Ramamurti is coming from exactly the Warren-staffer background often maligned here as the behind-the-scenes force pulling policy leftward in the Biden administration. He was a literal Warren staffer who went into the Biden administration, as Matt points out.
His statement here is promising! The price controls are only "targeted" while the supply side measures are "aggressive." That's a big evolution and shows abundance ideas getting some traction. You can't expect a complete 180.
The “master plumber” issue in NYC is particularly irritating insofar as many buildings are not wired to accommodate either induction or electric stoves. That eventual mandate will further drive up housing costs and make the city less “ affordable”.
Excellent question. Inadequate answer: I don’t know. But a (never-wrong) (ha) AI response to my inquiry suggests that retrofitting high rise apartment buildings for induction stoves would cost between $4000 and $20000 *per unit*. Do we provide some measure of property tax relief as a quid pro quo? Can NYC afford the associated revenue loss? Or do we just stick it to the landlords (who, in co-ops and condos are the actual owner/tenants)?
Would your alternative be longer runway to introduce the induction requirement (kicking the can down the road to avoid the trade off) or subsidies to encourage? Or neither?
I see the issue as downstream of the failure of both political parties. The Republicans have left reality on growth and fiscal responsibility and the Democrats are too parochial. Everyone says the right thing but no one is willing to actually take some action that might go against their priors.
In red states, and currently at the federal level, this becomes a lot or cutting off of one's nose to spite the face over increasingly crazed culture war signaling. In blue states politics devolves into a negotiation between executive and legislature over goodies and/or spoils for favored constituencies without regard for the underlying growth that makes goodies possible. In a highly polarized environment no one is ever held to account and there is no healthy push and pull. My gloomy prediction is that all of this will get worse before it gets better.
As far as I know, even very expensive NYC new build apartments will often have weird expensive through the wall “PTAC” machines that are like the ones in motels (except the NYC ones often attach to steam boiler systems with all the predictable fun that brings). Best as I can tell New York is the only place that uses these and they are very expensive. They are not efficient compared to more modern systems (on the cooling side they are basically a large window air conditioner). From what I gather, they are used because permitting and getting building designs through planning approval are much easier without attempting modern HVAC systems.
Jersey City also has these which is weird, the whole advantage to being in Jersey City is that you don't have to deal with NY City/State regulations and taxes.
I think the infrastructure of the PTAC is around NYC metro area, all the companies appear to be there. It may be a historical local NYC metro thing. The only advantage I can think of that it has is that you don’t have to site a compressor like you do for a modern system like a mini split, so I guess it is useful for retrofits and maybe beautifies facades or back sides of buildings compared to a ductless system.
With a certain amount of despair, I note that our admirable matt continues to ignore the actual solution for the energy problem in the northeast. It comprises the following: importing power from the north and the west through improved powerlines; creating an economic incentive in the west, and the north for renewables to be connected to the grid; yes, invest in nuclear, but stop talking about it as if it were going to deliver electricity tomorrow; offshore wind; electric transportation; willingness to use natural gas to replace fuel oil and an aggressive program to eliminate fuel oil; an offshore connector line for offshore wind that stretches from Maine to Virginia with many sea to land connections so as to maximize the availability of wind across the region; distributed storage with incentives for long-haul storage; solar on the roofs of every municipal and commercial building, connected through community, solar projects. Generally be aware that other nations at even more northern latitudes are able to move to renewables. Stop repeating the cant to the contrary.
Reed, I would love it if the environmental community were laser-focused on achieving the kind of federal legislative changes that would make the long-distance transmission projects you're talking about possible. Because you're right, this is clearly doable from an engineering standpoint.
But it's not actually something that the governor of New Jersey or New York is able to accomplish since it's a complicated multi-state issue with significant federal jurisdiction.
The problem is that the environmental movement is obsessively focused on blocking fossil fuel infrastructure and at best indifferent to trying to increase utility-scale renewable deployment and transmission while often actively hostile due to land use concerns.
The environmental activists have been their own enemy for decades. I agree. The reasons lie inter alia in their need to obtain dues paying members and seek philanthropic grants. The road to bad policy is paved with such compromising factors. RGGI otoh is a success story but grossly underutilized as a tool for regional efforts to lower e prices from their terrible heights. The relevant grid managers are even more important than governors and also are not brought into the deal in a productive way. It's a scandal that PJM has a long interconnection queue for renewables, just to cite one example. So you are right to point out that consumers and clear thinking climate concerned people do not seem to have a voice.
