Among the many ways New York is still paying for the erratic-but-forceful leadership of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the soaring expense and growing unreliability of the electric grid likely tops the list.
Cuomo forced the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear plant even as he rammed through the insane 2019 “Climate Leadership” law that demands an impossibly radical and expensive shift to wind and solar to produce most of the state’s power.
Fully embraced by Gov. Hochul, the climate law insists the state get 70% of its energy from non-carbon-fuels by 2030 — and 100% by 2040.
Yet the Indian Point shutdown pushed it farther from that goal: Those nuke plants had provided 25% of New York City’s power.
Yes, the plant’s owners “voluntary” agreed to close them, but Cuomo greeted that news by bragging, “I have personally been trying to close it down for 15 years,” as state attorney general and then gov.
And while Cuomo’s team had predicted the shutdown would add less than $50 a year to electric bills, the jump proved closer to $500, notes a new report from The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.
Meanwhile, the state’s need for electricity keeps growing: Modern tech ups power demands all by itself, and moves to implement the climate (pushing us all toward electric heat, electric stoves and electric cars) add greatly to it.
And Hochul keeps bragging about the huge Micron chip factory going up (with billions in taxpayer subsidies) without addressing where its electricity will come from.
Oh, and companies keep canceling contracts to build off-shore wind power plants for New York.
“It is very clear that New York will not meet the goals that are required under the statute when it comes to climate change,” Paul Zuber, senior vice president at the NYS Business Council, warned recently.
Worse, absent changes to the climate laws, Zuber predicts more residents and businesses will leave New York because of skyrocketing energy costs, including the cost to build new transmission lines for renewal projects, not to mention the vast subsidies needed to build those solar and wind plants.
In 2023, New York utilities sought over a billion dollars in rate hikes to fund state-mandated work to deliver more power from renewable energy sources and other “modernization” of transmission lines.
And the unreliability of wind and solar (and even hydropower) means New York cities will soon face “nearly daylong blackouts” each year as weather-related risks to the electric grid grow, warns a new Public Library of Science study.
By the way, the shift to electric heat means those outages will come in deep winter as much or more than in high summer.
New Yorkers already pay nearly the highest electric bills in the country, and it’s only going to grow worse until public outrage over the costs forces the state to back off its climate crusade.
Sadly, even that inevitable about-face won’t let us get Indian Point back.
