{"id":317692,"date":"2026-08-10T12:40:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T12:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/317692\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T12:40:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T12:40:46","slug":"blame-gov-kathy-hochul-and-the-legislature-for-nycs-power-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/317692\/","title":{"rendered":"Blame Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature for NYC\u2019s power peril"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City<\/a> doesn\u2019t have enough available energy to meet the needs of a serious heat wave or an especially frigid winter.<\/p>\n

\"GovernorGovernor Kathy Hochul speaks during the 44th annual Dominican Day parade on August 9, 2026 in New York, New York. Lev Radin\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The city is now relying almost nonstop on two aging emergency electric power-supply barges off Brooklyn\u2019s Sunset Park<\/a> to keep the lights on and apartments cool, Crain\u2019s reports.<\/p>\n

In other words, Gotham is already relying on its last line of defense against blackouts, and at high risk of catastrophic failure.<\/p>\n

If these aging stations fail, or demand spikes in, say, a week of 100-degree-plus temps, we\u2019re in big trouble. <\/p>\n

Blame Albany Democrats \u2014 Gov. Kathy Hochul <\/a>and our feckless state Legislature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Under then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Albany rushed to close the Indian Point nuclear plant, choke off new supplies of natural gas and retire fossil-fuel power plants far faster than alternative sources could come online \u2014 while simultaneously booting electricity demand by pushing shifts to electric cars, heating and so on.<\/p>\n

And Hochul only recently began even talking about slowing down the madness.<\/p>\n

The insane state Climate Action Plan closes reliable natural-gas power plants, aiming to replace them with expensive and less reliable solar and offshore wind<\/a> farms as well as massive battery-storage facilities.<\/p>\n

And the alternatives aren\u2019t getting built anywhere near as fast as the plan requires.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s oldest-in-America power infrastructure needs immediate improvements as experts warn that the system is operating near its limits.<\/p>\n

Even if we dodge blackouts, we still suffer: New York households pay the third-highest residential electricity prices in the country, trailing only Hawaii and California, per the Empire Center\u2019s Energy Data Bulletin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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NY prices in May were up 12% from a year earlier, rising at twice the US average.<\/p>\n

California is the only large state with higher residential electricity prices, thanks to similar-but-worse \u201cclimate\u201d policies.<\/p>\n

The politicians will rush to blame Con Edison and other utilities, but these companies have to do what Albany orders \u2014 no matter how insane.<\/p>\n

Looming blackouts are an existential threat \u2014 and inevitable unless the state abandons its climate madness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City doesn\u2019t have enough available energy to meet the needs of a serious heat wave or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[80,2534,7443,1168,304,7442,4762,19475,426,11538,9,24,55,54,56,299],"class_list":["post-317692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-andrew-cuomo","tag-blackout","tag-climate-change","tag-con-edison","tag-editorial","tag-electricity","tag-energy","tag-green-energy","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-legislature","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}