Matt, I am begging you, I see you trying out the "donning the skinsuit" metaphor and- Let's not make that a thing. Please, let's not. I don't need visions of pulp serial killers dancing before my eyes as I try to follow a serious policy discussion. Maybe use something about costumes next time, I don't know.
Skinsuiting is usually used in a different way--when an old organization is taken over by a new set of people/new ideology, who keep the name and (for awhile) the prestige of the old organization, but with entirely different goals and actions. Aka "eaten alive from the inside and worn as a skinsuit." From the sound of recent reporting, the Sierra Club is a prominent example.
It's sort-of the ideological version of a bustout scam.
I am saying "eaten alive from the inside and worn as a skinsuit" (I guess as opposed to having your skin peeled off while dead, not an improvement) is a metaphor that's distracting. Not a big deal really, just thought I'd deliver some feedback.
And this is why an abundance set of policies is hard politically. Just about every policy lever for lowing costs does it by lowering someone's income, taking away someone's sinecure, ceasing to give someone a cut of whatever building or work is done, etc. And every one of those people who are losing out will fight like hell to keep their particular bit of rent-seeking in place.
I mean, the trope namer here is housing abundance, which is actively against the interests of many current homeowners because more housing supply means lower housing costs and their house is their biggest asset and the thing that they're counting on to fund their retirement.
But many things you can do to lower costs involve taking money from some small but very focused interest group who is *very* dedicated to keeping their cut.
WTF is a "renewables portfolio standard (RPS)" I'll bet it is not the principle that "renewables" should be chosen over other sources of generation when they are cheaper than other sources taking account of what the others would cost if we had the tax on net CO2 emissions that we don't have."
And this is something that not just NJ has? Yikes!
I "get" that Cogress is not willing to pass a tax on net emissions right now but that is no reason that workarounds (this pplies to most of IRA) to be _more_ costly per unit of CO2 emision avoided than the tax!
What about all the NIMBY's dropping their opposition to lower cost residentil and commercial development and becoming NIMUB's, "Not in my utility bill!" :)
"Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) require that a specified percentage of the electricity utilities sell comes from renewable resources. States have created these standards to diversify their energy resources, promote domestic energy production and encourage economic development."
I hate the term renewable so much, and it needs to be buried into the deep ground. So much nonsense here:
"It’s worth noting that several states have expanded their policies to incorporate additional resources in recent years. There is now a distinction between a 'Renewable Portfolio Standard' (RPS) and what some states have labeled as a “Clean Energy Standard” (CES). The difference between a RPS and a CES comes down to how a particular state defines what is a 'renewable' versus a 'clean' source of energy. Clean energy typically refers to sources of energy that have zero carbon emissions.
Some of those “clean” sources may not be considered 'renewable.' For instance, under some CES policies, nuclear energy is considered a 'clean' energy source because it is carbon-free; it is not widely considered 'renewable,' however. Conversely, biomass, which is an eligible resource under many state RPS policies, is considered 'renewable' despite producing carbon emissions.
[...]
Eligible resources under an RPS vary state-by-state but often include wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and some hydroelectric facilities—depending on the size and vintage. States determine eligible resources based on their existing energy generation mix and the potential for renewable energy development in their states.
For instance, qualifying renewable energy resources in Colorado include solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, certain hydroelectric resources and emissions neutral coal-mine methane. Comparatively, eligible resources under Hawaii’s RPS include solar, wind, biomass and geothermal, in addition to energy produced from falling water, ocean water, waves and water currents. Additional eligible resources in several states include landfill gas, animal wastes, combined heat and power, and even energy efficiency."
Gonna do a little self promotion here and drop my piece in Vital City about how Mamdani might tackle some of these issue: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/zohran-mamdani-michelle-wu-and-brandon-johnson
I assume by tackle you mean make them worse
Quod licit iovi, non licit bovi? :)
Very good post, and I’m glad it’s strategically unpaywalled. But this is my first encounter with the “skinsuit” metaphor and it kind of creeps me out.
