Nearly two dozen clean-energy projects may be scrapped because the financial math doesn’t add up — and as state regulators refuse to renegotiate state contracts to reflect tariffs, inflation and rising labor costs.
According to the Times Union, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority told the developers they must move forward under the terms of earlier agreements.
That stance spells trouble for clean-energy developers stung by higher costs and no way of making the solar and offshore wind projects economically viable without more state cash.
Thus far, an estimated 60% of large-scale wind and solar farms that have received contracts from NYSERDA have been canceled.
Credit Gov. Hochul for finally seeing the folly of predecessor Andrew Cuomo’s cynical anti-carbon agenda merely to curry political favor with greenies and left-wing Democrats.
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By looking to make climate reform part of the state budget, Hochul’s giving lawmakers an excuse for doing the right thing — and lowering sky-high energy costs.
“We need a longer runway,” said Gov. Hochul about needing to amend New York’s controversial 2019 climate law after a state judge upheld implementing the law’s rigid targets and timeline in achieving a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
In re-election mode, the gov recognized that net-zero emissions mandates massively hiking gasoline prices and utility bills would derail her campaign’s affordability agenda.
A damning Public Policy Institute study reported that the clean-energy program succeeded in driving up costs for families and constraining reliable supply.
Together, Hochul and Cuomo had put the state on a course that retired fossil-fuel power plants faster than alternative energy ones could come online while simultaneously increasing electricity demand.
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All of it combined to threaten the power grid’s reliability as electricity demand grows.
Expensive and intermittent clean energy sources (like solar) can’t match the reliability of cheaper natural gas-fired power plants.
It should come as no surprise that the gov’s political survival trumped going ahead with expensive and unpopular green energy projects.
As budget talks conclude in the next few weeks, Hochul and the Legislature must ignore climate-change advocates’ new demand that the Empire State publicly own and build clean energy projects.
Government-owned offshore wind and solar farms would be open to higher cost overruns as well as corruption, fraud, waste and abuse.
New Yorkers should not be squeezed anymore than they have been or put at risk for blackouts just to satisfy diehard greenies.