NYISO Weighs In On The New York State Draft Energy Plan

October 14, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

NYISO is the New York Independent System Operator — the not-for-profit entity created to manage New York State’s electrical grid. Their main job is assuring that there is sufficient electricity generated moment to moment to closely match customer demand. Neighboring states have multi-state ISOs (i.e., PJM and ISO-NE) to do the same job, but being New York, we have our own.

If there is any entity that ought to be loudly outspoken about New York’s ridiculous energy schemes, it is NYISO. After all, when generating most of our electricity from wind and sun proves not to work, as it will, and when the blackouts follow, as they will, NYISO stands to get a large share of the blame.

So where are they? The good news is that they are slowly waking up. The bad news is that even now they are not being nearly as outspoken or as loud as they should be. On October 6 they submitted a long (25 page) Comment on the State’s new Energy Plan. That Comment takes the level of their expressed alarm to a new, if still unjustifiably muted, level.

As background, in 2019 New York State enacted its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, mandating, among other things, 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, and 100% from “zero emissions” sources by 2040. At the same time, New York City enacted its Local Law 97, mandating (via complex maximum emissions formulas) that most large buildings convert to electric heat by 2030. Supposedly, the State and City would enable fulfillment of these mandates through having developers construct large amounts of wind and solar generators. That process had barely gotten off the ground when, earlier this year, the federal government ended nearly all of the grants and subsidies that had made construction of wind and solar facilities at all feasible.

On July 25 the State’s Energy Planning Board came out with its self-described “Draft Energy Plan.” It’s a “draft” because they are taking comments, and may even make some revisions depending on those (don’t count on it). In a post on August 11 I described the so-called Plan as “hundreds of pages of fluff,” cheerleading for a supposed transition to a renewables-based electricity system, but lacking anything as basic as a feasibility study or a cost projection. I then submitted my own Comment on the Plan, and had a further post describing that on September 27. Key takeaway:

[T]he so-called “Energy Plan” is not an energy plan at all.  It would more accurately be described as random musings and wishful thinking by some completely incompetent people who have no idea what they are doing.

So with that background, let’s take a look at NYISO’s newly-issued Comment. This sentence from page 1 is fairly representative of the overall tone:

The NYISO submits these comments to highlight electric system reliability concerns and to offer approaches that support ongoing electric system reliability through competitive markets for consideration as part of the final State Energy Plan.

They are submitting comments to “highlight . . . concerns.” Yes, I guess so, but I find that a wholly inadequate statement of the problem. In fact, the energy bureaucracies are driving the State down an impossible path from which it becomes increasingly difficult to exit before disaster strikes.

This from pages 2-3 is a little stronger, but still much less specific than it needs to be:

Large energy-intensive economic development projects, such as semiconductor manufacturing plants and data centers, are driving up demand for electricity significantly after relatively flat demand trends over the last decade. Collectively, all these elements create uncertain conditions today, in the near term, and in the longer term, and each uncertainty has the real potential to cause major impacts on electric system reliability. 

All electric industry stakeholders, including the state agencies involved, must be aware of and factor these concerns into their planning and strategy. Progress towards the CLCPA goals, other public policies, and supplying the electricity that New Yorkers demand requires the State Energy Plan to support a well-functioning, reliable electric power sector. Reliable electric power is the foundation of the State’s plans to electrify other aspects of the economy and to reduce emissions. The NYISO urges the Board and NYSERDA to consider these comments and prioritize electric system reliability in the final State Energy Plan.

They just can’t make themselves say out loud that wind and solar by themselves cannot provide reliable electricity to match demand.

As you move through the Comment, the statements get stronger, little by little. From page 6:

Fossil-fuel-based generation is and will continue to be necessary to meet consumer demand and to maintain electric system reliability. The final State Energy Plan must include a recommendation consistent with the Draft Plan observations that combustion generating units “remain essential parts of electric grid reliability and affordability, and retirement of these units will not be able to occur until resources that provide the same grid reliability attributes are put in place.”

From page 8:

Simply maintaining the existing fossil-fuel-based generation fleet and carefully managing the requirement of these resources over the next fifteen years is not enough to maintain electric system reliability. The electric system needs all existing generation resources and needs new generation resources before the current fleet suffers a catastrophic failure that jeopardizes the health, safety, and welfare of New Yorkers.

“New generation resources” are needed, but the State’s Climate Act requires those to be carbon-emissions-free. We are therefore talking about the magical “dispatchable emissions-free resources” (DEFRs) that will supposedly replace fossil fuel generation to meet the requirements of the CLCPA. Can we somehow get ourselves to say that those don’t exist and are not going to exist in any relevant time frame? We come to a discussion of that subject on page 14:

The NYISO fully supports identifying and developing technologies that have the greatest potential to support electric system reliability and the needs that will arise throughout this energy transition. As noted in the Draft Plan, many of the technologies necessary to meet system needs for firm, dispatchable capacity are not yet commercially available at scale. The development of these technologies must start now as these technologies need to be proven and deployed to the electric grid before the resources that currently supply the energy that consumers demand and the reliability attributes needed to support the grid can be retired.

The DEFRs “are not yet commercially available at scale” and therefore “development . . . must start now.” How lame is that? They just can’t bring themselves to say that “you must admit that this is not going to happen.” With a mandate for tens of thousands of megawatts of these mythical generators by 2030, and it’s almost 2026, we haven’t even started “development.”

At least you don’t need to read between the lines of this Comment to see that the NYISO is issuing a very explicit warning to the State’s energy planners. But still, with the planners offering no idea as to feasibility, cost, or time frame for availability of necessary new resources to support the energy transition, the best the NYISO can say is to “start development now”? What they should be saying is that this can’t work, it won’t work, and continuing further down this path is incompetent, irresponsible, and dangerous.

Unlike the people at the other State energy bureaucracies like NYSERDA and the Energy Planning Board, I’m not saying that the people at NYISO lack competence. However, it is a problem that the entity is organized as a not-for-profit. Nobody there has any skin in the game, and they are unlikely to be held accountable when there are catastrophic system failures. It’s just one more instance of a failed socialist-lite model.

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

September 27, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

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.

I’ll start with the PSC’s Report. The Report came with a three-page press release announcing and summarizing it. Oddly, the press release does not contain any link to access the Report itself. Instead, if you want to review the Report, you are instructed to go to the Commission’s page for accessing its case documents, where you must then input the correct case number (22-M-0149) in a box provided, and then scroll through the docket entries until you find the Report. Why would they make finding this so difficult? I’ll bet you can guess.

A summary of both the press release and the Report itself is this: a lot of empty talk about all the wonderful plans, without any quantitative information on whether any progress is being made toward the 70 x 30 mandate, or toward any of the various other mandates (including 100% of electricity from zero-emissions sources by 2040, or “100 x 40.”). From the press release:

The New York State Public Service Commission (Commission) today received an update from Department of Public Service (DPS) staff regarding progress toward the clean energy goals of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act or Climate Act. The report details actions taken in pursuit of these ambitious clean energy goals while working to keep ratepayer costs manageable with benefits that are widely shared. . . . The Climate Act’s directives require the Commission to build on its existing efforts to deploy clean energy resources and energy storage technologies, implement energy efficiency and building electrification measures, and support electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This year’s update included: Progress on achieving the targets mandated within the renewable energy program.

