State Sen. George Borrello is warning that the closure of the Homer City Power Plant could have negative implications for the reliability of Western New York’s power grid.

Borrello told The Post-Journal that the closure of the Homer City Power Plant highlights the importance of energy independence and the dangers of policies that do not support efficient energy production.

“First of all, it’s sad that we used to be energy independent in Western New York, and then thanks to the closure of the NRG plant in Dunkirk and in Tonawanda, they now have to rely on places like Homer City.”

With Homer City’s “old-fashioned” coal plant, Borrello said the state took a “big step backwards” with regard to greenhouse gas emissions by choosing to import energy from the Pennsylvania power plant rather than produce energy its own energy in the region.

Borrello said there is “not doubt” that the region will have power grid reliability issues as a result of the closure of the Homer City Power Plant. Based on the information he has received, Borrello said roughly 1900 megawatts of power are produced by the power plant in Homer City. With power imported into the Western New York region based on the “peaks and valleys” of demand, Borrello believes the state will eventually run into serious reliability issues.

“On a hot summer day, we import a lot more power from outside of New York State just to meet the demand, so this is going to definitely have an impact, especially because they somehow think that they are going to replace that much of power with renewable energy, which is likely an impossibility,” he said. “My understanding is for the moment, we can meet the demand, but in the long term as New York continues to shift away from reliable forms of energy, we’re going to have a real problem without Homer City as a backup.”

Asked what can be done to increase the reliability of the region’s power grid, Borrello said the state needs to “go back to reality” and “abandon” the idea of completely removing energy forms like natural gas.

With the closure of the Homer City Power Plant, Borrello said the energy plant in Dunkirk should be reopened, which he said was originally promised “a decade ago.”

“Producing energy domestically in New York State is going to mean better and more reliable and ultimately cleaner energy,” he said. “The fact that we’re going to pretend that we’re doing something about climate change by shutting down reliable energy here and just importing power from other states and other countries like Canada is a shameless virtue signaling shell game.”

Asked about the role politics and climate change policies have had on the closure of power plants, Borrello said both politics and climate change policies have made a “huge impact,” particularly in New York state.

According to Borrello, despite former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2013 visit to Dunkirk and announcement that the state was going to re-power the plant, the plan was never executed. Borrello said Cuomo “caved” to the “climate socialists.” Additionally, NRG Dunkirk’s repowering plans were mentioned in a lawsuit that ultimately led to the company to back away from its aggressive agenda at the Lake Erie location.

Instead of operating lower emission plants like natural gas, the state chose to import what Borrello described as “dirty power” from other states, such as Pennsylvania. “That’s the joke of it all,” he said. “New York State is looking to wreck its economy to meet the standards of the CLCPA, and in the end, we’re actually going to actually be doing worse things for the climate and the environment, especially, in order to meet some kind of a political goal.”

In order to meet the state’s climate change goals, Borrello said the state is currently importing more power than it ever has before. He told The Post-Journal that on an average day the state imports roughly 20% of its power, while it imports as much as 50% of its power during peak demand times. He added that the state is also damaging natural habitats in order to produce “clean” energy.

“We’re clear-cutting forests to put up the solar and wind projects,” he said. “We’re destroying natural habitats. We’re risking our water supply and everything else that’s involved with the industrialization of our pristine area and our pristine land to meet a bogus political goal.”

Asked what steps could be taken in the state to increase power production instead of decrease it, Borrello said the state needs to reject “the lie” that New York will operate with 100% renewable energy. Instead of simply importing power from other states, he suggested that the state could consider “reliable” clean energy sources, such as hydropower. Borrello explained that New York is already third in the nation for hydropower energy production. He believes the state should take steps to further increase hydropower.

“We should expand that,” Borrello said. “We have we have hundreds of dams and reservoirs across the state that are in a dangerous state of disrepair, like Fredonia’s reservoir, that could be converted into small hydropower plants that could power small areas.”

In addition to increasing hydropower production, Borrello said the state should not shut down pipelines for transporting natural gas and oil, claiming that pipelines are cheaper, more reliable and safer than other ways of transporting things like oil and natural gas.

“We should be looking for a transition, but a prudent transition, and in the end, there’s no reason to eliminate reliable forms of energy in New York state,” he said. “The bottom line is New York State accounts for 0.4%, so less than one half 1%, of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world. If New York State wrecks the economy and destroys our natural environment to meet this ridiculous goal of zero emission, even if we were able to achieve that, it’s going to have virtually no impact on global climate change.”

Due to the controversial nature of the politics surrounding topics such as energy production and climate change policies, Borrello emphasized the importance of New York residents understanding the impact of harmful energy policies. On the state level, Borrello said his Republican colleagues are starting to see Gov. Kathy Hochul “walk back” some of her energy plans and climate initiatives.

“We were successful in getting an exemption from the natural gas ban for agricultural buildings, although that’s not enough,” he said. “She certainly walked back her plans to ban things like natural gas stoves. The reality is people need to wake up to the fact that, quite frankly, the inmates are running the asylum in Albany, and the most radical elements of the climate socialist movement are really the ones that set the agenda for the CLCPA and the Climate Action Council.”