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 (“70×30”) and 100% from “zero-carbon” sources by 2040 (“100×40”).
Well, here we are in 2026 — 7 years down and only 4 to go toward the 70×30 mandate — and we have made almost no progress in “de-carbonizing” the electricity system. It is obvious to any thinking person that the 70×30 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?
Actually, there is a way out. Buried in the CLCPA there is a provision that was added as Section 66-P(4) of the Public Service Law. That provision gives the Public Service Commission the ability to “suspend or modify” the obligations of the CLCPA if it conducts a hearing, and after that hearing makes one of several findings, such as that suspending or modifying the mandates is required to maintain “safe and adequate” electric service, or that the mandates are causing a significant increase in customer arrears or service disconnections. Here is relevant text of the Act:
The commission may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing . . . makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program.
As readers here know, during 2025, I, along with a small group of colleagues (Roger Caiazza, Richard Ellenbogen and Constantine Kontogiannis), started efforts to try to get the PSC to pay attention and invoke this provision. One of the things we did was to intervene in a rate proceeding initiated by the utility (Con Edison) serving New York City and Westchester County. I have reported on that intervention on several occasions, for example here and here. Another thing we did was to intervene in another PSC proceeding, this one with the number 22-M-0149, called “Assessing Implementation of and Compliance with the Requirements and Targets of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.” Here is a link to the filing of my colleagues and myself in that proceeding.
As this process has gone on, there has been an aspect that is completely surreal. Here we are, four very knowledgeable guys, watching a complete train wreck unfold before our eyes, something of huge consequence to every New Yorker, and particularly to every business operating here. And yet the entire effort to avert the train wreck has been carried out by four individuals on their own time and with their own money, with no interest of any kind shown by the thousands of businesses who are in the cross-hairs of the state climate zealots. I have long thought that that would eventually have to end.
Three days ago, it finally did. On January 6, a large group of trade associations and businesses in New York State, calling themselves the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy (Coalition), filed a Petition in proceeding 22-M-0149, calling on the PSC to hold a hearing on whether to suspend or modify the mandates of the CLCPA. The Coalition makes clear its own position that the mandates must be suspended.
My excellent colleague Roger Caiazza, always alert for these kinds of things, already put up a post about this filing at his blog Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.
The Coalition’s Petition lists some 34 members, mostly broad-based trade associations. However, they are not randomly selected. All but two have addresses in what we call “upstate” New York, in other words, the part of the State North of New York City. (Of the remaining two, one — the National Federation of Independent Businesses — is based in Washington, D.C., while the other — Northeast Hearth, Patio, and Barbecue Association — is based in Massachusetts.). Not a single member gives an address in New York City (about 43% of the State’s population) or Long Island (about 15% of the State’s population). Most of the addresses are from places like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany and Binghamton. To be fair, there is one member — the Business Council of New York State — that, although based in Albany, represents businesses throughout the State, including major national businesses in New York City. Still, the absence of the New York City business community from this Petition is striking.
The Coalition’s Petition makes obvious points that echo what my colleagues and I have long been saying, and that the business community should have been screaming about for years. At least some substantial portion of that community is now starting to wake up. My main comment is that the Petition is much too soft on the morons running state energy policy, trying to feign general support for the goals of the CLCPA while pretending that they are just seeking some teensy, weensy postponements.
I’ll give you some excerpts from the Petition, with interspersed comments. From page 1-2:
Recent evidence suggests that the Renewable Energy Program, and its associated renewable energy targets, may impede the provision of safe and adequate electric service and upset the necessary balance of reliable, economic and sustainable energy in New York State. This evidence justifies commencement of the hearing process in PSL § 66-p (4), which will allow the Commission to determine whether the temporary suspension or modification of the Renewable Energy Program obligations is necessary to ensure the continued provision of safe and adequate electric service.
Actually, the recent evidence does not merely “suggest” that the CLCPA mandates “may impede” the functioning of the electrical system, but rather definitively establishes that the entire program is infeasible and impossible.
From page 2:
Recent data from the Commission demonstrates that New York will not achieve – or even come close to achieving – the 70% target by 2030. In addition, recent developments at the federal level impacting clean energy are likely to have a negative impact on renewable energy in the near term.
That’s a huge understatement, but we’ll take it. From page 3:
The inability of New York to develop the amount of renewable energy generation necessary to meet the 70% target by 2030, the increasing retirement of aging fossil-fuel generators due to the CLCPA, and the uncertainty surrounding the development of resources necessary to meet the zero emissions target by 2040, presents a reliability concern.