OK, so the press release specifically says that the update includes “progress on achieving the targets mandated,” but what exactly does that progress consist of? There’s nothing about that in the press release, so we must go over to the Report itself. The Report is some 63 pages, including appendices. Most of it is about qualitative descriptions of the various schemes (e.g., “renewable energy and energy storage,” “transmission and distribution investment and development,” etc., etc.). Finally at page 37 we get to a section headed “Progress Toward CLCPA Green Energy Targets.” Surely, this is where we will get the quantitative information we are seeking on the progress toward New York’s plans? Here is the entire text of that section:

The subject of this subsection has been covered in depth in the Draft CES Biennial Review. 109

Wait a minute! I thought the press release had specifically said that the PSC Report itself contained an update on this progress. But in fact the update is completely missing. Following that footnote 109, we find out that this CES Biennial Review came out on July 1, 2024 — over a year ago — and must in turn be hunted down on another PSC docket, this one numbered 15-E-0302. This time the Report is some 98 pages long. If we make it to page 53, we find a section titled “The Path to the 70% Goal.”

This section of some 7 pages entirely discusses how many GWh of demand are in the state’s load forecast for 2030, and how many GWh of generation from renewables it will take to produce 70% of that. Excerpts:

Under the base case load forecast assumption of 164,910 GWh by 2030 as described above, the 70% goal equates to 115,437 GWh.

On page 56 in a Table 8, we find the amount of renewables “operational as of 2022” — 29,289 GWh. That’s barely one-quarter of the 115,437 needed by 2030, and by the way more than half of the 29,289 GWh comes from one source, Niagara Falls, that cannot be replicated. The same table on page 8 indicates that an additional approximately 36,000 GWh of renewable generation, consisting of onshore and offshore wind and solar, has been “contracted” by 2024. After substracting a few small miscellaneous items, they come up with a “gap to 70% (2030)” of 42,145 GWh. Then, after further assuming large additions to offshore wind and rooftop solar will provide about half of that, they get to this bottom line:

To achieve this pathway, just over 3,900 GWh of onshore large-scale renewables resources would need to be procured per year, or approximately 5,600 GWh per year with attrition.

Well, in the time since this CES document was issued in mid-2024, all of the off-shore wind has been shot down by the federal government, and all of the federal subsidies for additional wind and solar developments have disappeared. None of the 5,600 GWh per year of additional renewables procurements is in the works. All of this was known and obvious by the time the most recent PSC Report came out on September 23, and yet they don’t mention any of it. I guess they figure that nobody will take the time and effort to track through their references to figure out the problem.

And one more thing: There is not one word in these reports mentioning that wind and solar do not produce electricity at the same time that consumers use it, meaning that there must be storage or batteries or backup of some kind. The entire approach is to assume that if the amount of electricity generated is equal to the amount consumed, the two can be easily matched up somehow, without any issues or costs worth discussing.

In summary, New York’s PSC is entirely engaged in throwing up a smokescreen to obscure the fact that the state’s energy transformation is dead in the water.

Now let’s turn to my Comment on the Draft “Energy Plan.” Although I submitted it a couple of days ago, I can’t yet find it on the website, so I don’t have a link to provide. As an alternative, I’ll provide some extensive excerpts. The bulk of my Comment focused on a chart, Figure 19, appearing on page 22 of a portion of the Plan called the “Pathway Analysis,” purporting to show how the Climate Act mandates, like 70 x 30 and 100 x 40, would be achieved. Here is that Figure 19: 

 

Here are some portions of my reactions to this chart:

• Installed capacity of natural gas power plants declines from about 25 GW today to about 15 GW in 2035 – and then completely disappears by 2040.  What will keep the lights on 24/7/365 when the natural gas generation is gone?  There is no answer here.
• In the same Figure, a new generation category called “Zero-Carbon Firm” suddenly appears in 2040, with 17.2 GW of capacity – about three-quarters as much as our entire current fleet of natural gas power plants.  They have no idea what this “Zero-Carbon Firm” category might be.  Text seems to indicate that they might be thinking about new nuclear or maybe so-called “renewable” gas from landfills.  In fact nuclear is completely blocked in this state, although Governor Hochul has supposedly started a process to build one 1 GW nuclear plant starting now.  That plant has not even yet gotten to the stage of site selection, and will not possibly be ready by 2040 even if construction started today.  And it is also only 1 GW, when the “Energy Plan” is saying that 17.2 GW of “Zero-Carbon Firm” is needed by 2040.  And landfills can produce only a tiny fraction of the gas they are talking about here, while meanwhile the Pathway Analysis admits elsewhere (see page 14) that this supposedly “renewable” gas does not count as zero-emissions under the Climate Act.
• Professor Lindsay Anderson of Cornell did an analysis of the New York electricity system, which found that if natural gas generation was eliminated and demand increased as projected, the actual amount of firm emissions-free resources needed to meet the state Climate Act mandates would be about 37 GW of capacity.  NYISO analysis of the same issue comes up with a requirement 35 GW of firm emissions-free generation.  Where did the Energy Plan come up with the ridiculously low figure of 17.2 GW?  I guess it doesn’t really matter, because the “firm emissions-free resource” is just magical thinking anyway, and does not exist in the real world.
• The same Figure shows a massive increase in capacity of solar generation, from about 7 GW today to supposedly 35.4 GW by 2040.  That capacity, if built (it won’t be), will be lucky to generate electricity at 15-20% of rated capacity over the course of a year in cloudy and snowy upstate New York, and will be next to useless to provide electric heat in the winter, when we have 15 hours of darkness per day.

My Comment goes on and on from there. Some concluding lines:

[T]he so-called “Energy Plan” is not an energy plan at all.  It would more accurately be described as random musings and wishful thinking by some completely incompetent people who have no idea what they are doing.  The so-called “Plan” envisions a future of a fully transformed energy system within the next 15-25 years.  Yet it contains no meaningful feasibility analysis, nor any meaningful cost analysis. . . . It’s time to start over, with some people in charge who know what they are doing.

So I think the vision of New York’s politicians and bureaucrats is to put their heads in the sand until this all falls apart, and then try to blame somebody else. We are living at peak absurdity.

Green Energy Wall Coming Into Focus In New York?

August 17, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

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. The immediate issue is the cost of upgrading local delivery infrastructure to transmit sufficient electricity for the imagined future of electrified buildings and vehicles.

