updated 9/15/2026
Alle-Catt Wind Energy Proposal
On June 3, 2020, twelve months from the date its application was accepted by the Siting Board, the Board issued a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need, with Conditions pursuant to Public Service Law, Article 10. (PSC Case No. 17-F-0282). On September 25, 2020, the Siting Board denied petitions for rehearing submitted by intervenor parties, the Town of Farmersville and the Coalition of Concerned Citizens. The intervenor parties then filed suit in the state Supreme Court, Appellate Division (Fourth Department) which denied all claims. (Court papers are linked below.)
The Alle-Catt Wind Energy proposal offers a critical window on the feasibility of New York's energy plan. The plan seeks to achieve a 100% zero-emissions grid by 2050 by adding sufficient wind, solar and battery storage energy.
The Siting Board and Alle-Catt agreed with the Coalition that insufficient transmission capacity exists to utilize Alle-Catt's energy because Alle-Catt's energy cannot be transported downstate where it is needed. However, the Siting Board disagreed that this is a basis to deny approval for the project. The Siting Board reasoned that if Alle-Catt is sited, transmission developers will come. More than six years later the project has yet to become operational and no transmission developers have come to connect any upstate clean energy with New York's downstate dirty grid.
Over a decade ago in 2016 NYISO told the Public Service Commission that transmission congestion preventing upstate renewables from benefiting downstate needs exists at three levels: the local distribution system, inter-regional transmission lines, and long-distance bulk transmission lines. Without addressing all transmission congestion problems, according to NYISO, continued siting of large-scale renewables upstate will require the transmission operator to progressively curtail operations (or instruct wind facilities to limit their output). In 2022, NYISO reported that 161.7 GWh of electricity generated by wind farms had to be curtailed, up from 70.5 GWh in 2019. NYISO also reported that wind projects in New York in 2022 generated at between 23% and 26% of their rated (or design) capacity. (Slides 9, 17). Compare this to the efficiency rating (or capacity factor) for hydro- and nuclear power, which exceeds 90%. These are "baseload" power sources, always on and highly reliable. Intermittent wind and solar generators require natural gas-fired backup plants known as "peaker" plants, which are very inefficient (high carbon emitting). This why James Hansen as said that a 100% wind and solar energy system is a "fantasy": the more intermittent renewables on the grid, the more natural gas is needed. See also Grid Brief, Deep Dive (April 5, 2024).
The Fourth Department Appellate Division, without any record evidence, "found" that Alle-Catt had proven that it could deliver its energy to New York City. This finding is unsupported; it is contrary to the finding of the Siting Board on this topic (see discussion at pp. 81-81 of the June 3, 2020 Certificate Decision).
NYISO's Power Trends report finds that about 90% of upstate's electricity is already carbon-free, owing to upstate's nuclear and hydropower (renewables remain in the single digits), compared to downstate where carbon-free electricity is 5%. Downstate's emissions problem can be attributed to the premature shutdown of nuclear reactors at Indian Point serving New York City and Westchester County and their replacement by two large gas-fired power plants). Each year since the 2019 Climate Act, New York's greenhouse gas emissions have grown. Clearly, renewables have failed to deliver meaningful decarbonization.
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To date, Alle-Catt has not obtained authorization from the Siting Board to operate. In 2021 the Board granted Alle-Catt's request to extend the time to operate to June 2030. Otherwise, the June 2020 Certificate Order includes some 131 certificate conditions that must be satisfied before operations can begin. These include a handful of noise design goals and noise level limits the company has been unable to show it can meet.
Chief among these is a demonstration that the project is designed to achieve an annual average noise at project area homes of 40 decibels (dBA), for which a 10-decibel penalty is added to noise modeling results to reflect the added sensitivity to night noise. After three noise assessments failed to demonstrate compliance, the company petitioned the Siting Board to simply remove the requirement and on June 23, 2026, the Siting Board denied the petition. The Board concluded that Alle-Catt's noise assessment is based on non-standard corrections to the accepted model that were never authorized by the Board. A new noise assessment was submitted by Alle-Catt on August 26 and is under review by the Board. However, this new assessment continues to use novel methods that depart from the generally accepted noise model (ISO 9613-2).
Also important is a short-term limit on low frequency noise, 65 dBZ. Most of the sound power in wind turbine noise occurs at the lowest frequencies where impacts are often felt in the body or seen in rattling windows and walls rather than heard. Chronic exposure to low frequency noise is known to cause sleeplessness and a cascade of adverse health effects that follow such as declining performance and increased susceptibility to disease. (More on wind turbine noise impacts here.)
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Older briefs filed with the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals challenging the June 2020 Certificate Order are available from the links below. The briefs reference records filed in the Article 10 proceeding, all of which are available online, on the "Document Matter Master" (DMM) maintained by the Department of Public Service. Specifically, the briefs cite to the DMM "Item No." found in the sixth column of the DMM page. Petitions for rehearing, briefs filed in the administrative proceeding and all other records can be found there. These submissions preceded the civil litigation reported here.
The Appellate Division unanimously dismissed all of the Coalition's claims regarding factual and legal issues with the Siting Board's Certificate decision. A motion for reargument was brought, focusing on the Court's erroneous finding that Alle-Catt demonstrated it could deliver its energy to New York City (an impossibility, according to New York's electric system operator, NYISO). The Court rejected the motion without comment.
Where there is a unanimous appellate dismissal, the petitioner has no right to appeal unless a constitutional question is raised. The Coalition filed a notice of appeal to the Court of Appeals based on the Siting Board's refusal to accommodate the special needs of the Swartzentruber (Old Order) Amish in Farmersville, where almost half of the 600-foot-high wind turbines would be located. The Court responded with a request for arguments about whether that was a substantial question in the siting proceeding. Despite having been awarded intervenor funds from the beginning of the application stage to represent the Amish (which required submitting a retainer agreeent), and despite having put in expert testimony on the subject concluding that the Farmersville Amish settlement of 22 families would be forced, based on their religion, to migrate out of the area if the project is built, and despite briefing the issue before the Siting Board, the Court found that a religious freedom claim was raised for the first time on appeal, and the Court refused to consider the appeal.
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Town of Farmersville initial brief (January 27, 2021) (Coalition of Concerned Citizens and Dennis Gaffin v. New York State Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment and Alle-Catt Wind Energy, LLC, No. OP 20-01405)
Coalition initial brief (January 27, 2021) (Town of Farmersville v. New York State Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment, Alle-Catt Wind Energy, LLC, State of New York, John Doe Corporations and John Does, No. OP 20-01406)
