New York's Ridiculous Energy Policy Way Off The Edge Of The Cliff

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New York's Ridiculous Energy Policy Way Off The Edge Of The Cliff

  • Every time I write about this subject it has gotten yet a little more ridiculous. The background is that back in 2019 New York, both State and City, set themselves targets for “emissions” reductions and energy transformation that are quite literally impossible as a matter of physics, thermodynamics, and cost.

  • And then, just to show who is the boss here, they made the impossible targets mandatory by statute.

  • In the case of New York State, the statute in question is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA or Climate Act). Among the many requirements of that statute, the most immediate are a mandate for 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030 (known as “70x30”), and another mandate for 100% of electricity from “zero emissions” sources by 2040 (“100x40”). I should also mention that the CLCPA in addition contains a deadline of January 1, 2024, for the State Department of Environmental Conservation to issue regulations informing us peasants how these various impossible mandates of the CLCPA were/are going to be achieved. That latter deadline, you will note, has long passed.

  • So here we are, seven years into the CLCPA morass.

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New York Business Community Starting To Wake Up About The Coming Energy Train Wreck

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  • In 2018 New York’s voters suddenly elected a far more left-wing legislature than we had previously had, particularly the State Senate (the Assembly having already been deep in the progressive camp). Taking office in 2019, the new legislators quickly got to work seeing how much destruction they could wreak in a short period of time.

  • One product of their efforts was what we call the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), enacted in July 2019. The point of the CLCPA was to have New York State rescue the climate and save the planet, which supposedly was going to be accomplished by imposing mandates for eliminating hydrocarbon fuels from the energy system of this one little state.

  • It seems that nobody had pointed out to the very earnest legislators that New York represents only a small fraction of 1% of world CO2 emissions, the total elimination of which would barely be noticed in the overall world carbon balance. But the point was not necessarily to make any noticeable impact on world carbon emissions, so much as to show our virtue and our “leadership” by destroying our own wealth as an example to others, or something like that. Of most immediate consequence in the CLCPA were mandates for the electricity system, that 70% of our electricity must come from “renewables” by 2030 (“70x30”) and 100% from “zero-carbon” sources by 2040 (“100x40”).

  • Well, here we are in 2026 — 7 years down and only 4 to go toward the 70x30 mandate — and we have made almost no progress in “de-carbonizing” the electricity system. It is obvious to any thinking person that the 70x30 mandate has become a joke (to the extent that that was not obvious from the outset).

  • But there is the mandate written in black and white in a statute. Is anything to be done?

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Mayor Mamdani: Can You Feel The Excitement?

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Mayor Mamdani: Can You Feel The Excitement?

  • In New York, officials elected in November take office on January 1. And thus, on New Year’s Day 2026, we had the inauguration of our new Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Can you feel the excitement?

  • For myself, not so much. The best I can say is that this too shall pass. Hopefully without too much destruction in the meantime, but we have no assurance of that.

  • And yet it seems that plenty of people really do feel excitement. I’m not making this up

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The Unreported Story Of Grid Scale Battery Fires

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The Unreported Story Of Grid Scale Battery Fires

  • The geniuses who are planning New York’s energy future think that they can make intermittent wind and solar generators work to power the electrical grid by the simple device of providing some battery storage.

  • The idea is that when there is abundant wind and sun, they can store up the power for use during those calm and dark periods in the winter. How much battery storage will that take? It’s a simple arithmetic calculation, but none of our supposed experts have taken the trouble to crunch the numbers.

  • Nevertheless, without any kind of feasibility study of whether this will work, they soldier forth building large grid-scale battery storage facilities. The battery building program is under way, at least to some degree, and a few such facilities are actually complete and operating out in the rural parts of the state. Meanwhile, there are plans for some much larger such facilities in New York City, including right in some of its most densely-populated sections.

  • Is there any problem with this that we ought to know about?

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Doubling Down On The Worst Possible Public Policy ("Affordable Housing" In Manhattan)

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Doubling Down On The Worst Possible Public Policy ("Affordable Housing" In Manhattan)

  • I often write about the folly of attempting, through a myriad of government mandates and subsidies, to compel the replacement of our electricity system with one powered by the wind and sun. You may think it would be impossible to come up with any public policy that is worse than that one of a forced energy system transformation.

  • And yet, the Manhattan Contrarian designee for “worst possible public policy” has gone to something else. That something else is the building of what they call “affordable housing” on some of the world’s most expensive real estate here in Manhattan.

  • The term “affordable housing” as used by housing advocates is a euphemistic term of art that means something different from what you would think. What it really means is subsidized and income restricted.

  • The policies of forced energy transition and of building “affordable housing” in Manhattan share some notable characteristics. One is that a few simple observations are sufficient to demonstrate that the policy wastes vasts amounts of taxpayer resources while accomplishing essentially nothing and indeed being destructive. Another is that there is near total consensus among the Manhattan cognoscenti that the policy is a not only good idea but indeed a moral imperative.

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Our Final Objection To Our Local Utility's Rate Increase

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  • If you have been following this blog closely, you know that I have been participating, along with two excellent colleagues, in the rate proceeding of our local utility, Con Edison.

  • A rate proceeding is the mechanism by which a utility goes before a regulatory body, in our case the New York Public Service Commission, seeking to increase the rates charged to consumers. Our purpose in the proceeding has been to object to and disrupt having the ratepayers charged for the building of infrastructure in pursuit of the futile and infeasible “climate” goals of our deluded politicians.

  • One of the rules of these things is that anybody with a genuine interest in the outcome can “intervene” if they want, and participate as a party in the proceedings. That’s how we got ourselves in on the action.

  • And by the same mechanism, multiple parties advocating for the utopian future of “renewable” and “zero emissions” energy also joined up. Among the green energy advocates in the mix were the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Alliance for a Green Economy. And then there was the New York City government, which wants to present itself as an advocate for low consumer rates, but at the same time has enacted its own mandate for electric building heat that can only be implemented with the support of some expensive new infrastructure to be built by Con Edison.

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