New York At The Green Energy Wall -- What Is The Exit Strategy?

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  • When New York passed its utopian Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act back in 2019, it set mandatory targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s energy consumption. But none of the mandates were scheduled to take effect prior to 2030.

  • The earliest mandates were: 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030, and 40% overall reduction in GHG emissions by the same year. (Still more ambitious mandates were also set for 2040, followed by a “net zero” mandate for 2050.). These dates all seemed so terribly far away — plenty of time for somebody to invent some new gizmos in the off chance that new technology might be needed to hit the goal.

  • Our legislators, innumerate to a person, had bought into the fantasy — peddled by lightweight academics like Mark Jacobson and Robert Howarth, and by grifting promoters like the American Wind Energy Association and investment bank Lazard — that wind and solar were now the cheapest way to make electricity. To abolish the evil fossil fuels, all that was needed was some political will.

  • The legislators definitely did not pay the slightest attention to the Manhattan Contrarian.

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Jane Menton Comments On Zohran Mamdani

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  • My sometimes co-poster and daughter Jane Menton has been absent from these pages, and from political commentary, for a couple of years. In her defense, she has three little kids on her hands.

  • However, this morning, just in time for today’s election, she had a piece published in the Daily Wire. The subject of the post is Zohran Mamdani’s position on our local electric heat mandate, known as New York City Local Law 97.

  • The Daily Wire has graciously agreed to allow me to repost the article. Here it is (with an introduction by the Daily Wire editors):

Zohran Mamdani Says He Wants To Make NYC Affordable. Don’t Believe Him.

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Magical Thinking Is Why Socialists Get Everything Wrong

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  • What is the source of the wealth of a nation? That’s actually the question addressed by Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations.”

  • Smith doesn’t put it in these exact terms, but his answer lies in some combination of hard work of the people plus figuring out how to work more efficiently through specialization and exchange.

  • And then there’s the other theory that the wealth just appears somehow, by luck or magic (or maybe by oppression of marginalized peoples). Which theory you buy into has everything to do with what you might think are appropriate public policies.

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A Bright New Energy Dawn In The UK

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  • It was just a couple of weeks ago — October 3 to be precise — that I reported that the long-running “net zero” political consensus in the UK was finally “crumbling.” In the intervening two-plus weeks, the slow crumbling has turned into a rapid collapse.

  • The biggest roadblock for opponents of a green energy transition in the UK has been that the Conservative Party, which should have been the natural home of opposition to net zero, has instead long (and foolishly) allied itself with the net zero cause. In June 2019, the Conservatives (under Prime Minister Theresa May) put through an ambitious amendment to enhance the net zero targets of the 2008 Climate Act, and then proceeded to a general election that December where they won a substantial majority of 365 seats (in a parliament of 650).

  • In subsequent years, a parliamentary faction in the House of Commons called the Net Zero Scrutiny Group struggled to get to about 50 or so Conservative members, who were far outnumbered by the opposing faction of the same party called the Conservative Environment Network. The UK voters had surely demonstrated their climate virtue.

  • But unfortunately things did not work out quite as they had anticipated.

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NYISO Weighs In On The New York State Draft Energy Plan

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  • NYISO is the New York Independent System Operator — the not-for-profit entity created to manage New York State’s electrical grid. Their main job is assuring that there is sufficient electricity generated moment to moment to closely match customer demand. Neighboring states have multi-state ISOs (i.e., PJM and ISO-NE) to do the same job, but being New York, we have our own.

  • If there is any entity that ought to be loudly outspoken about New York’s ridiculous energy schemes, it is NYISO. After all, when generating most of our electricity from wind and sun proves not to work, as it will, and when the blackouts follow, as they will, NYISO stands to get a large share of the blame.

  • So where are they? The good news is that they are slowly waking up. The bad news is that even now they are not being nearly as outspoken or as loud as they should be.

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In The UK The Net Zero Consensus Has Crumbled

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  • Here in the U.S., ever since the push to “de-carbonize” the energy system to “save the planet” from global warming got going in a big way 20 or so years ago, there has always been a critical mass of skeptics strongly pushing back. I count myself among them. Another prominent example is the CO2 Coalition, an organization of about 200 scientists and intellectuals who dissent from the climate orthodoxy. Large portions of our Republican Party — recently approaching near unanimity — have also joined the dissent from climate orthodoxy.

  • But over in Europe, the same has not been true at all; and it has particularly not been true in the UK. There, at least until very recently, there was a near total consensus across the political spectrum in favor of mandatory reductions in carbon emissions, with an ultimate goal of zero emissions.

  • Well, let’s take a look at where the UK finds itself today.

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