New York Court Refuses To Block State's Plan For A "Renewables" Program

For a couple of years now, I have been collaborating with a small group of friends here in New York to see if we can introduce some rationality into the State’s completely insane energy plans.  The other three members of our little cabal (Roger Caiazza, Richard Ellenbogen and Constantine Kontogiannis) are a scientist (Caiazza) and two engineers who are knowledgeable about how the electrical grid works.  Our efforts have included things like submitting comments on various regulatory proposals, intervening in Public Service Commission proceedings, and even bringing court proceedings to try to block crazy and impossible schemes from taking effect.  So far we have scored exactly zero public successes, although we do occasionally receive communications (always confidential and never in writing) from various bureaucrats who say things like “I know you’re right, but I can’t speak up or I will lose my job.”

On Monday (July 13) we achieved our latest defeat when a Justice of the Albany County Supreme Court (William Little) issued an Order dismissing a Petition we had filed seeking to overturn a May 2025 Order of the Public Service Commission on the subject of the State’s Renewable Program and Clean Energy Standard.  The PSC’s Order was issued in one of its proceedings, numbered 15-E-0302.  Here is a link to the PSC’s Docket of that proceeding, where the Order in question can be found as item number 1364.

Much of this stuff gets little coverage in the general press, and I thought that readers may be interested in some of the blow by blow.

The backstory is that New York adopted a Climate Act back in 2019, mandating conversion of the electrical grid to a zero emissions system by 2040, with interim deadlines; and under that statute various state agencies got tasked with figuring out how to do it.  Note that there had not been in 2019, nor has there been as of today, any demonstration project or feasibility study on how to make a functional “zero emissions” electrical grid that can fulfill the demands of our economy.  The State agencies that got the task, in this instance, were mainly the Public Service Commission (PSC) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).