Supposedly, under a statute known as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, we are faced with a 2030 deadline to get some 70% of our electricity from “renewables.” Currently the percent of our electricity that we get from these “renewables” is around 44%, and almost half of that comes from the gigantic waterfall known as Niagara Falls. Without another Niagara Falls on the horizon, theoretically we should be building vast fields of wind turbines and solar panels to meet the statutory mandates; but that effort has stalled out, and the costs of wind and solar generation, and of backup to make the grid run all the time, have barely started to show up in consumer bills. Nor have various big new long-distance transmission projects yet come into consumer bills.

But meanwhile, the big utilities have come forward with large demands for rate increases. So why the need for big rate increases if not from new generators or long-distance transmission? The answer is that the rate increases mainly relate to the portion of the consumer bills referred to as the “delivery” charge, as opposed to the charge for generation. The utilities seek funds to add delivery infrastructure like substations, transformers, and cables to deliver vastly increased amounts of electricity for things like vehicle charging stations (for both cars and trucks) and for the electrification of building heat.

In upstate New York, a utility called National Grid has been petitioning the regulator for a large electricity rate increase, mostly to support these kinds of upgrades to the delivery infrastructure. The service territory of National Grid in upstate New York covers the region between about Syracuse and Albany, and from there North to the Canadian border. After prolonged negotiations, the regulator (Public Service Commission) and National Grid entered into a “settlement” a few days ago on August 14. Here is the PSC release describing the settlement. Basically, the PSC congratulates itself on beating back a much larger rate increase originally sought by National Grid. (The headline is “PSC Dramatically Reduces National Grid’s Rate Request.”). But if you read on you find that they still agreed to a very large increase. The release makes clear that most of the increase relates to the delivery infrastructure:

National Grid had sought a base delivery increase of $509.6 million (25.5 percent delivery or 10.4 percent total revenue) and $156.5 million (29.7 percent delivery or 15.7 percent total revenue) for electric and gas, respectively for one year. Instead, the Commission adopted a joint proposal establishing levelized increases, on a percentage basis, to the company's electric revenues of $167.3 million in the first year, $297.4 million in the second year, and $243.4 million in the third year.

Basically, they spread NG’s requested increase out over three years; but it still comes to almost a 30% jump on the delivery side by the time it all kicks in.

Governor Hochul then issued a release expressing extreme displeasure:

While I appreciate that the New York Public Service Commission worked to significantly lower the outrageously high initial rate proposals, it’s still not enough. I have been crystal clear that utilities must make ratepayer affordability the priority.

Well, Governor Hochul, good luck trying to blame the utility, but you are the one with all the electric vehicle mandates and incentives and subsidies, thus calling on the utility to provide all this new infrastructure. In all likelihood few will ever buy the electric vehicles, and nobody will ever generate the extra electricity from wind and sun, and thus this infrastructure will mostly be wasted. But can the utility just refuse to make itself ready to meet your ridiculous mandate?

And meanwhile down here in New York City, our utility Con Edison is requesting almost as large a rate increase, again focused on the delivery portion of the bill, and on local infrastructure upgrades necessary to support increased electricity demand. In the City, the increased demand is anticipated to come both from electric vehicles (per the state mandates) and from building electrification (based on a City building electrification mandate known as Local Law 97). It is likely that the result of the Con Edison rate proceeding will be a settlement agreement comparable to what occurred in the National Grid case a few days ago.

I am an intervenor in this Con Edison rate case, and in recent days I have actually been personally participating — in a minor way — in the settlement negotiations. My co-intervenors and I are objecting to any rate increases based on adding infrastructure to support building and vehicle electrification unless and until the additional electricity generation capacity has been built to support these mandates. (There is no chance that this additional capacity, supposedly wind and solar generators, will actually be built.)

The New York Post has a lead editorial today summarizing how the green energy madness is coming around to bite New Yorkers in their pocketbooks. Excerpt:

New York’s state Public Service Commission just OK’d big National Grid rate increases that’ll hike many upstate utility bills by $600 a year — fueling outrage Democrats will soon feel. Downstate, Con Edison is seeking an 11.4% hike to electric bills and 13.3% gas hike — largely thanks to green-energy mandates that Gov. Kathy Hochul embraced along with the rest of the party. The “climate agenda” is delivering pain we’ve long warned of, in New York and New Jersey.

If we ever get to the point of building dozens of gigawatts of wind and solar generation capacity, and enough backup and storage to make them work to support a grid, that would cause electricity rates to multiply by a factor of five or ten or more. We are a long way from that. But here we are just trying to add enough substations and transformers to support 30-50% vehicle electrification, and a comparable amount of building electrification, and it is causing politicians to start to scream. How much more before of this will it take before we quit?

New York's Official Energy Plan Is No Plan

 August 11, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

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.

So what is the plan from here forward? The short answer is that there is no plan, or at least nothing remotely close to a credible plan.

But while we lack any semblance of a credible plan, we do not lack big reports purporting to be a plan. The last couple of months have seen the issuance of two such documents. On July 25, something called the New York State Energy Planning Board issued a document titled the Draft 2025 Energy Plan for the State. Separately, back on June 2, an agency called the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) issued its own document called 2025 Power Trends. So how can I say that there is no plan?

Well, start with that document from the Energy Planning Board. The EPB is some kind of consortium of the infinitely confusing morass of bureaucracies with their fingers in the New York energy planning pie. Here is a list of members, with some 14 hangers-on ranging from the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, to the Chancellor of the State University, to the Commissioner of the Department of Health, to the Chair of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. You would think that by this time, with only five years to go to the 2030 deadline, this highfalutin group of muckety-mucks would have, at the minimum: a detailed list of exactly what was going to be built where to meet the mandate, accompanied by an engineering-level feasibility study and detailed cost projections. Well no, no and no.

Instead we get hundreds upon hundreds of pages of fluff. The Summary for Policy Makers alone is 75 pages long. The whole thing is way too voluminous for me to give you anything more than a tiny sampling here. But an excerpt from the introductory paragraphs will give you some of the flavor:

Energy is central to New Yorkers’ lives. It powers the economy, keeps homes and workplaces comfortable, moves people and goods, and runs critical infrastructure. New York is one of the most energy-efficient states in the nation based on energy use per person and state economic output. 

1. Additionally, our power grid is becoming cleaner. Roughly half of New York’s in-state electricity generation comes from zero-emission sources,

2 and renewable generation projects that are in the pipeline today would double the state’s renewable generation by 2030.

3 Yet, like the rest of the country, New Yorkers face volatile energy prices, intensifying extreme weather, and environmental and health impacts associated with reliance on fossil fuels and aging fossil fuel infrastructure. These shared concerns do not affect all communities equally. 

Low-income households and otherwise disadvantaged communities are disproportionately impacted by energy cost burdens and by community and environmental health concerns like water and air pollution.4 Disadvantaged communities also face significant barriers to accessing clean energy choices.5

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then this from a little further down in the introduction:

The Energy Planning Board acknowledges that at the time of developing the Draft Plan, the energy sector faces significant uncertainty, stemming from economic pressures and, more recently, a shift in political priorities and policies at the federal level. These uncertainties impact long-term planning, investment decisions, and possibly the pace of transition to clean energy.

