New York state legislators have agreed to enact the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, requiring the state to achieve a carbon-free economy by 2050. Robert Bryce and Mark P. Mills respond.
The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act may be aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions, but New York legislators are ignoring two key issues. The first, of course, is how the plan will affect consumers. Renewable mandates invariably result in higher-cost electricity. That’s important because New Yorkers are already paying some of the highest electricity prices in the country.
Second, legislators may want 70 percent of the state’s electricity to be coming from renewables by 2030, but that wish ignores the ongoing land-use battles over the siting of large-scale wind and solar projects. In the last four months alone, about 400 megawatts of renewable capacity in the state (roughly 300 megawatts of wind and 100 megawatts of solar) have been blocked, cancelled, or suspended due to local opposition. In short, where, exactly, do New York legislators think they are going to put all that renewable stuff?
—Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the forthcoming report “Out of Gas: New York’s Blocked Pipelines Will Hurt the Northeast,” to be released on June 25, 2019
As New York sinks beneath the waves of high costs from “green” plans and carbon virtue-signaling, this legislation will have zero impact on the planet’s “carbon balance.” Just a few weeks of activity in just one of China’s 100 mega cities will create a greater avalanche of carbon dioxide emissions, making this a true pyrrhic “victory” for New Yorkers.
—Mark P. Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the recent report “The 'New Energy Economy': An Exercise in Magical Thinking”