Are New York state voters waking up to the looming disaster caused by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) of 2019, which eliminated nuclear and fossil fuel based electricity by 2040?

Not yet, apparently.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who killed nuclear power in New York state, is now a major Nuclear industry stockholder, having purchased Nuclear stock at rock bottom prices after driving the stocks down with his CLCPA legislation. New York state politicians are hoping you don’t notice the sleight-of-hand in their Green Scheme.

Everybody should recognize that Cuomo – and others – used their political power to enrich themselves by “gaming” the energy market for Nuclear like they did with wind and solar, leaving the little people to pay the bill, all while playing “Chicken Little” on climate.

And they are not done separating you from your money.

About 72% of current New York state electricity generation comes from sources that will be illegal by 2040 under CLCPA, while New York state power demand will nearly double by then (with no increase possible in other emission free power) because of mandates for EVs, elimination of natural gas, and massive increases in power needed for computing resources.

wind and solar today provide only 8% of average New York state electricity (NYISO), even after years of lucrative subsidies. Yet under CLCPA, we will need 20x more future wind and solar power to replace Nuclear and Fossil Fuel power that will be outlawed under CLCPA – not including the additional power required to constantly recharge backup systems required to accompany wind and solar.

The obvious hole in the Green Scheme is that wind and solar are inherently intermittent, thereby requiring nearly 100% backup for many days on end. New York state calls this backup power “DEFR” (Dispatchable Emission Free Resource), but there is no technology available other than storage of wind and solar generated power, and there are only two storage options theoretically possible, and neither will work in the real world.

New York state is wasting gobs of money on paltry Battery Farms that so far will provide about 2 minutes of backup power; Battery storage will never provide enough backup capacity for New York state at scale. Latest estimates show the cost of battery backup for New York state (today’s dollars) to enable Net Zero emissions is about $3.6 Trillion every 10 years (batteries have limited life). In addition, New York state would need to double or triple its nominal wind and solar generation capacity to keep the batteries adequately charged. Perhaps Gov. Hochul can tell us where she will find all the land and resources to install 40x more wind and solar capacity than we currently have.

Enter “Green Hydrogen”, the fantasy du jour for backup power. This is hydrogen created by electrolyzing water (H2O) to separate the H2 from the O, which could theoretically be used almost like natural gas. However, the challenges of implementing Green Hydrogen at scale are even worse than batteries. To summarize:

Green Hydrogen requires 3 MWH of electrical energy input to create 2 MWH of backup energy. Hence, it would require 1.5 times as much wind and solar infrastructure to operate with Green Hydrogen backup as it would take for battery storage. That would require up to 60 times of our currently installed base of wind and solar. Perhaps we could put a solar farm in Central Park, New York City.

Hydrogen cannot be handled by existing natural gas infrastructure because hydrogen weakens steel, and massive high-pressure storage facilities would be needed for hydrogen. (Remember the Hindenburg? Challenger?) Hence we would need to duplicate the entire natural gas delivery infrastructure with hydrogen-friendly materials that are significantly more expensive, and add massive high-pressure storage systems. Open your wallets folks, and forget those Bills season passes.

In 2020, Bloomberg NEF estimated that “…producing enough Green Hydrogen to meet 25% of global energy demand would require more electricity than the world now generates from all sources.” Perhaps this fact eludes the “wizards of smart” in the Hochul Administration.

In August 2024 Australia shut down its “world-leading” Green Hydrogen production plant, concluding that Green Hydrogen could never work at acceptable cost – even with all that free solar power.

In spite of reality, Gov. Hochul announced at the Sep 5 “New York state Energy Summit” that New York state will “stay the course” defined in CLCPA. Is this stupidity or corruption? One might conclude that the politicians who passed CLCPA in 2019 – and those who support it now – are clueless with respect to the Green Monster they have created.

Or perhaps they are rather pleased with the greatest wealth transfer (from you to their wealthy friends) in the history of New York state.

I suppose we are not supposed to notice the Oct 5 deadline for the official “New York state Draft Nuclear Blueprint” to bring back nuclear power after insiders like Cuomo “gamed” the system to enrich themselves. It has always been known by Power Engineers that Nuclear would be an absolute necessity in the future, but the Hochul Administration has successfully played voters for the fools they are. Elections have consequences.

Michael Dee is a Silver Creek resident. Scott Axelson is a Jamestown resident.