Translation: all of their fantasies about massive amounts of solar and wind power driven by federal subsidies have been wiped out, and they have no idea of what is next. So they’re going to bury you in hundreds of pages of bafflegab about things like “delivering abundant, reliable and resilient clean energy,” or “continuing progress toward de-carbonization and a clean energy economy,” or “delivering abundant energy services for economic competitiveness.” (These are examples of headings from the table of contents.)

Note that this is just the “draft” plan. A multi-month process of public comments and revisions is contemplated. The chance that that process will contribute an actual feasibility study or detailed cost projection is exactly zero.

And then there is the NYISO Power Trends report. This one is a comparatively terse 50 pages. Most is written in the same type of bureaucratese designed to conceal the lack of substance and to keep you from reading further. Example from the President’s introductory letter:

The electric system is the backbone of our economy. It is essential to the health and safety of all New Yorkers. Since the NYISO’s inception in 1999, protecting electric system reliability and evolving competitive markets has been our top priority in the face of great change, whether it be societal, public policy, or extreme weather.

But then NYISO is the one agency here that actually has the responsibility to keep the system up and running. Deeply buried on page 14 as the last paragraph of a section headed “A diverse resource mix supports grid reliability,” we find these two sentences:

Simply put, as New York seeks to retire more fossil fuel units in the coming years it will be essential to deploy new energy resources with the same reliability attributes to maintain grid reliability. Until new, non-emitting alternatives like hydrogen or advanced nuclear generation are developed and commercialized, fossil resources are needed to fill an essential role in preserving reliable grid operations.

Well as of today grid-scale hydrogen and advanced nuclear generation have not been “commercialized.” So the only answer is to keep the fossil fuel generation going. Perhaps they should tell some of their co-bureaucrats, like NYSERDA, or the Energy Planning Board, or maybe even the Legislature or the New York City Council. But as of now NYISO’s strategy seems to be to put a warning somewhere deep in their reports just so they can say “I told you so” when the whole thing falls apart. They owe the New York citizenry much better.

New York Jews Support Trump More Than Any Other Group

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

In New York State, Jews have the highest favorable opinion of President Trump. Jews support Trump more than any other religious group, more than Catholics and Protestants, upstate voters, and more than white voters in general.

Jews are the only identity group in the state with whom Trump isn’t underwater even at the same time as Sen. Schumer polls worse among Jews than among Catholics or Protestants.

(So when Trump taunts Schumer as a ‘Palestinian’, he knows what he’s doing.)

At 61%, Jews provide the highest rate of approval for Trump’s deportation of migrants compared to 42% among Protestants, 49% among Catholics and 48% among white voters.

Jews in New York have a total 57% approval rating for Trump in contrast to 38% among Protestants, 49% among Catholics and 47% among white voters, and the highest levels of support for Trump’s immigration, inflation, trade and conviction that Trump will make America great (51% Jews, 42% Catholics and 28% Protestants.)

Unsurprisingly, 64% of New York Jews support President Trump’s approach to Iran.

The Siena College poll numbers reflect an ongoing trend of Jewish support for Trump that defies the fake polls advanced by Democrat front groups (previously exposed by Freedom Center Investigates) which generate the 70% plus numbers often quoted by the media and the gullible to falsely claim nearly universal Jewish support for Obama, Biden and Kamala.

While some people would claim that these numbers are inadequate (and would complain that any numbers short of 101% are not good enough), they are all the more remarkable for coming out of one of the more liberal states in the country and even more so when you consider that much of New York’s Jewish population lives in New York City which leans so far leftward that it’s on the verge of electing a Muslim Communist and regularly generates anti-Trump protest mobs.

New York Jews are defying the trend in a state poll that shows 60% of the state has an unfavorable view of Trump and a poll rigged with slanted negative questions asking about the detention of elected officials over ICE protests, keeping the SALT cap in place, “cutting taxes for corporations” and cutting food stamps for “poor people” in a calculated effort to elicit negative responses. Despite that, Jews were the only group to continue standing by President Trump.

“Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans” was an old political jab. But if the rest of New York voted the way its Jewish population does, Trump would have won the state.

And it doesn’t end with Trump.

Support for President Trump doesn’t necessarily translate into support for Republicans at the local level, but that’s something that New York’s moribund GOP can choose to tackle.

While the next gubernatorial election is still in the wind and most of the candidates are unknown, a majority of New York’s Jewish voters would back Republican Mike Lawler over Gov. Kathy Hochul, the current unpopular Democrat in office, and back some conservative policies.

(The Siena polls also show that social media isn’t real life and that much of the Jewish population remains unaware of the pro-Israel positions of Rep. Elise Stefanik or Rep. Ritchie Torres and don’t even know who they are. The Twitter effect is extremely overrated.)

Contrary to popular belief, the Jewish vote is winnable. President Trump is proving it. Trump’s secret was competing for voters, black, Jewish or Latino, whom most GOPers had written off, and especially targeting working class and minority male voters.

While the perception of New York Jews is somewhere between Jerry Seinfeld and a Park Avenue cardiologist, much of the population is actually religious, traditional and working class, is far more likely to live in Brooklyn than Manhattan and among Orthodox Jews is concerned about many of the same issues as conservative Christians are, not only Israel, but religious values, immigration control and national greatness.

New York’s demographics make it unlikely that a Republican presidential candidate will win New York outright, but courting the Jewish population and other ‘winnable’ groups can boost the size of the state’s Republican congressional delegation and make a difference at the state level.

Even while people mindlessly repeat the same lies about 70% of Jews supporting Democrats, New York Republicans got their best numbers in a gubernatorial race since the ’90s with a Jewish candidate. And President Trump is getting his best numbers in the state from its Jewish population even while Sen. Schumer is underwater among his own community.

New York Jews are no longer earning like Episcopalians and voting like Puerto Ricans. They’re moving to the right while the Episcopalians are moving leftward. Schumer can grit his teeth, Randi Weingarten can curse Jews as part of the “ownership class” and Democrat groups can spread their fake polls under front groups, but they are losing New York’s Jewish population.

It’s gotten so bad that the only one they could find to head Jews for Zohran was the niece of a Sri Lankan Marxist operating out of China. It would have been impossible to imagine a generation ago, but today, New York’s Jews stand with Trump.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

 

Burning trash for energy, people and planet

By Paul Driessen, Tags, Spain’s Impossible Dream of ‘Green’ Electricity, Reexamining the Obama Era Endangerment Finding, My Paul Driessen File

Prologue: New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. But what starts in NYC doesn’t stay in NYC. The trash now gets exported to landfills and incinerators in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina!

A far more responsible, ecological and energy-wise solution would be to copy Fairfax County, Virginia’s waste-to-energy electricity generation and resource recovery facility. Doing so would turn that trash into reliable, affordable electricity, while recovering iron, copper, aluminum and other metals … and utilizing most of the remaining ash for building roads and manufacturing construction materials.

