In case you missed it, here is New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s breathless announcement from yesterday: “Governor Hochul Directs New York Power Authority to Develop a Zero-Emission Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology Power Plant.”

Does something here seem like it doesn’t quite fit? Yes, it was just four years ago, in April 2021, that New York completed the forced closure of the two perfectly functional Indian Point nuclear plants, with combined generating capacity of about 2 GW, for no other reason than relentless opposition from environmentalists and NIMBYs. And yet now the Governor is saying that the plan is to start over and build a new nuclear plant at some unspecified place.

Before getting to a few of the problems, let’s start with some of the excited language from the Governor’s press release:

In a post in December 2021, I first asked which state or country would be the first to hit the “Renewable Energy Wall” — described as “a situation where the electricity system stops functioning, or the price goes through the roof,” or some other aspects of impossibility become so unavoidable that the zero carbon fantasy must be abandoned.

In subsequent posts I have explored various ways that the Wall was starting to manifest — for example, cancellation of offshore wind energy developments, and abandonment of large investments in producing so-called “green hydrogen.”

Although the coming of the Wall has been obvious to intelligent observers for a long time, the green energy fantasists had set their statutory and regulatory mandates sufficiently far into the future that there was no immediate reckoning.

But now, five and more years on, that is starting to change. The first of the impossible mandates are suddenly looming. The arrival of President Trump on the scene has also been a huge negative for the green energy crowd. But for today I’ll focus on a subject that has much more to do with reality than with any action of the President. That subject is fully electrified heavy duty trucks.

We are fast approaching something I have called the “Green Energy Wall.” The “Wall” consists of some combination of real-world obstacles, partly cost and partly physics, that will inevitably end the quest for emissions-free “net zero” electricity generation well before the goal of zero emissions is reached.

I first identified the approaching Wall in this post in December 2021, and remarked that it was “gradually coming into focus” in this follow-up post in November 2023. Everyone who pays attention and is capable of doing basic arithmetic knows that the we are approaching this Wall, some jurisdictions much faster than others. (New York has voluntarily put itself in the front ranks.).

What we don’t know is how the hitting of the Wall will manifest itself: Widespread and frequent blackouts? Regular, enforced load-shedding brown-outs? Tripling or quadrupling of electricity prices? A political uprising as people realize that they have been duped by scammers claiming that an energy transition would be easy and cheap? Or perhaps it will be all of the above.

Meanwhile, the years pass slowly.