“Presents a reliability concern”? How about, instead, “this is completely delusional, can’t possibly work, and is putting all New Yorkers in serious danger”?
And from page 23:
The Coalition is generally supportive of the continued pursuit of renewable energy generation – but not at the expense of grid reliability and safe, adequate and affordable electric service. The inability to timely develop renewable generation and keep up with forecast demand necessitates keeping all options on the table, including existing fossil-fuel generation.
They just can’t stop themselves from continuing to pay lip service to the “pursuit of renewable energy generation.” I would say that the time for engaging in that fantasy has long passed.
Anyway, to the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy, I say, welcome to the fray! I look forward to working with you, and with the many others who will soon be joining this effort as the Climate Act nonsense falls apart.
Indeed, now isn’t the time to skirt around the edges of the obvious upcoming chaos. Just go full bull in a china shop!
That is what makes Donald so great – he just tells it as he sees it without worrying about what the Far Left or their media poodles think about it. Nothing grabs the attention so much as a punch in the face.
It should be clear now that nyc has dug a deep enough hole that they won’t be able to claim it isn’t there. The question is, how will they blame it on someone else? Trump is the obvious person to blame but I can’t see how they’ll do it. He might be gone by the time it gets bad enough that people have to admit it.
It’s Trumps fault. And all of the deniers. We must liquidate the kulaks as a class.
You think they’re not already on it?
https://spectator.com/article/democrats-ai-skepticism-data-centers/?edition=us
Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall but in essence the coming energy armageddon is entirely the result of “Data Centers”. I particularly liked :
“In areas nearby data centers, wholesale electricity prices have risen by as much as 267 percent over the past five years”
“Texas, which hosts a disproportionate number of data centers due to its cheap energy”
But worry not, the Commies have your back :
“At the federal level, Senator Elizabeth Warren and colleagues are investigating whether energy buildout costs are being unfairly shifted onto households, and have pledged to hold the sector to greater levels of transparency and accountability”
Intelligence is not necessarily valued by the Green Blob.
Seeing that both US political parties have been around for more than 100 years and held power for long stretches at all levels in all branches during that time, I would like any politician who uses the words “transparency and accountability” to provide an example of where their party has accomplished that before.
Had New York gone all in on nuclear, they might have had real reductions.
But the Cuomo machine, and the Green Blob in general, is resolutely antinuclear. FAFO.
Agreed. They forced the completely unnecessary shutdown of Indian Point’s two reactors. NY chose this outcome. Business in the city has a choice; get out and run for the hills, or collapse into bankruptcy. They should get the full punishment they are owed. Make stupid choices; get stupid results.
Who ever thought that the movie “Escape From New York” would turn out to be a documentary?
Could it be a plan to empty the city, crash real estate prices, then profit from the rebuild?
Build Back Better….?
What rebuild?
The US SouthEast looked pretty dead after the emancipation proclamation made cotton and tobacco more difficult. They figured out how to make it work. NY has plenty of people smart enough to (eventually) fix the mess they’re making. If you buy me a supercomputer and pay my salary for about 40 years I’ll build you a simulator that says when they’ll figure it out.
For cities, that’s not the normal pattern. Decades of ruinously bad government have destroyed Detroit. What used to be one of the largest cities in the US, well over 1.5 million, it’s now declined to less than 670,000. It has 1/3rd of the population it had in 1950. That’s a collapse on the scale of the depopulation of Rome in the 6th Century.
The people don’t stay and figure things out. They move to better places. In the US, people are fleeing the Blue States: California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois. They are moving to better locations like Florida, Texas, Georgia. Even Wikipedia shows the scale of the Bluestate implosion.
List of U.S. states and territories by net migration – Wikipedia
They move to better places
The question is – will they figure out why those places are better?
It took the south a century to get back in the game. like cgh says look at Detroit. Only now are they beginning to see recovery from the 1968 riots and Coleman Young’s reign of terror.(1974 -1994)
Had to look up Coleman Young…
“In 1974, the year Young took office, the homicide rate in Detroit was slightly above 50 per 100,000 residents… In 1994, the year Young retired from office, the homicide rate was roughly 54 per 100,000”
The Cuomos are also resolutely opposed
to fracking. At least they are consistent.
The situation in NYS illustrates a typical unpleasant consequence of a balkanized electorate. One can anticipate that nothing useful can happen even if a few serious thinkers propose corrective actions. Every year more of NYS’s disgruntled will carry their voting habits to surrounding states where they metastasize.Can Texas be far behind?
Texas, with windmills, might be ahead on electricity.