I hope you enjoy reading my article and thank you for posting it, quoting from it, sharing it with friends and colleagues – and helping to improve America’s trash handling and electricity generation policies. Waste-to-Energy reduces land filling, increases recycling, powers society and avoids blackouts

After years of opposing them, but facing constituents increasingly angry about rising electricity prices, New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave grudging support for two new Williams Companies natural gas pipelines.

Assuming they clear new hurdles, the Constitution Pipeline will transport gas 100+ miles from northeastern Pennsylvania fracking fields toward Albany. The 23-mile Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline will connect New York to the New Jersey segment of the Transco Pipeline, America’s largest-volume natural gas pipeline system, and carry enough gas to heat 2.3 million homes.

Hochul, other state Democrats and environmental activists have long stymied the projects, using exaggerated and fabricated water quality and climate change arguments – and fanciful expectations that heavily subsidized solar panels and onshore and offshore wind turbines can provide enough affordable electricity, enough of the time, to meet steadily increasing New York City and State power demands.

In exchange, the Trump Administration will let them continue installing gigantic offshore wind turbines that will generate 9,000 MW of electricity (less than one-third of what the state needs on hot summer days) perhaps 30-40% of the year … and be supported by fire-prone grid-scale batteries that would provide statewide backup power for about 45 minutes.

New gas turbines would help avoid blackouts, ensure that poor families freeze less often in winter and swelter less in summer, and help the state meet power needs that are soaring because of data centers, artificial intelligence, and legislatively mandated conversions from gasoline and gas to electric vehicles, stoves, and home and water heating.

They could also help reduce the need to import electricity from Canada and other states: some 36,000 gigawatt-hours (11% of statewide electricity) annually.

But legislators want to put another hurdle in the way. New legislation would force homes and businesses to pay $10,000 or more to connect to natural gas lines. If Gov. Hochul signs the bill, or the legislature overrides a veto, few or no new customers would take advantage of the new gas.

It’s a kill switch, reflecting the state’s determination to impose “climate leadership” and “protect communities” from alleged dangers from fossil fuels.

It’s also hypocritical and irresponsible. New York doesn’t just import electricity; it also exports garbage.

New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. Its last municipal incinerator closed in 1990; its last municipal landfill in 2001. City trash is now mostly sent on barges, trucks and trains to landfills (80%) and incinerators (20%) in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina! NY State exports 30% of its garbage.

The city and state could address both garbage and electricity challenges by using natural gas to power waste-to-energy (WTE) generating plants that burn trash, thereby reducing the need to landfill or export garbage, while increasing recycling, producing reliable, affordable, much-needed electricity, and reducing blackout risks that are climbing every year.

In Fairfax County, Virginia, a WTE or resource recovery facility operated by Reworld Waste burns home, business, industrial and other garbage that doesn’t go straight into recycling programs and would typically be landfilled, including myriad extraneous plastics. The trash is dumped in a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials like rocks, mixed thoroughly, and burned with natural gas in a chamber at 2000 degrees F for up to two hours, until it’s totally combusted to ash. 

The heat converts water to steam, which is super-heated in tubes to drive turbines that generate electricity: 80 megawatts 24/7, enough for about 52,000 homes. Depending on its composition, a ton of waste generates 550-700 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Since opening in 1990, the plant’s trash has replaced the equivalent of burning 2,000,000 barrels of oil for electricity every year.

Glass from lightbulbs and other nonrecyclable sources becomes part of the ash stream, from which ferrous and nonferrous metals are recovered. Most of the remaining ash is used as a substitute for sand and aggregates in road and building construction, cement and cinder block production, and manufacturing other building materials.

Unsold ash is landfilled but, by the time the metals are removed, only about 10% of the original trash bulk and 25% of its original weight is left.

Even staples, paper clips, bottle caps, metal light bulb bases, aluminum foil, and wires from spiral notebooks and furnace filters can be “recycled” this way. In fact, enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper and other metals are recovered from the resultant ash at the Fairfax facility to build 20,000 automobiles annually.

However, plastic-metal-glass waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, microwaves), broken pots and pans, household appliances and other larger refuse should go to special “white goods” and metal recycling centers.

Lime neutralizes acids in the airstream, activated carbon controls heavy metals, and fabric filter bags remove particulates, keeping air emissions below EPA standards. The scrubber waste (fly ash) is then dewatered and chemically stabilized, before being landfilled or used in construction materials. 

Process steam condenses back into water and is reused. Water from the wastes and scrubbers is recovered, treated and used to cool the facility and equipment.

Two other trash-to-energy facilities serve the Washington, DC area; 75 across the USA generate over 2,500 MW of electricity. However, more WTE plants could help solve garbage, energy, landfill and pollution problems in metropolitan areas across the country (and worldwide), including:

* Philadelphia, PA – 1,300,000 tons per year of municipal solid waste (MSW), but only one WTE; 

* Chicago, IL – 3,100,000 tpy, but just one WTE plant (other proposed facilities were rejected);

* Houston, TX – 4,200,000 tpy, with one WTE facility;

* Phoenix, AZ – 1,000,000 tpy, and one WTE facility;

* Los Angeles, CA – 4,000,000 tpy, but again only one WTE facility.  

New York and other jurisdictions that have rejected natural gas and waste-to-energy/resource-recovery facilities are missing enormous opportunities to address challenges that will only become worse. They’re also dumping their own local responsibilities into their neighbors’ backyards.

These facilities ensure secure, affordable electricity generation close by, without the need for expensive backup power and multi-hundred-mile transmission lines to part-time wind and solar power.

They utilize fuels that America still has in abundance: gas and trash. And they reduce the need for resources that are in increasingly short supply: landfill space, cropland and wildlife habitats impacted, and bird, bat and other wildlife lost due to wind, solar and transmission installations.

From my perch, these clear and significant benefits clearly offset the cost and subsidy concerns that some have raised about WTE facilities.

Metro areas and states should apply pragmatism, reality and these benefits when reconsidering climate and “renewable” energy ideologies that have dominated public policies for far too long.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental protection and human rights. 

Epilogue:  My Take - Here's a bit more on this issue of energy production.  Four fifths of New York's energy is imported, and from traditional energy production sources from outside the state, if they're true believers in the "Net Zero" insanity, that should end.  But it won't!

 It's amazing how the price of energy is a reality that overwhelms ideology.  After  giving in to green activists they closed nuclear plants, and now Governor Hochul has ordered the New York Power Authority to develop and construct a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant in upstate New York ..... and it will only take 15 years.  If you're in your seventies it's unlikely you will see the benefits of that endeavor.  

