Gov. Hochul has spent much of her 4 \u00b9\/\u2082\u00a0years in office facing a time bomb left by her predecessor: drastic, legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets that the state has no practical means of meeting.<\/p>\n
The 2019 Climate Act requires New York to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about one-quarter from that year\u2019s levels by 2030. The state has made little progress toward this goal, in part because officials shuttered New York\u2019s largest nuclear power plant in 2021.<\/p>\n
The law remains on the books, and its defenders balk at revision. If Hochul can\u2019t persuade them to change it, Albany\u2019s green dreams<\/a> will cause harsh conditions in the Empire State \u2014 steep electric bills, green-energy boondoggles and rolling blackouts.<\/p>\n The law has saddled the state with three related but distinct problems: threats to the grid\u2019s reliability, rising electric bills and a looming surge in fuel prices.<\/p>\n The most ominous\u00a0\u2014and the least visible \u2014 is the growing risk that New York City might have difficulty keeping the lights on as soon as June. Last summer\u2019s heat wave, when temperatures reached 100 degrees in some neighborhoods, put the electric grid under extreme stress.<\/p>\n Powerless<\/p>\n In spite of this sort of demand, state air-quality regulations (related to ozone and separate from the Climate Act) have already forced operators to close a few dozen small \u201cpeaker\u201d power plants \u2014 plants that previously ran for a few hours each summer when demand was highest.<\/p>\n Some of the lost peaker capacity should have been replaced years ago. But state environmental officials, citing the Climate Act, blocked a major power plant upgrade in Astoria, Queens, in October 2021 and another one in Orange County the same day. That move \u2014 about which state officials jetted off to Scotland to boast \u2014 put the kibosh on other upgrades. The remaining stock keeps getting older: The two yet-to-be-replaced power plants in Astoria that went offline amid the heat last June were built in 1954 and 1958.<\/p>\n In December, the state\u2019s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, ordered the city\u2019s electric utility, Con Edison, to address the shrinking margin between peak electricity demand and supply. But because of the Climate Act, the PSC told the company to look only at \u201cnon-emitting solutions\u201d \u2014 i.e., those that didn\u2019t create additional greenhouse gases. It remains unclear how Con Edison will handle the next sweltering weekday afternoon.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, customer rates have surged across New York.<\/p>\n As of November, bills were up an average of 7% over last year, and up a whopping 47% since 2019 on average. In greater Syracuse, customer bills have more than doubled from 2019 levels. A state energy forecast published without fanfare last year (following criticism that prior forecasts were unrealistic) showed that electricity prices across upstate New York could rise by at least an additional 40% in the next five years.<\/p>\n Why? The Climate Act. Customers are paying more so that the state can subsidize wind and solar facilities, as well as new transmission projects to get that energy to market<\/a>. (Something that can\u2019t always happen, thanks to the ready-shoot-aim mentality behind state climate policy.) Some of the biggest new statewide costs \u2014 for offshore wind and a new power line under the Hudson River \u2014 haven\u2019t even hit customers\u2019 bills yet. And electric utilities are stealthily funding various electrification projects, at the state\u2019s behest, with costs spread out to all customers.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Last-ditch efforts<\/p>\n The state has also been fending off a lawsuit by environmental groups upset that officials haven\u2019t issued the Climate Act\u2019s long-promised \u2014 and legally required \u2014 regulations to increase fuel costs for homes, businesses and vehicles. The costs only go up from here.<\/p>\n