From: Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York
By: Roger Caiazza
Date: March 20, 2026
NYISO Winter 2025-2026 Cold Weather Operations – Weather and Loads
Last month I wrote a couple of articles about the January 23-27 winter storm and its ramifications on a future electric system that depends upon wind and solar and how it demonstrated that Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources (DEFR) will be needed. This article describes New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) documents that extend the previous analysis through February 9. The following documents were on the agenda for the NYISO Operating Committee March 19, 2026 meeting: a presentation titled Winter 2025-2026 Cold Weather Operations by Aaron Markham, NYISO Vice President Operations and the February 2026 Operations Performance Metrics Monthly Report. This article is limited to the description of the weather and resulting loads. I will follow up on the implications to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) later.
I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Overview
The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. Among its interim 2030 targets is a 70% renewable energy electricity mandate and 100% zero emissions electric generation in 2040.
Electric systems must be built around reliability during peak demand. One of my primary concerns with the Climate Act weather-reliant renewable energy mandates is correlated weather-dependent resource variability because the conditions that characterize the highest loads also have the weakest expected wind resource availability. That makes electric resource planning for reliability during the peak period especially challenging. (continue reading)
NYISO Winter 2025-2026 Cold Weather Operations – Weather and Loads