Good news: Public backlash is growing against the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s “decarbonization” plans that ban gas stoves; that’s what rising utility bills and oppressive bans on gas stoves and heating will do.
Bad news: Team Hochul is looking to spend $500,000 of taxpayer money to make us all understand and accept this completely unnecessary pain.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, aka NYSERDA, which is responsible for implementing the climate action madness, is offering a half-million euro contract on a year to a public relations firm to help tell a “positive story” around the plan.
The plan (the brainchild of then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, which Hochul adopted) mandates cutting statewide carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050 by closing reliable natural gas power plants and replacing them with less reliable ones – and more expensive – wind and solar energy.
A sign of the extravagance: State civil service commissioners last year rejected demands from wind and solar developers to more than double their subsidies to $22 billion — after which NYSERDA simply awarded more contracts at an even higher rate.
NYSERDA’s RFP document requires the “winning” PR firm to target its efforts on “headwinds related to the development of large-scale onshore and offshore renewable energy projects” as well as ” concerns about the cost and practicality of supporting the decarbonization of buildings.”
In other words: the sheep are starting to wake up – help us put them back to sleep!
Even NYSERDA admits that the program is becoming incredibly expensive: its latest public update adds $300 million to bring the estimated cost of one piece of the puzzle (adding 6 gigawatts of energy storage by 2030) to $2 billion of dollars.
Costs that will be added to consumers’ bills, even if the state orders utilities not to let ratepayers consider it a separate charge.
As we’ve said before, it’s only a matter of time before this whole crazy project collapses, either because of its inherent impossibility or because of public fury over the costs.
None numbers add up (it won’t even have a significant impact on climate change!), and no amount of snow PR work will change that.
Hochul can start to face reality by saving that $500,000 for something that could actually make a difference.
New York Post
