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Articles by Phil Wilcox
Another Voice: New York has better energy options that it currently recognizes
Phil Wilcox is retired from IBEW and lives in Tonawanda. k5:G 5:ClQ=ECQm k^5:Gm k5:G 5:ClQ=ECQmxE :D ?@E23=6 E92E 2 ?6H ?F4=62C A=2?E :D 2 >:?:>2= 7:G6\J62C 3F:=5[ 3FE >2J E2<6 2D =@?8 `_ J62CD E@ 4@>A=6E6[ 2?5 E96 ?665 7@C 255:E:@?2= :?\DE2E6 A@H6C 42?VE H2:E :7 H6 56D:C6 DE625J 6>:DD:@? C65F4E:@?D]k^5:Gm k5:G 5:ClQ=ECQm k^5:Gm k5:G 5:ClQ=ECQmp 4@>3:?65\4J4=6 ?2EFC2= 82D A=2?E :D 2 EH@\J62C 4@?DECF4E:@? AC@;64E[ 2?5 H:E9 E96 2G2:=23:=:EJ @7 5@C>2?E 4@2= A=2?ED[ G2=F23=6 DF3DE2E:@?D 2C6 :?
Another Voice: Data center growth make it necessary to reassess New York's energy plan
Much has happened in the power sector since New York passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019. The law includes massive electrification plans and aggressive phasing out of natural gas. The architects of the well-intended law made flawed assumptions about the availability of New York’s electric supply, and could not have foreseen the exponential growth in data centers and the recent major draw on U.S. electric supplies.
Another Voice: New York will need additional clean energy sources to meet goals
Phil Wilcox For an energy “geek,” visiting our NYISO website, along with that of a major source of New York energy imports — PJM, can be an eye-opening experience. Cross referenced with our Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and the mandates for massive electrification, there are tools to reasonably predict expected costs, if the path remains unaltered.
Another Voice: We're running out of time to stabilize energy systems
Having spent most of my nearly four-decade career as a substation electrician for a major New York utility, we were additionally tasked with training and qualifying for storm response. The complex arrangement of wires that we all see was and is primarily lineman’s work, but in a storm emergency there are often thousands or more tri-plex drops to residential customers that are labor intensive to re-install, and that’s what we and others and others were trained to do.
Another Voice: A balanced approach that avoids extremes will lead to emission reduction
The politics of addressing climate change has been an absolute disaster, if the goal is to establish effective and long-lasting emission reductions. As we know, many politicians follow polling numbers first, and facts only if they fit the “stay in the club” mentality.
Emotions and impact: Make it close. Make it real. Make it easy to care.
Fed up with feeling like a lone voice? Tired of having your budget slashed? Considered an afterthought for change projects or programmes? Yeah, I felt that way too. It was all I had known for so long. What felt like safety, reassurance, belief and confidence all evaporated when times got tough and money got tight. It felt like lip service. I still get that now. Just a few weeks ago, a contract we expected to run for a further six months ended early.
Another Voice: The shift to electric power has its downside
Over the course of my 35-year utility career, I have seen several well-intended policies advanced in the name of cost and reliability of electricity and natural gas. Some worked out well, such as efforts to save the zero-carbon nuclear power complex in Oswego and advancing electric transmission upgrades. Others?
Another Voice: Global instability should mitigate hasty climate change policy
Climate change has been accurately described as an “existential threat” to reinforce emission reduction efforts. The devil in those details has made it dicey for policy folks to advance rational change, and they may be overly influenced by recommendations not properly vetted, but politically expedient. Most of us support efforts to combat climate change – until policies impact the cost of driving, heating and electricity.
Tonawanda section of the Niagara River Greenway has been left out
Governor Hochul's announcement on Aug. 15 regarding accelerated investment into the downtown Buffalo waterfront is more wonderful news about that portion of what is known as the Niagara River Greenway corridor. The tenacity shown by then Assemblyman Brian Higgins during the time-sensitive negotiations to relicense the Niagara Power Project until 2056 delivered settlement funds of monumental proportions for downtown Buffalo and the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation.