ETA: this is a very widespread problem. On the transpo and infrastructure projects I work on, there are all kinds of procurement rules as well as rules governing the hiring of consultants like us (eg, a percentage of women- and minority-owned subconsultants on the team). Most people know this—I knew it before I worked in this domain—but to see it in action is truly remarkable, and not in a good way. The problem is so big and so enmeshed in the system that it seems impossible to unwind. Earlier this year, I nurtured a tiny ember of hope that the wanton destruction would open up an opportunity to build a better system, but per this post that doesn’t seem likely.
So much of politics of the 2010s was straight up trojan horsing.
Iliiac equestrianism?
Matt wrote an excellent and terrible column. Y’all have covered the excellence, and I think lindamc gets at the terrible aspect with this insight:
- “The problem is so big and so enmeshed in the system that it seems impossible to unwind.”
Indeed! That’s because “the problem” isn’t distinct from democracy itself. Interest groups aren’t parasites on politics — they are politics. Some, like the master plumbers, have a revenue interest. Others, like environmentalists, have policy interests. Matt and his readers, including me, are what power brokers used to derisively call “goo-goos”: advocates for good government who weren’t adult enough in their view to confront reality.
By calling out the interests opposed to needed change, Matt does some good. The real work (as Matt often notes in the context of housing) is assembling the coalition which can advance the change. In other words, to push through improvements that require accepting tradeoffs, we will have to ... build a coalition of partially aligned groups which force us to accept tradeoffs on our accepting tradeoffs ;-). The next question is “how do we turn the broad diffuse constituency for General Improvement into an effective coalition of concentrated interests?”
Sounds like we need an Anti-Group Group to do our politics!
The Coalition Against Coalitions.
SPLITTER!!!
What's the different between"skinsuit" and plain old fasioned LARPing?
LARPing = dress up as someone else
Skin suit = kill someone, peel of their skin, wear it so you look like them
That’s why, as lindamc pointed out, the skin suit metaphor is creepy!
This is why I think the “abundance” movement garnered so much pushback from the left. Abundance and affordability mean efficiency. Unions are anti-efficiency by design. Zero big city dem politicians want to be seen as anti-union. Hence, I am extremely skeptical dems are able to actually enact anything that lowers any costs at a local level. I hope I am wrong.
It's true that zero big city mayors want to appear anti-union. But that doesn't mean that all big city mayors just bend the knee to the unions on every issue. Some do (Brandon Johnson in Chicago). But look at more reform oriented mayors like Mike Johnston in Denver and Daniel Lauri in SF — they've picked some fights.
I found this article depressing because there’s no reason to think Dems will take on unions. If the master plumbers are getting their bed’s feathered 48-1, a great deal of progress could occur and they would still win 27-22
Hochul has no choice but to try, at least to some extent. She scraped by 53-47 in 2022 against the broom puppet named Lee Zeldin. Elise Stefanik is substantially more formidable, and the state has only grown more conservative since - at the exact moment that everyone’s favorite Great Socialist Hope just ascended to the NYC mayoralty, where he can really destroy Democrats’ brand with Long Island swing voters. Hence her supporting the pipeline that’s infuriating the environmental losers. And hence her still not having signed the bill locking in makework for the TWU indefinitely.
I will take the under on Stefanik as a candidate with statewide electoral appeal.
Especially in 2026.
How did you feel about Lee Zeldin?
With Trump in the White House, Hochul will win regardless and it won’t be close.
Hochul is going to get a very good election environment for Dems. She's not going to face a serious challenge from the right. Maybe in the primary though
It’s especially frustrating that the pro-union aura extends to plumbers. Plumbers! You know, the people that you, as an individual, hire as individuals. This isn’t a Gilded Age mining concern with monopsony power and Pinkertons and all that, this is you needing a new stove put in. It’s a goddamn medieval guild, not a union!
I think you're giving the abundance pusher-backers too much credit by rationalizing their irrationality. They are a clique and reject anyone who doesn't wear pink on Wednesdays, or whatever their in-group signaling measure of the moment is.
Goes without saying this was a great post.