The price of alternative energy is going to grow, right along with the maintenance costs, compounded by alternative energy's lack of reliability, it's just a matter of time before all this "net zero" virtue signally ends and they start using natural gas in traditional power plants, and who knows, maybe even coal in the near future.   RK

 

Good Laugh For Today: New York State Says It Will Build A New Nuclear Power Plant

June 24, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

 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.” And here is Hochul’s picture of herself making the announcement:

       

oes 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:

Governor Kathy Hochul today directed the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to develop and construct a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant in Upstate New York to support a reliable and affordable electric grid, while providing the necessary zero-emission electricity to achieve a clean energy economy. . . . “As New York State electrifies its economy, deactivates aging fossil fuel power generation and continues to attract large manufacturers that create good-paying jobs, we must embrace an energy policy of abundance that centers on energy independence and supply chain security to ensure New York controls its energy future,” Governor Hochul said. . . .

NYPA, in coordination with the Department of Public Service (DPS), will seek to develop at least one new nuclear energy facility with a combined capacity of no less than one gigawatt of electricity, either alone or in partnership with private entities, to support the state's electric grid and the people and businesses that rely on it. NYPA will immediately begin evaluation of technologies, business models, and locations for this first nuclear power plant and will secure the key partnerships needed for the project. This process will include site and technology feasibility assessments as well as consideration of financing options, in coordination with the forthcoming studies included in the master plan. . . .

Now who wouldn’t want “a reliable and affordable electric grid” that provides “the necessary zero-emission electricity to achieve a clean energy economy”? Not meaning to be the grinch here, but let me lay out a few of the problems that I have with the approach to energy policy for New York as described by our Governor:

• Are we really talking about just one new nuclear plant with just one GW of generation capacity? That is barely a drop in the bucket compared to the immediate need, and doesn’t even meaningfully address the problem of keeping the grid operating as we pursue a statutorily-mandated transition to mostly wind and solar generation. The State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA) demands closure of at least 20 GW of dispatchable power plants running on natural gas; and the State’s Independent System Operator, NYISO, has stated that the State needs at least 20 GW of what they call “dispatchable emissions-free resources” (DEFR) to replace the natural gas generation. Nuclear is the only plausible DEFR. So why we are going to build only one GW of new nuclear capacity? Wouldn’t you think the Governor would at least mention the rather large disparity between the identified need and her plan?

• The Governor’s announcement doesn’t say anything about the timeline, beyond making it clear that this project hasn’t even gotten to the most preliminary of preliminary steps. (“NYPA will immediately begin evaluation of technologies, business models, and locations for this first nuclear power plant. . . .”). We don’t even know the “technology” or the “business model” yet, let alone the location. The most recent nuclear plant to begin operation in the United States — Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia — took 15 years from start of construction in 2009 until commencement of operation in 2024. Fifteen years from now is 2040, by which year the CLCPA mandates that New York produce all its electricity from “zero-emissions” sources. But before Governor Hochul’s unicorn power plant can begin construction, we must have not just selection of technology, business model, and location, but also such things as preparation and completion of an EIS, permitting, design, awarding of a contract, financing, and, don’t let me forget, defeat of a few dozen litigations attempting to block the project. We will be very, very lucky if this plant is ready to operate by 2045. 2050 would be more likely — if it ever operates at all.

• Shouldn’t there be at least some mention by the Gov that the CLCPA plan for a “zero emissions” electricity grid by 2040 has become completely unachievable — indeed, ridiculous? 20+ GW of reliable natural gas generation will go away by the mid-2030s, to be replaced by — what? One 1 GW nuclear plant, to maybe become available some time post-2045? That’s a complete joke. How about Hochul’s other plan for 6 GW/24 GWh of “grid-scale” battery storage? Per calculations at this post from March 2024, New York would need at least 720 hours of average usage, which is 12,240 GWh of energy storage, to reliably back up a grid predominantly powered by wind and sun; the 24 GWh in our Gov’s plan would be about 0.2% of that requirement. Another complete joke. Is there a third proposal? Not that I can find.

So what is Governor Hochul even thinking when she puts out a proposal for a single new nuclear power plant, describing it as supporting a future “reliable and affordable electric grid,” when she knows that her proposal represents at best 5% of what is needed and at least 5 to 10 years too late? What this proposal clearly is not is a serious plan to move toward a “zero-emissions” grid by the statutory mandate of 2040. Being charitable toward our Governor, perhaps the idea here is to lay down a marker, so that when her 1 GW nuclear plant proposal gets killed by some combination of environmental activism and bureaucratic stumbling, she will be able to say that she tried to put forth a solution but got blocked. The alternative hypothesis — that Governor Hochul actually thinks her 1 GW nuclear plant proposal is a relevant solution to the problem at hand — would imply that the Gov operates at essentially a kindergarten level of incompetence.

I’ll let you pick which of these two alternatives is more likely. Meanwhile, let this be your good laugh for today.

New York/Florida Comparison: The Contrast Becomes Ever More Dramatic

June 21, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Among the larger states, the two that are closest to each other in population and demographics are New York and Florida. According to the latest U.S. Census data (from July 1, 2024), the population of New York was 19,867,248, while the population of Florida was 23,372,215. More recent estimates from a source called World Population Review put New York’s 2025 population at 19,997,100 (an increase of about 130,000 on the year), and Florida’s at 23,839,600 (an increase of about 467,000 over the same year).

Yet in terms of the approach to state government — taxing, spending, and government programs overall — there could not be a greater contrast than between these two states. And that contrast only grows stronger every year.

In recent weeks the two states have finalized their budgets for the 2025-26 fiscal years. Here is New York’s Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget Briefing Book. The budget was enacted in May. The total of the budget can be found in a table on page 21: $252 billion, an increase from $243.4 billion last year. Florida’s legislature just finished work on that state’s budget this week, on June 17. The total as enacted, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, is $115.1 billion. That’s actually a decrease of about $3 billion from the current year. And it’s still subject to line item vetoes from the governor, which could reduce it still further.

So how could Florida, a state with almost 20% more people than New York, have a state budget that’s less than half the size? Doing a little arithmetic, the Florida state government spends $4,828 per person, while New York’s spends $12,602 per person, more than two and a half times as much.

With the gap that large, you might think that New York must have some huge special categories of services that it provides and Florida does not. But that is not correct. Instead, New York spends vastly more to provide essentially the same services provided by Florida.

The two big categories in both states’ budgets are education and health care.

For PK-12 education, Florida’s state budget allocates approximately $31 billion. In New York, the figure is $37.4 billion (page 55 of briefing book). The difference becomes more striking when you take account of the fact that Florida has almost 2.9 million students enrolled in public preK-12 schools to New York’s approximately 2.4 million. New York pays approximately 50% more per student. Does it get anything for the much greater spending? According to the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) data pages, in the most recent tests in 2024, Florida scored somewhat higher than New York in both 4th grade reading and math, while New York scored somewhat higher in 8th grade reading and math. The differences do not look significant to me. For example, in 4th grade math, Florida gets a 243 to New York’s 234. In 8th grade reading, New York gets 257 to Florida’s 253.

But healthcare, and particularly Medicaid, is where the really big numbers pop out. From New York’s briefing book, page 68:

Total Medicaid and Essential Plan spending is expected to be $123.8 billion in FY 2026.

