Back at the beginning of the year, I had a post titled “New York On The March To Climate Utopia.”  The post took note that everything about New York State’s vision for a zero-emissions economy and for “climate leadership” was in the process of falling apart.  Its contracts for vast off-shore wind farms to replace fossil fuel generation had either been completely canceled (the majority) or rebid at much higher and uneconomic prices (the minority).  Its two contracted facilities to produce “green” hydrogen to back up the intermittent wind and solar had run into financial difficulties and were likely to fail.  Its one big contracted high-capacity transmission line to bring the imaginary upstate wind and solar electricity to downstate markets had also been canceled, without stated reason but almost certainly because of unworkable economics.

I illustrated the piece with this picture of Wile E. Coyote in the role of New York State, having run off the cliff and about to fall to the bottom of the canyon:

In the few short weeks since that post, you would think that it would be almost impossible for the situation of New York’s utopian climate plans to have gotten any worse.  But in fact the situation has gotten worse — much, much worse.  

On January 20, President Trump was inaugurated, and he immediately went to work dismantling federal support and subsidies for “green” energy.  By this January 20 Executive Order, Trump “temporarily” withdrew all of the Outer Continental Shelf from leasing for wind power projects.  That appears to nix most, although perhaps not all, of New York’s offshore wind plans.  (Although the pause in leasing is said to be “temporary,” there is no commitment that the leasing will ever resume.).