Democratic officials would respond “hey Matt, your examples are category errors; those votes are meaningless. We’re just taking legislature votes that won’t amount to anything as long as the executive governs like an adult.” Leaving aside that this is not at all reliable - see Cuomo passing the 2019 housing price explosion law - I would respond with the SlowBoring commonplace that these votes do register in the background for voters, that they reinforce the Democratic brand of consisting of a bunch of totally unserious people, and that no amount of paid media showing Kamala Harris making constipated faces at the camera while touting her economic centrism can overcome Democrats hammering home the message, over and over and over, to voters that they simply do not live in a reality with material constraints.
One themes here is how often politicians are bullied by weak and badly funded lobbies. I can understand folding when faced with environmentalists but why fold when pressured by master plumbers?
In their minds it costs nothing, keeps the unions on their side, and it’s the mayor’s job to actually govern like an adult.
And then Democrats wonder why paid media with Kamala Harris looking constipated isn’t enough to convince voters to vote for her party!
Right, the political cost of any one of these votes is low. I doubt many voters were aware of this. But these financial costs pile up like sediment, and then Dems are wondering why life is "unaffordable."
If you have a class-oriented worldview, then why would you take the other side of a (in this case plumber) union? Unions represent the working class, so those opposed to them are inherently on the side of the capitalist oligarchs.
But it isn't just or mainly Marxists backing the plumbers, even Republicans supported them.
fair point!
Northeastern republicans are arguably the worst political faction we have in this country.
Only about 25% of plumbers belong to unions. It’s not plumbers in general.
The biggest unions are teachers, government workers, service employees, and then the Teamsters. Blue collar workers are not a majority of union members.
I think because this is actually a pigovian tax on gas stoves wearing a pro-labor skinsuit.
Here is the problem that environmental groups pose for affordability.
Green Organizations care far more about the planet than humanity. They do not care about the costs to humans.
They think of humans as lint or dust. Something that exists but provides little benefit to the planet. In fact, I have zero doubt that they would prefer to see the extinction of humanity.
The lawyers they employ have one job: to stop everything. Just to shut it down.
I would like to register my disagreement than the Sierra Club wants to kill all humans. They are counter productive, certainly, but let’s not get hysterical.
Matt Yglesias' utopia is 1 billion Americans. Sierra Club's utopia is 1 billion humans. Certainly not zero humans, though.
I can't believe Ben Krauss liked this. Suggesting that issue advocacy groups would "prefer the extinction of humanity" is a text book example of bad forum behavior.
It’s easy to paint characiatures of antis but the world has plenty of moderates everywhere. Not the ones on flotillas in the medeterranian I’ll grant you.
IMO the most egregious case of this is environmental groups in Maine fighting to prevent Quebec hydropower from being delivered to MA because they had to tear down forest cover. Opposing pipelines I could af least understand as it's "dirty" so they're obviously not going to like it, but hydro is clean!
Luckily it seems to be going ahead anyways, but they're 4 years behind schedule now.
https://oilandenergyonline.com/articles/all/hydro-electric-line-quebec-can-proceed-against-voters-wishes/
“Politicians are interested in policies that sound like they can bring costs down purely by sticking it to unsympathetic actors, but this is rarely the actual situation.”
At the peak of Inflation Discourse, I’m pretty sure people angrily posting about $100 chicken soup thought you could bring costs down by abolishing people who study and report on inflation indicators.
"Bharat Ramamurti, a very smart economic-policy guy who worked in the Biden administration and for Elizabeth Warren, says that “targeted price controls, alongside aggressive measures to boost the supply of things like housing and clean energy, may be the least worst option out of the cost-of-living crisis we’re facing.”
Er... if he were _very_ smart he woud know that price controls by supressing supply _increse the costs of the controlled good or service. Has he just ignored the experisnce o NYC's 70 year experiment witn rent controls?
This is a good example of "affordability" eating itself, why "affordability" is a good excuse for good policy (like scrapping RPS's) but a poor guide for policy.
the article seems to view price controls as a second-best policy measure in a world where voters have to be appeased in order to expand supply.
argument seems to be that voters demand short-run insurance against price shocks, and in a supply-inelastic world subsidies won't do a good job providing that since suppliers eat up all the surplus, so you need huge taxes to pay for it. but in a supply-inelastic world price controls are less costly, right?
price controls also arent very good as SR insurance against price shocks but have a different downside of shortages rather than high prices. voters might find this preferable for some reason? certainly ones who expect to pay tax in subsidy-world but also expect to be costlessly allocated goods in price-control-world will be happier with price controls. in the context of rent control for existing apartments this might reflect a pretty powerful bloc of voters.
