Can Anyone Save New York From Its Coming Self-Inflicted Climate and Energy Disaster?

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  • New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter.

  • New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet.

  • A so-called “Scoping Plan” on how to do all this, issued by the State in 2022, contains no bona fide feasibility analysis, and equally no bona fide cost analysis.

  • Everybody with over a sixth-grade education who has taken any time to look at this knows that it can’t possibly work. The only question is how much destruction will befall us before the whole thing crashes to the ground.

  • Can anyone save New York from the coming self-inflicted climate and energy disaster?

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The "Big Beautiful Bill" -- Climate And Energy Provisions

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The "Big Beautiful Bill" -- Climate And Energy Provisions

  • On Thursday (May 22) the House of Representatives passed, by a narrow margin of 215-214, what is referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — a massive compendium of taxing and spending measures that can now seek to avoid the filibuster in the Senate on grounds of being a “budget reconciliation.” The BBB is well over a thousand pages long (go here for full text), and covers a huge range of subjects.

  • Most summaries of the BBB that I have seen never get to the important subject of subsidies for so-called “green” energy — wind turbines, solar arrays, grid-scale batteries, hydrogen production, and so forth.

  • That is understandable given the large number of important issues covered in the bill. However, the green energy subsidies are a gigantic issue. They consist of generous tax credits for wind and solar facilities that have been around for a long time, plus a barrage of subsidies and handouts created by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

  • In a post that I wrote at the time of enactment of the IRA, I linked to an analysis that estimated the green energy handouts of just the IRA alone at approximately $370 billion (although I noted that the IRA handouts were un-capped and could end up being far more than that).

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New York Times On Climate Change: Two Candidates For Quote Of The Day

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  • Over at the New York Times today, print edition, there is a big front page article documenting how their side is losing the latest battle in the climate wars. The headline is “U.S. Embraces Climate Denial In Science Cuts.” (online headline somewhat different). Also in the Times today (online version) is a feature called “Quote of the Day.” Today’s “quote of the day,” as selected by the Times, is taken from the “climate denial” article just previously linked. Here it is:

  • “It’s as if we’re in the Dark Ages.”

  • This quote is attributed to one Rachel Cleetus, identified as senior policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

  • But then, if you take some time to read the article, you come to what I would propose as another excellent candidate for quote of the day. It’s from Brooke Rollins, recently confirmed as the new Secretary of Agriculture in the Trump administration. Here it is:

  • “We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore.”

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"Renewable" Electricity Champion Denmark Now Looking Into Nuclear

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"Renewable" Electricity Champion Denmark Now Looking Into Nuclear

  • At this site, when I have written about countries and states seeking to be among the leaders in eliminating fossil fuels from their electricity supply, I have generally focused on the larger jurisdictions, like Germany and the UK in Europe, and California and New York in the U.S.

  • But there is one much smaller country that puts all of those bigger ones to shame: Denmark.

  • With a population of only about 6 million, Denmark has pushed the “renewable” electricity generation thing well beyond what others have been able to accomplish. According to its official statistics, in 2024 Denmark got some 79.5% of its electricity from what it calls “low carbon” sources. The large majority of that came from wind and solar, with only a minimal contribution from nuclear. As to nuclear, Denmark had in fact mandated phasing it out, by a law passed back in 2003.

  • So then, does it seem like, with just a final little push, Denmark can go over the top and reach the long-sought goal of 100% of generation from “renewables”?

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As The Federal Government Abandons The Climate Fantasy, New York Doubles Down

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  • The first 100+ days of the second Trump administration (it’s now actually 113 days) have seen a near total abandonment of the fantasy that this one country’s government can change the weather and “save the planet” by suppressing use of hydrocarbon fuels and impoverishing the people.

  • Biden administration “climate” and energy policies amounting to thousands of pages in regulations and hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and subsidies to uneconomic energy projects have been swiftly reversed. Examples in just the past few weeks include:

  • The announcement by the Department of Energy just yesterday (May 12) of no fewer than 47 regulatory reversals, covering everything from ovens. to dehumidifiers, to clothes washers and driers, to shower heads, to dishwashers, and much, much more.

  • Rescission of hundreds of grants from the Department of Energy for so-called “green energy” projects.

  • Similar rescission of hundreds of grants from EPA, supposedly to fund “greenhouse gas reduction” and “climate justice” initiatives.

  • Commencement by EPA of a process to undo the “Endangerment Finding” — a regulatory action that underlies essentially all climate and energy regulation by that agency — and some 30 other climate and energy actions of EPA.

  • And these are just examples. There are many more.

  • At this point, you would think that the blue states might take the hint.

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Have The Intermittent Energy Blackouts Begun?

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  • Today there have been widespread electricity blackouts across Europe, beginning in Spain and Portugal in the early afternoon (local time), and then spreading to other countries including France, Andorra, Belgium and the Netherlands. Is this related to the increasing penetration of intermittent generation from wind and solar facilities?

  • For years, many in the climate skeptic community have warned that expansion of intermittent renewable electricity generation on the grid will, sooner or later, lead to frequent blackouts.

  • The reason for the warning is easy to understand: The grid has some rather exacting operational requirements that the intermittent renewable generation technologies cannot fulfill. Primary among these requirements are, first, minute-by-minute matching of electricity supply with electricity demand and, second, grid-wide synchronization of the frequency of the alternating current. When wind and solar generate provided relatively small portions of the electricity consumed, other generation sources, particularly thermal (fossil fuel) and hydro, would fulfill these requirements.

  • But as wind and solar come to dominate generation, the problems become much more difficult to solve.

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