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?
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