Ramamurti is coming from exactly the Warren-staffer background often maligned here as the behind-the-scenes force pulling policy leftward in the Biden administration. He was a literal Warren staffer who went into the Biden administration, as Matt points out.
His statement here is promising! The price controls are only "targeted" while the supply side measures are "aggressive." That's a big evolution and shows abundance ideas getting some traction. You can't expect a complete 180.
The “master plumber” issue in NYC is particularly irritating insofar as many buildings are not wired to accommodate either induction or electric stoves. That eventual mandate will further drive up housing costs and make the city less “ affordable”.
"The rent seeking is too damn high" is a phrase that applies to a broad range of local and national political issues.
Excellent question. Inadequate answer: I don’t know. But a (never-wrong) (ha) AI response to my inquiry suggests that retrofitting high rise apartment buildings for induction stoves would cost between $4000 and $20000 *per unit*. Do we provide some measure of property tax relief as a quid pro quo? Can NYC afford the associated revenue loss? Or do we just stick it to the landlords (who, in co-ops and condos are the actual owner/tenants)?
Would your alternative be longer runway to introduce the induction requirement (kicking the can down the road to avoid the trade off) or subsidies to encourage? Or neither?
I see the issue as downstream of the failure of both political parties. The Republicans have left reality on growth and fiscal responsibility and the Democrats are too parochial. Everyone says the right thing but no one is willing to actually take some action that might go against their priors.
In red states, and currently at the federal level, this becomes a lot or cutting off of one's nose to spite the face over increasingly crazed culture war signaling. In blue states politics devolves into a negotiation between executive and legislature over goodies and/or spoils for favored constituencies without regard for the underlying growth that makes goodies possible. In a highly polarized environment no one is ever held to account and there is no healthy push and pull. My gloomy prediction is that all of this will get worse before it gets better.
As far as I know, even very expensive NYC new build apartments will often have weird expensive through the wall “PTAC” machines that are like the ones in motels (except the NYC ones often attach to steam boiler systems with all the predictable fun that brings). Best as I can tell New York is the only place that uses these and they are very expensive. They are not efficient compared to more modern systems (on the cooling side they are basically a large window air conditioner). From what I gather, they are used because permitting and getting building designs through planning approval are much easier without attempting modern HVAC systems.
Jersey City also has these which is weird, the whole advantage to being in Jersey City is that you don't have to deal with NY City/State regulations and taxes.
I think the infrastructure of the PTAC is around NYC metro area, all the companies appear to be there. It may be a historical local NYC metro thing. The only advantage I can think of that it has is that you don’t have to site a compressor like you do for a modern system like a mini split, so I guess it is useful for retrofits and maybe beautifies facades or back sides of buildings compared to a ductless system.
With a certain amount of despair, I note that our admirable matt continues to ignore the actual solution for the energy problem in the northeast. It comprises the following: importing power from the north and the west through improved powerlines; creating an economic incentive in the west, and the north for renewables to be connected to the grid; yes, invest in nuclear, but stop talking about it as if it were going to deliver electricity tomorrow; offshore wind; electric transportation; willingness to use natural gas to replace fuel oil and an aggressive program to eliminate fuel oil; an offshore connector line for offshore wind that stretches from Maine to Virginia with many sea to land connections so as to maximize the availability of wind across the region; distributed storage with incentives for long-haul storage; solar on the roofs of every municipal and commercial building, connected through community, solar projects. Generally be aware that other nations at even more northern latitudes are able to move to renewables. Stop repeating the cant to the contrary.
Reed, I would love it if the environmental community were laser-focused on achieving the kind of federal legislative changes that would make the long-distance transmission projects you're talking about possible. Because you're right, this is clearly doable from an engineering standpoint.
But it's not actually something that the governor of New Jersey or New York is able to accomplish since it's a complicated multi-state issue with significant federal jurisdiction.
The problem is that the environmental movement is obsessively focused on blocking fossil fuel infrastructure and at best indifferent to trying to increase utility-scale renewable deployment and transmission while often actively hostile due to land use concerns.
