Two Takes On The Progress Of New York's Energy Transformation

Two Takes On The Progress Of New York's Energy Transformation
  • In the real world, the climate scam is rapidly falling apart, along with the related government-subsidized schemes for worldwide energy transformation. So how should New York react? After all, we claim to have the ultimate program of “climate leadership” for showing everyone else how easy it is to do this energy transformation thing. We’ve started with mandating under our Climate Act an electricity system having 70% of its generation from “renewables” by 2030 (a mandate known as “70 x 30”). The deadline for 70 x 30 is now just over four years away.

  • So, is this really happening?

  • Fortunately, our Public Service Commission has just come out with a Report with the long title “NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE SECOND CLCPA [Climate Act] INFORMATIONAL REPORT ON OVERALL IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CLIMATE LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY PROTECTION ACT, WITH CORRECTIONS,” bearing a date of September 23, 2025. Today, I will take a look at that to see what we can learn about New York’s progress toward its goals.

  • Separately, a different bureaucracy called the New York State Energy Planning Board a couple of months ago (July 25) issued something called the 2025 Draft Energy Plan for the state. I had a post discussing that document back on August 11 (“New York’s Official Energy Plan Is No Plan”). That Draft Energy Plan then became subject to a period for public comment, so I took the opportunity to submit my Comment on September 25.

  • Let’s say that the PSC’s Report and my Comment on the Energy Plan are two very different takes on the progress toward New York’s energy transformation.

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Two Tragic Deaths, And Some Useful Lessons

Two Tragic Deaths, And Some Useful Lessons
  • It’s been a very sad few weeks, first with the tragic and senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska on a train in North Carolina on August 22, and now with the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah on September 10.

  • These two killings have suddenly focused the attention of a lot of previously complacent people, and provided some very useful education about the kind of world we live in. But what are the lessons to take away?

  • One possible lesson is that the world is just irretrievably filled with anger and hate, to the extent that the best that sensible people can do is withdraw into their bunker, keep out of blue states and away from people who follow leftist and woke ideology, stick to a limited circle of family and friends, and avoid dealing with the broader world to the maximum extent possible.

  • I do not subscribe to that approach.

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Watching The End Game Of New York's Climate Madness Begin To Play Out

Watching The End Game Of New York's Climate Madness Begin To Play Out
  • As I have written many times, with New York’s fantasy “net zero” energy plans, it is not a question of whether they will fail, but only when and how.

  • The Democrats, who dominate state politics, and their environmentalist allies, are firmly committed to the impossible. Thus, they are caught in a trap of their own making, and from which there is no good escape. The fact that they are caught in this trap is obvious to anyone with basic arithmetic skills, but almost all of our politicians and environmentalists lack those.

  • However, a small handful of them are starting to sense the impending crash. This makes for amusing interplay.

  • The state’s Climate Act of 2019 directs hostility to fossil fuels on all fronts.

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The Humiliation Of Letitia James -- And Of The New York Legal Establishment

The Humiliation Of Letitia James -- And Of The New York Legal Establishment
  • You have probably seen that last week an appellate court in New York (Appellate Division, First Department) reversed the civil judgment against President Trump where he had been ordered to pay a fine in excess of $450 million to the state of New York.

  • This case originated during Trump’s first term, as part of then newly-elected New York Attorney General Letitia James’s campaign promise to take down the President.

  • Today, six plus years later, everything about the case has become an embarrassment and a humiliation for AG James, as well as for other parts of the New York political and legal establishment.

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Green Energy Wall Coming Into Focus In New York?

  • It was back in 2021 that I started to ask which country or U.S. state would be the first to hit the “Green Energy Wall.”

  • It has long been obvious to anyone who looks at the situation that the fantasy of a fully de-carbonized energy system, with everything run on electricity generated by intermittent wind and sun, could never happen.

  • But what would be the limiting condition that would put a stop to the madness? Would it be confronting the absurd costs of grid-scale battery storage? Or perhaps a string of blackouts caused by insufficient backup of the wind and solar generation?

  • Here in New York, we are starting to see some push back from politicians on the fantasy green energy transition, but the source may be the last thing you would have predicted.

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New York's Official Energy Plan Is No Plan

  • It was in July 2019 that New York State adopted its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Our Legislature and Governor (it was Andrew Cuomo at the time) had officially designated us as the climate “leader,” here to show the unsophisticated rubes and provincials in the rest of the country how a small application of political will could transform our electricity system from majority fossil fuels in 2019 to 70% “renewables” by 2030 and 100% “zero-carbon” by 2040.

  • Now six years into the eleven available to meet the 2030 mandate, we actually get less of our electricity from zero-carbon sources than we did in 2019.

  • The reason is that the large (2 GW) Indian Point nuclear plant was forced to close under pressure from environmentalists, to be replaced by two natural gas plants of approximately the same total capacity.

  • Meanwhile the vision of massive amounts of power from the wind and sun has barely gotten off the ground; and in particular the vision of vast offshore wind capacity has essentially died with the withdrawal of federal support by the Trump administration.

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