That’s more than Florida’s entire state budget for everything! The best number I can find for a comparable Florida spending figure for Medicaid (from the Florida Policy Institute) is $34.7 billion — less than a third of New York’s spending for a 20% larger population. The difference is in part due to New York’s higher enrollment (7 million versus 5.4 million), reflecting a complete lack of discipline in allowing people to sign up; and in part due to New York adopting every possible bell and whistle of Medicaid benefits, most famously paying hundreds of thousands of family members as caregivers for their parents and spouses.

Is New York’s population notably healthier than Florida’s? Not that I can determine. Life expectancy figures seem to have swung back and forth over the past few years, as Covid deaths went up first in New York and then later in Florida. I don’t think that Medicaid spending had anything to do with that. For our almost $90 billion additional Medicaid spending over Florida, you would think there would be something very dramatic to show for it; but there is not.

Everywhere you look, New York just has a cavalier attitude of lack of fiscal discipline and that spending more money is a good thing. As another point of comparison, this report from the Empire Center found that New York State executive agencies had some 188,455 “full-time equivalent” employees in 2022. In Florida, this Politifact piece from January 2024 gives a figure of 164,829 — again for a substantially larger population. The point of the Politifact piece is to “fact check” a claim by Florida Governor DeSantis that Florida has the lowest ratio of state employees to population of all the states. Politifact ends up rating that “mostly true.”

Looking around at coverage of New York’s government spending in the local media, there is almost never any mention of the dramatic contrast to Florida. Florida is living proof that just being careful about spending and watching where every dollar goes can make a huge difference. It’s not so different from managing a family budget.

New York vs. Florida: Round #7

June 12, 2025 by Dan Mitchell  @ International Liberty

One of the most unfortunate features of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is that it expands the deduction for state and local taxes, thus weakening one of the best provisions of the 2017 tax package.

This is bad news since it is foolish to have a loophole that makes it easier for states to impose higher taxes to fund more wasteful government.

For evidence, let’s consider a comparison of Florida and New York. And we’ll start with this chart, which shows that New York spends far more, on a per-capita basis, than Florida.

The chart comes from a new report by David Ditch of the Economic Policy Innovation Center.

He explains why it is very foolish for taxpayers elsewhere in the country to subsidize New York profligacy.

 

The House-passed OBBB increases the SALT deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 per taxpayer at a cost of $377 billion over 10 years, leaving less room for pro-growth tax reforms. … 

A review of the governance of New York State shows the punishingly high state and local taxes paid by Empire State residents benefit wasteful and corrupt bureaucracies. Increasing the SALT deduction would further subsidize New York’s dysfunction. Spreading the costs across the country would encourage more graft… Contrasting New York’s budget with that of Florida is instructive. … 

In 2000, New York State spending per capita was already 30% higher than Florida. By 2024, New York spent 133% more per capita than Florida. …It is understandable that representatives of high-tax districts in New York want to assist their constituents. However, threatening to force massive tax hikes on all Americans for the sake of a bloated SALT deduction is the wrong solution.

The report also explains that New York is abusing the Medicaid program, which is yet another reason why that program desperately needs reform.

But here’s the part of David’s report that is even more astounding, albeit in a depressing way.

New York’s per-student spending is the highest in the nation, including an average of $35,000 per student this year. …Public school spending is driven by the demands of politically powerful teachers’ unions. …Yet, higher education spending has produced worse outcomes. In 2022, New York’s 4th graders ranked 36th in the nation in reading and 46th in the nation in math. Meanwhile, Florida spends about $13,000 per student and its 4th graders rank 3rd in the nation in reading and 4th in the nation in math.

More money leading to worse results is not a surprise. But this is the steroid-fueled version.

I’ll close by sharing a chart from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

Is anyone surprised to see that people are moving from New York to Florida and not the other way?

P.S. For those who want additional comparisons of bad governance in New York and good governance in Florida, here are the previous editions in this series:

• Round #1
• Round #2
• Round #3
• Round #4
• Round #5
• Round #6

P.P.S. You can also read comparison between Texas and California by clicking here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Can Anyone Save New York From Its Coming Self-Inflicted Climate and Energy Disaster?

June 04, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter. 

New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet. A so-called “Scoping Plan” on how to do all this, issued by the State in 2022, contains no bona fide feasibility analysis, and equally no bona fide cost analysis.

 Everybody with over a sixth-grade education who has taken any time to look at this knows that it can’t possibly work. The only question is how much destruction will befall us before the whole thing crashes to the ground. Can anyone save New York from the coming self-inflicted climate and energy disaster?

In the category of people making futile efforts to try to save New York from its own folly, or at least from some portion of it, we have none other than yours truly, the Manhattan Contrarian. As reported here back on February 23, I had just filed, along with co-counsel Cameron Macdonald, an amicus curiae brief at the New York Court of Appeals in support of the plaintiffs in a case called Glen Oaks Village Owners, Inc. v. City of New York. 

In this case, owners of a large group of co-op buildings in Queens had sued seeking to have the City’s Local Law 97 declared invalid as pre-empted by the State’s Climate Act. Note that victory by these plaintiffs would not have ended the folly of the State’s Climate Act and its associated destruction of our electricity system; but their victory would have eliminated the mandate to convert to electric heat without sufficient electricity, and therefore would at least have made it possible for residents of large buildings to avoid freezing in the winter when they have converted to electric heat and there is no electricity.

In the Glen Oaks case, the trial court had dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint, finding that it had no basis in law. But an interim appellate court, known as the Appellate Division, had reversed, and said the the plaintiffs should have a chance to prove their case. New York City appealed that ruling to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, asking to have the trial court’s dismissal re-instated.

In my February 23 post, I noted that the plaintiffs were giving the Court of Appeals the chance to save the New Yorkers from their own folly — an opportunity which the Court might or might not take:

The Court of Appeals has a chance here to save New York City and its residents from their own folly. It may or may not take advantage of the opportunity. If it takes a pass, and reinstates the dismissal of the case, Local Law 97 will still fail within a few years at most. It’s just that, in that scenario, a lot of people stand to get hurt.

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, the Court of Appeals took a pass, and re-instated the dismissal. Here is the decision (from May 22). It’s mostly mumbo jumbo about legal standards for deciding if one statute has pre-empted another. But the bottom line is clear: the Court of Appeals is not going to be the one to save New York from its coming climate and energy disaster.

As another candidate for the role of New York’s savior from climate and energy disaster, how about President Trump? Immediately upon entering office back in January, Trump went to work knocking the supports out from under the green energy subsidies and favoritism that form the underpinnings of New York’s Climate Act plans. The biggest item in the Climate Act’s strategy for transitioning New York’s electricity system to renewables is plan for some 9000 MW of offshore wind developments in the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island. But by this January 20 Executive Order, Trump withdrew all of the Outer Continental Shelf for leasing for potential off-shore wind energy projects. A separate January 20 Executive Order then directed a halt to all disbursements of green energy subsidies under Biden-era statutes.