The environmental activists have been their own enemy for decades. I agree. The reasons lie inter alia in their need to obtain dues paying members and seek philanthropic grants. The road to bad policy is paved with such compromising factors. RGGI otoh is a success story but grossly underutilized as a tool for regional efforts to lower e prices from their terrible heights. The relevant grid managers are even more important than governors and also are not brought into the deal in a productive way. It's a scandal that PJM has a long interconnection queue for renewables, just to cite one example. So you are right to point out that consumers and clear thinking climate concerned people do not seem to have a voice.
Matt, I am begging you, I see you trying out the "donning the skinsuit" metaphor and- Let's not make that a thing. Please, let's not. I don't need visions of pulp serial killers dancing before my eyes as I try to follow a serious policy discussion. Maybe use something about costumes next time, I don't know.
Skinsuiting is usually used in a different way--when an old organization is taken over by a new set of people/new ideology, who keep the name and (for awhile) the prestige of the old organization, but with entirely different goals and actions. Aka "eaten alive from the inside and worn as a skinsuit." From the sound of recent reporting, the Sierra Club is a prominent example.
It's sort-of the ideological version of a bustout scam.
Yes, I understand its meaning.
I am saying "eaten alive from the inside and worn as a skinsuit" (I guess as opposed to having your skin peeled off while dead, not an improvement) is a metaphor that's distracting. Not a big deal really, just thought I'd deliver some feedback.
“Your costs are my income”. Very important reminder - put in on a bumper sticker
And this is why an abundance set of policies is hard politically. Just about every policy lever for lowing costs does it by lowering someone's income, taking away someone's sinecure, ceasing to give someone a cut of whatever building or work is done, etc. And every one of those people who are losing out will fight like hell to keep their particular bit of rent-seeking in place.
I mean, the trope namer here is housing abundance, which is actively against the interests of many current homeowners because more housing supply means lower housing costs and their house is their biggest asset and the thing that they're counting on to fund their retirement.
But many things you can do to lower costs involve taking money from some small but very focused interest group who is *very* dedicated to keeping their cut.
WTF is a "renewables portfolio standard (RPS)" I'll bet it is not the principle that "renewables" should be chosen over other sources of generation when they are cheaper than other sources taking account of what the others would cost if we had the tax on net CO2 emissions that we don't have."
And this is something that not just NJ has? Yikes!
I "get" that Cogress is not willing to pass a tax on net emissions right now but that is no reason that workarounds (this pplies to most of IRA) to be _more_ costly per unit of CO2 emision avoided than the tax!
What about all the NIMBY's dropping their opposition to lower cost residentil and commercial development and becoming NIMUB's, "Not in my utility bill!" :)
I had to Google this too:
"Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) require that a specified percentage of the electricity utilities sell comes from renewable resources. States have created these standards to diversify their energy resources, promote domestic energy production and encourage economic development."
https://www.ncsl.org/energy/state-renewable-portfolio-standards-and-goals
Worth noting it doesn't include nuclear either.
I hate the term renewable so much, and it needs to be buried into the deep ground. So much nonsense here:
"It’s worth noting that several states have expanded their policies to incorporate additional resources in recent years. There is now a distinction between a 'Renewable Portfolio Standard' (RPS) and what some states have labeled as a “Clean Energy Standard” (CES). The difference between a RPS and a CES comes down to how a particular state defines what is a 'renewable' versus a 'clean' source of energy. Clean energy typically refers to sources of energy that have zero carbon emissions.
Some of those “clean” sources may not be considered 'renewable.' For instance, under some CES policies, nuclear energy is considered a 'clean' energy source because it is carbon-free; it is not widely considered 'renewable,' however. Conversely, biomass, which is an eligible resource under many state RPS policies, is considered 'renewable' despite producing carbon emissions.
[...]
Eligible resources under an RPS vary state-by-state but often include wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and some hydroelectric facilities—depending on the size and vintage. States determine eligible resources based on their existing energy generation mix and the potential for renewable energy development in their states.
For instance, qualifying renewable energy resources in Colorado include solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, certain hydroelectric resources and emissions neutral coal-mine methane. Comparatively, eligible resources under Hawaii’s RPS include solar, wind, biomass and geothermal, in addition to energy produced from falling water, ocean water, waves and water currents. Additional eligible resources in several states include landfill gas, animal wastes, combined heat and power, and even energy efficiency."
As George W. Bush might say, we need to build more nucular.