New York must balance natural gas use with clean energy development
Part of a climate change conundrum is that many of those who are staunch supporters of wholesale shut-down of fossil fuels also vote with their wallets. Even a well-informed, reasonable person who cares deeply about reductions in carbon emission can also be poised to take vengeance against a political party and leaders regardless of actual culpability for recent price spikes in transportation fuels.
New York's climate timeline is counterproductive
The comment period is coming to and end in New York's massive Climate Leadership and Community Investment Act legislation (CLCPA). The aggressive goals for additional carbon reductions merits careful review prior to the laws that will follow to enable the bill's ambitions for further reducing carbon emissions.
Don’t let energy alarmists give natural gas a bad rap
By Phil Wilcox In the sometimes irrational debate regarding energy policy and climate change, natural gas has slowly turned from hero to goat – in the views of some unenlightened extremists – when it is among the primary reasons for the steady decline in coal use for generating power. Natural gas cuts greenhouse gas emissions in half and eliminates nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions that are present with coal.
Why Canada? Upstate has ample hydropower for New York City
To the editor: I am quite confused by Mayor Bill de Blasio's call for resurrection of the seemingly dead Champlain Hudson Power Express that would run an extension cord from Quebec to New York City to meet a large portion of the city's electricity needs. This anti-made-in-NY idea further threatens our energy independence and would continue the trend to close New York power plants and replace them with imports.
On singing and communicating, from a choral director
Phil Wilcox is an experienced choral director, currently leading the Fleet Singers, a community choir based in Gospel Oak, and several choirs for Music in Offices. A Royal Academy of Music graduate, he has sung as a baritone soloist for Buxton Festival Opera, Royal Shakespeare Company, Retrospect Opera, Merry Opera Company, XOGA, Opera on Location and Young Opera Venture and appears regularly on the oratorio and concert platform.
Top ten tips for the amateur choral singer
1Warm up before you sing Do anything! Lip trills, syrens, ‘v’, ‘z’, ‘m’, ‘sh sh sh’, ‘s s s’. Literally anything to take the voice out of normal speech pitch and to wake up the muscles involving extended breath flow and expression. Stretch the body and the face! Exercise that tongue. Stick it out, roll it around, to the left, to the right. Our tongues are a huge muscle that go right down into the neck.
Drawing the line for cyber warfare
The difference between cyber warfare and other cyber attacks is merely a frame of reference. For example, we can define cyber warfare as cyber attacks in the context of overt military engagement, such as those conducted against so-called Islamic State as part of ongoing warfare in Syria where these attacks fall within a war’s theatre of operations.
10 YEARS OF LOCAL: LONG LIVE RECORD STORE DAY
As sure as you can be that most employees of DigBoston will spend way too many pesos on Record Store Day, one can bet one’s ass that vinyl muse and guru Phil Wilcox of Tres Gatos in Jamaica Plain will be screaming from his indie soapbox for the weeks leading up to the high musical holiday. As he wrote us in an email last month, “RSD is my favorite day of the year, and not because of crazy sales. We survive—like a lot of small stores—on a group of 200-300 regulars who come in weekly and buy vinyl.
Another Voice: Burden of greenhouse gas reduction should be shared
New York is one of nine states that participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The RGGI is essentially a tax on carbon emitters from the power generation sector. More than $400 million was collected in 2014 alone, with the New York share of that funding primarily filtered through NYSERDA for a host of greenhouse gas-reducing investments and initiatives.
Another Voice: We need inclusiveness in planning public projects, but that doesn’t mean unanimity
“Consensus does not mean unanimity.” These words were shared by the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the earliest days of relicensing the Niagara Power Project. I had the good fortune, along with other labor leaders, of organizing the Western New York Relicensing Consensus Committee in 1999.
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