NY’s Climate Fantasy
“If we miss it by a couple of years, which is probably what will happen, the goals are still worthy,” says Gov. Hochul of notice that New York won’t meet its 2030 green-energy goals.
She’s whistling in the wind: The state is decades away, burning billions and undermining its reliable-energy capacity in pursuit of a fantasy.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli shared the truth in an audit still couched with cheery language. Some damning facts:
● As of 2022, about 29% of electricity generated in New York came from renewable sources.
● Three-quarters of that came from hydropower — which (he didn’t spell out) can’t possibly grow much as we built every conceivable dam long ago.
● So, to meet the 70% goal, solar and wind would need to grow from less than 10% to more than 40% even if demand remained the same. But other green mandates (for electric heat, cooling, cooking and cars) vastly increase the amount of power needed.
Not to mention the inconvenient truth that AI computers — central to the future economy — demand huge amounts of power: Past forecasts of future electricity needs are hopelessly outdated. The only way for New York to get the power it’ll need is to build more fossil-fuel plants — lots of them.
So the state Climate Plan’s goal to cut carbon emissions (40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050) are a mandate for economic suicide.
And maybe you noticed the Con Edison warning during the last heat wave that customers needed to limit energy use to avoid blackouts?
New York’s plans depend on a vast expansion of offshore wind power, yet the costs to build those plants are soaring as other states rush to the same end. That’s why companies keep opting out of contracts to build them, demanding far greater subsidies when the work is re-bid.
State officials’ failure to level with the public on all this, per DiNapoli, makes it “impossible” to assess the financial burden on New Yorkers already “struggling to pay their utility bills.”
The investments needed to reach the Climate Act’s outdated goals run north of $300 billion; the practical barriers are even more daunting. Meanwhile, China keeps building coal plants to power its AI and to manufacture solar panels and electric vehicles and EV batteries — dwarfing whatever emissions reductions New York, California and so on might achieve.
Just as Hochul & Co. are telling flat-out lies about President Biden’s condition, they’re blowing pure smoke about the “energy transition.” Tell the truth and pull the plug on this insanity.