Texas is very expensively extracting itself
from Green folly.
Wind turbines are a total waste of money. Intermittent non-dispatchable energy can never fill the role of coal, gas and nuclear. 30 years of experience makes that clear. Texas should have built nukes and saved money. Emblemsvag (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY2024, VOL. 43, NO. 1, 2355642 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642) made this point clearly in 2024. I am writing an book on the topic with Schernikau as we speak.
Sure. I wasn’t trying to defend windmills. whsmith wrote “Can Texas be far behind?” I thought that, depending on how you measure, Texas might be way ahead.
I live upside down on the other side of the world and bear no ill will towards the good people of New York State but must admit to looking forward to these impossible fantasies collapse in spectacular rather than an anticlimactic fashion.
Especially when the idiots responsible think they can legislate away the vagaries of nature, principles of economics and laws of physics.
If you mean you are in Australia.. Don’t forget that Bow-wow’s plans are probably even worse.
Same applies to my benighted country, a short sharp shock would have a salutary effect and wake up a dozy majority.
Would it? How much shock will be required? What will “wake up” look like? Does anyone expect Ozzies or New Yorkers to take to the streets like Iranians? How much pain will it take to engender total shut down of the Climate Mullahs?
They appear to be just the kind of group that would pass a law making PI to be 3.14, no need for those pesky numbers to the right of .14….
why bother with anything to the right of ‘.’?
Washington State’s Climate Commitment Act, 2021, is likewise designed to save the planet by collecting “carbon” indulgences and passing money to legiswlative friends or high-profile returns.
I suspect these Acts were all helped along by outside interests insofar as legislators aren’t smart enough to think of such things on their own. A proper press would have investigated this.
Very nice Francis, you Roger, Richard and Constantine are owed a lot by all of us. While nearly everybody is sitting on their backside whining there is nothing we can do you guys have grabbed Goliath by the ears and kicked him in the ass. We all owe you a lot. As for the business community I am not at all surprised that they are a bunch of cowards, especially big business, they are connected at the hip with big government. It is hard to distinguish who is the hooker and who is the John. A real sorry state of affairs. This is a prime example of why government involvement in matters as important as energy production and transmission should be kept to the bare minimum. Government is not knowledgeable, is too powerful, is easily corrupted, is dishonest and is almost impossible to be held accountable. Not to mention there is no one to regulate them.
Absolutely correct on all counts. The State, the Left, whatever you want to call it, can not thrive without the tacit support of its useful idiots, i.e., crony ‘capitalists’, academia and the media.
I appreciate their efforts, as well. I have relatives living in and around NYC and am concerned about how this will impact them when the inevitable crisis occurs.
I also appreciate their efforts, and also have relatives in NYC. While I am concerned about my relatives, all are smart people who knew or should have known this is coming and could do something to alleviate their own personal situations. But they won’t because they love the city too much. You can’t help those who won’t help themselves.
I live out here in the Middle of Nowhere, Eastern Washington state. But I have close relatives living in Manhattan, on Long Island, and in upstate New York. And also in the Bay Area of California.
All of these people have been drinking the wind & solar Kool Aid in five-gallon buckets for years. When the inevitable blackouts begin to occur, and with increasing frequency, these people will be finding something else to blame.
As for those who live in NYC, the only kind of adverse event which might have any prospect of influencing their thinking would be a massive fire in an urban grid-scale battery facility which killed and injured hundreds if not thousands of NYC residents.
If I lived in New York, I would oppose suspending the mandate. they only way they will learn how stupid they are is by spectacular and obvious failure.
“Example, Sir, is the only school of mankind. They will learn at no other.”
— Edmund Burke
My advice to anyone living in New York…
ESCAPE.. while you are still allowed to !!
It was a trashy movie in 1981, but who expected “Escape From New York” to be an accurate future prediction?
Where is Snake Plissken, now that we need him?
They went Full Retard but can’t admit it, so are throttling back to Half Retard.
I’m sure that a letter or brief meeting with Zohran K. Mamdani,112th Mayor of New York City, will solve the problem. He’ll be out there laying bricks and welding pipe in no time.
Maybe NYC should be its own state- let that happen and liberate the rest of the state.
Maybe Mamdani will mandate hand cranks in all of NYC’s elevators?
Only if some reliably conservative place spits to offset the additional US Senators.
Upstate NY would have its own- so there would be an additional 2 Senators with common sense.
