With great fanfare in 2019, state Gov. Andrew Cuomo celebrated passage of the so-called Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). With much hype around escaping climate doom, and with absolutely no debate on the reality of the doom, the feasibility of CLCPA, or even its ability to fix the so-called “doom”, Gov. Cuomo at once made big investors fabulously rich with lucrative subsidies, while indenturing state taxpayers to servitude in a serfdom of green madness and de-industrialization on a scale comparable to the recent debacles in England and Germany.

Leap ahead to 2024, and Gov. Kathy Hochul is carefully distancing herself from CLCPA, and is under fire from her fellow radicals for publicly acknowledging that CLCPA binds state to impossible energy goals.

It’s a bummer when the laws of Physics interfere with politicians’ abilities to exploit a so-called “climate crisis,” as if they actually believe in it themselves. Of course, the biggest polluters in the world (China, India, etc.) celebrate our stupidity because it benefits them when we waste our resources. The Chickens of Reality have come home to roost in New York, but there is still time to avoid the state’s version of Mao’s Great Leap Forward (he only starved 40 million), thanks to a handful of honest public servants.

Two recent state reports have broken the ice: The state comptroller’s “Climate Act Goals – Planning, Procurements, and Progress Tracking”; and NYSERDA’s “Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review.”

Here are some major points raised by the NYSERDA report:

— Meeting CLCPA goals will be impossible because “renewables” require massive quantities of materials that the supply chains cannot produce, and we cannot afford. We simply can’t mine and process materials, and build infrastructure fast enough to meet CLCPA.

— Renewable Infrastructure is not sustainable. It must be replaced every 10 to 20 years, whereas Nuclear, for example, has a life of 60-80 years. Battery backup to guarantee baseload power in lieu of non-existent DEFR must be replaced every 10 years, at a cost recently calculated at $3.6 trillion just for the state.

— Recent cancellations of Atlantic Offshore Wind projects were due to the extremely high cost of producing offshore power. These costs won’t go down, primarily because initial costs were “low-balled” to sell, and the infrastructure is already mature with no room for cost improvement. Costs are also rising because of inflation caused (ironically) by Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act”, creating artificially high demand via subsidies paid by printing money. Apparently the laws of Economics are as irrelevant as the laws of Physics to the political class.

— Massive investments will be necessary to build a grid that can manage power across the state (and nations) to shift power transmission routes over large geographical regions as needed for Wind and Solar-based systems to be useful. Where will all that copper come from?

— The 70% emissions free requirement for 2030 cannot be met, even with maximum political breath-holding and foot stomping. Under the rosiest scenario, there is a renewable energy supply deficit of 42,145 GWh based on the CLCPA mandated 70% goal amount of 115,437 GWh.

— Strike price escalation (the price your provider is required to pay for renewables) will increasingly make “renewable” electricity unaffordable. This will encourage more people and industry to leave NYS.

Here are major points of the comptroller’s report regarding the Public Service Commission (PSC):

— “PSC is using outdated data, and, at times, incorrect calculations, for planning purposes and has not started to address all current and emerging issues that could significantly increase electricity demand and lower projected generation, such as increased push to transition to electric vehicles by 2035 and the cancellation or delay in renewable energy projects.”

— “The costs of transitioning to renewable energy are not known, nor have they been reasonably estimated. Moreover, funding sources to cover those costs have not been identified, leaving the ratepayers as the primary source of funding.”

— “PSC has taken steps to address some risks and issues; however, it has not yet begun to formally review progress toward Climate Act goals with updated generation and electricity demand forecasts.”

Albany, we have a problem…

Instead of coming clean about the precarious position CLCPA has created for NYS residents, the Hochul administration is more concerned with the political optics of hoping we don’t notice the embarrassment of a walk-back of CLCPA, which is just now starting.

When politics trumps Scientific/Engineering/Economic reality, Governor, you are trapped within a conundrum of your own creation. By the way… Andrew Cuomo is now hawking Nuclear Power, after having killed it.

It is time to repeal CLCPA.

Michael Dee is a Silver Creek resident.