So did these moves completely flummox New York’s plans for electricity from “renewables”? In the succeeding months, New York’s governments have soldiered on as if nothing is amiss. And then last week came news that Trump has somewhat changed direction. The new direction can be summarized as letting New York proceed with at least part of its wind energy fantasies as long as it backs off on suppressing at least some fossil fuel projects.

Here is a New York Times article from May 29, headline “N.Y. Natural Gas Pipelines Get a Second Chance Under Trump.” The gist is that the Trump administration and Governor Hochul have entered into discussion about a deal whereby two natural gas pipelines long blocked by New York would be allowed to move forward, and in return the feds would allow one of the off-shore wind projects to proceed. Excerpt:

A pipeline company is reviving plans to build two natural gas pipelines into New York State, a major reversal that amounts to a bet that the Trump administration will be able to strong-arm states into signing off on energy projects. New York had blocked both pipelines, called Constitution and Northeast Supply Enhancement, over environmental concerns. But the Trump administration has made clear that it wants more oil and gas infrastructure, including in the Northeast, where pipelines had become so hard to build that companies had all but given up on them.

According to the Times, this is all so far in the discussion stage, with no final commitments on either side. Even if finalized, the proposed deal would be far from an end to New York’s energy follies. Like the Glen Oaks lawsuit, if successful the Trump administration gambit would have the effect of keeping natural gas available as a back-up for when the electricity system transition inevitably fails.

I’m thankful for every bit of help we can get. But ultimately, our salvation will have to come from New York’s own voters. The question is, rather than getting saved by outside forces, would this benighted State and City actually be better off to go through an energy disaster and, perhaps, have its voters learn a little something from the experience?

As The Federal Government Abandons The Climate Fantasy, New York Doubles Down

May 13, 2025/ Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian 32 Comments

The first 100+ days of the second Trump administration (it’s now actually 113 days) have seen a near total abandonment of the fantasy that this one country’s government can change the weather and “save the planet” by suppressing use of hydrocarbon fuels and impoverishing the people. Biden administration “climate” and energy policies amounting to thousands of pages in regulations and hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and subsidies to uneconomic energy projects have been swiftly reversed. Examples in just the past few weeks include:

• The announcement by the Department of Energy just yesterday (May 12) of no fewer than 47 regulatory reversals, covering everything from ovens. to dehumidifiers, to clothes washers and driers, to shower heads, to dishwashers, and much, much more.
• Rescission of hundreds of grants from the Department of Energy for so-called “green energy” projects.
• Similar rescission of hundreds of grants from EPA, supposedly to fund “greenhouse gas reduction” and “climate justice” initiatives.
• Commencement by EPA of a process to undo the “Endangerment Finding” — a regulatory action that underlies essentially all climate and energy regulation by that agency — and some 30 other climate and energy actions of EPA.

And these are just examples. There are many more.

At this point, you would think that the blue states might take the hint. As a blue state, you had thought that you were embarking on an energy “transition” with the full backing and support of the federal government, complete with its vast powers and its infinite checkbook. Sure, this was going to cost trillions of dollars; but it was almost all their money, not yours. If somehow it all didn’t work out, you were not going to be the main one on the hook. Now, all that has changed. In the blink of an eye, there is no more support to be had from the infinite deep pocket. Not only is the federal government no longer your partner and financial sugar daddy, but it is even taking steps to obstruct and hinder your efforts.

So going forward, is there any point? As a lone blue state, you don’t remotely have the resources to expunge fossil fuels from your energy system on your own. Maybe, would it be best just to lie low for a few years and wait for the next friendly administration in Washington?

Well, if you are New York, that is not how you react. Your religious fervor is such that you are now prepared proceed totally on your own to defy the laws of physics and thermodynamics. Even as the federal government is telling New York to take a hike, here are some of the latest antics on the climate front from New York officials and climate activists:

• The State’s 2025-26 budget just got enacted on Friday, May 9. ESG Today reported excitedly on Monday (May 12) that the budget includes “over $1 billion investment in decarbonization.” Excerpt: 

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the state’s 2025-2026 budget on Friday, which included more than $1 billion in climate change-focused investments, including funding to lower emissions from buildings and accelerate the rollout of electrified transportation. . . . Key climate-focused allocations in the new budget include $450 million targeting reductions in building emissions, including investments in energy-efficient retrofits and clean heating technologies like heat pumps, more than $200 million for thermal energy networks, $250 million to support electric school buses, fast-charging stations and a NYSERDA rebate program for installing EV charging stations, as well as $200 million for renewable energy expansion and grid modernization.

• Nobody is impolite enough here to mention that $1 billion is chump change in the effort to get rid of hydrocarbon fuels. If you were serious about the effort, the number would be more like $1 trillion. But don’t worry, nobody reading this stuff has sufficient numeric competency to understand that.

• New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — who is also a candidate for Mayor in the current election cycle — fancies himself a leader in the climate movement. Lander put out a statement on April 22 (“Earth Day”) setting forth his position:

  New York City Comptroller Brad Lander decried threats from the Trump administration to dramatically roll back climate progress and stood with climate activists from New York Communities for Change, 350 NYC, and Fridays for Future to announce new actions by the Comptroller’s Office to reduce New York City’s emissions. . . . [T]o stand strong against federal rollbacks, Comptroller Lander is demanding more from the asset managers who manage funds for the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS), Teachers Retirement System (TRS), and Board of Education Retirement System (BERS).

• In a prior statement on March 26, reported in Net Zero Investor, Lander vowed that the City “will not retreat one inch” on its climate program, despite the actions of the Trump administration.

• Our local environmental activist groups brook no dissent from climate orthodoxy. On March 31, a group of four climate activist organizations sued the State government in an effort to force faster progress on greenhouse gas reduction goals. From New York Focus, March 31:

  Four environmental and climate justice groups filed a lawsuit Monday in a state court, claiming that New York is “stonewalling necessary climate action in outright violation” of its legal obligations. By not releasing economy-wide emissions rules, the suit alleges, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, or dec, is “defying the Legislature’s clear directive” and “prolonging New Yorkers’ exposure to air pollution … especially in disadvantaged communities.” It’s the first lawsuit to charge the state with failing to enforce the core mandate of its 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or clcpa: eliminating nearly all of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

So, there is plenty of bluster from local politicians and activists. But despite that, I can’t find a word as to how they plan to meet the greenhouse gas reduction and green energy mandates of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, now that all federal backing is withdrawn. As just one element, there was supposed to be 9000 MW of offshore wind built to replace on-shore fossil fuel power plants. Now the Trump administration is obstructing the offshore wind development. I haven’t been able to find a word from New York elected or energy officials on how they plan to transitions the energy supply if they can’t build the offshore wind facilities.

So we move forward with our officials in a state of bluff and bluster and denial, and no plan of any kind to meet the impossible mandates of the Climate Act. We all know that this is doomed to failure, but it will likely be a couple of years before we see the failure unfold.