For all practical purposes, the Hochul Administration has delayed the 2019 Climate Act’s legally mandated 2030 GHG reduction targets ten years out to 2040. See this graphic that I’ve adapted from Page 1, Figure 1 of the state’s Analysis Pathways Factsheet:
From the graphic:
— NYS total energy consumption falls 20% overall between 2025 and 2040
— Distillate consumption (mostly heating oil) … a 48% reduction
— Gasoline consumption (presume in-state residents) … a 52% reduction
— Natural gas consumption (presume in-state residents) … a 23% reduction
— Electricity consumption (presume in-state residents) … a 25% increase
Remarks:
(1) Since the Hochul Administration knows the Climate Act’s 2030 emission targets can’t come close to being met, at least not without imposing a program of government-enforced energy rationing, the analysis pathways fact sheet doesn’t include a breakdown for the year 2030. (How convenient.)
(2) Total energy consumption in New York state falls 20% between 2025 and 2040. Gains in energy efficiency play a central role in that 20% reduction. These supposed gains depend on a series of assumptions which are pie in the sky out to the planet Jupiter and beyond.
(3) How does a mere 25% increase in the state’s consumption of electricity between 2025 and 2040 account for the rise of AI data centers; for the adoption of EV-based transportation modes; for the increased use of heat pumps; and last but not least, for Micron’s massive demand for electricity for use in its new computer chip manufacturing plants now slated for upstate New York?
Micron’s Upstate Computer Chip Plants:
It is one thing for New York politicians and state officials to ignore the red flags now being raised concerning the oncoming shortfalls in that state’s supply of electricity. One expects that of politicians and state officials. It’s in their job descriptions to lie their a$$es off up one side and down the other.
But it is quite another thing for a large corporation like Micron to push this major project forward when its own internal technical staff has to know full well that New York’s supply of electricity is now at serious risk.
So we have to ask the question, what kind of game is Micron playing with New York State government and with those Hochul administration officials whose cooperation will be crucial for keeping Micron’s huge demand for electricity satisfied?
Assuming there is a signed cooperative agreement between Micron and New York state government, is that agreement available for public scrutiny? What does that agreement have to say about the availability and reliability of electricity in New York state?
New York State Politics:
Another question comes to mind based on my own assessment of where New York state politics are headed.
The socialist-communists now ascendant in downstate New York intend to gain full control of the New York state Democratic Party, and hence full political control of all of New York state.
They have the political muscle, the money, the campaign organization, the messaging, and the ground game needed to get there.
Governor Hochul obviously recognizes where New York politics are going and is now aligning herself with NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani and his downstate socialist-communist followers.
When push comes to shove, upstate New Yorkers will be taking it in the shorts. The upstaters must go along with the downstater’s radical agenda or else be frozen out entirely.
IMHO, Mamdani will challenge Hochul in the 2030 election cycle, probably successfully. And so the question can be asked, what will he be doing with the stalled Net Zero transition plan if and when he replaces Hochul as governor in January of 2031?
They are building a dedicated underground transmission line from the Clay Substation to the Micron site. The Clay Substation is fed by the Watertown station which is hydro. According to what I have seen posted, they plan to supplement with wind and solar but Hydro is the primary.
I’ve spent part of the morning using Google AI to research the Micron plant’s energy draws and their associated timelines. The Watertown generating station’s hydropower output of 6.6 MW isn’t nearly enough to power the Micron plant’s expected real-time draw of 480 MW starting at the end of the first phase of construction in 2030.
The specific renewable energy sources planned to power the facility include:
Groundbreaking for the plant will happen on January 16th, 2026. Based on what Google AI has told me about the plant, I’ll be writing an extended comment before then entitled “The Chip Plant that Ate New York.”
Hydo – okay seems real
Wind and solar – they might add some of that if they do it right
Green Hydrogen – uh oh, I thought they were serious. Maybe they could find-replace that with natural gas or coal or something.
2025-2030:
— Distillate consumption (mostly heating oil) … a 48% reduction
— Gasoline consumption (presume in-state residents) … a 52% reduction
— Natural gas consumption (presume in-state residents) … a 23% reduction
So respectively an average of 6%, 6% and 3% reductions annually. This will only take a year to be a busted prediction.
As indicated in my comment, the extended timeline for the listed fuel types is fifteen years, 2025-2040. So the actual per year reduction figures are 3.3%, 3.5%, and 1.5%, respectively.
The target shortfalls per year are low enough that in 2030, when she is running for governor once again, Kathy Hochul will be claiming that the extended timeline out to 2040 is still doable.
An escape clause allows the political circus act to play on until it’s time to fold the tent and move to the next consultant strategy. In a word….plastics.