Political Whisperer
By Robert Hornak
There’s no other way to say it, there are many people who are obsessed with CO2 and how much humans are emitting. This is in spite of the simple reality that carbon dioxide, the most fundamental building block of life on earth, only makes up a tiny, tiny fraction of earth’s atmosphere, and human emissions only a tiny fraction of that.
This obsession also ignores the fact that over the last 20 years, CO2 emissions in the U.S. have decreased by at least 20%. After a significant shift from coal to “cleaner” natural gas, CO2 emissions decreased from their high in 2007 of 6.1 billion metric tons to 4.7 billion metric tons in 2024. This was the target established in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, 5% below the 1990 level of 5 BMT.
Natural gas is now the top source of electricity in the U.S. giving us 43% of our energy with coal dropping to 16%, in large part due to the lower cost of natural gas. So, energy costs should be either holding steady or even dropping, but they aren’t.
This is thanks to the Democrats obsession with further reducing CO2 and by primarily doing that relying on wind power, which is now fourth in our supply of energy at 10%. Wind power is dramatically driving up the cost of energy in NY, and will continue to make the cost exponentially worse over time. NY is focused primarily on offshore wind, which is estimated to be 2.6 times the cost of onshore wind and 3.4 times the cost of natural gas.
Estimates by green power proponents are raising alarm bells in NY. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority recently sent a memo to Gov. Hochul that coming increases in electricity cost will be crushing for NY families, predicting $3,500 a year in additional cost per home annually. Some predict it could be as high as $4,000.
So according to best estimates that’s almost an additional $300 a month in electricity cost, for every single family. Heads are exploding among people promising affordability for New Yorkers. This undermines their entire agenda.
It’s so bad that Hochul’s state budget director recently said the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) was “well-intentioned” but that changes will be needed, calling his estimate of an additional $3,000 for NY’s families “unacceptable.” Well, isn’t that a relief?
The CLCPA was the law passed in 2019 that mandated NY to change how the state’s energy is produced. It set the target at 70% of all electricity to come from “renewables” by 2030, and for all energy produced carbon free by 2040.
Never missing an opportunity to undermine their own objectives, NY lost over 9% of it’s renewable production when Indian Point was closed in 2021 (nuclear still provides 18.6%). That was mostly replaced with natural gas, not wind or solar, which still only make up approximately 4% and 3% of NY’s energy, respectively.
Realizing their horrendous miscalculation, Hochul is now indicating she will move forward with her proposal to increase nuclear energy production in NY. But they are still wedded to their costly offshore wind plans.
In a recent decision, they managing to convince a judge to put five offshore wind projects back online after the Trump administration recognized this plan for what it is – a losing proposition for NY rate payers.
This seemingly schizophrenic approach is a desperate attempt to satisfy both the green ideologues and families across the state grappling with ever increasing costs, driven by bad public policy.
And this doesn’t take into account the changing digital landscape, with AI, crypto, and the growing digital economy on the verge of radically transforming our society, and transforming how we use energy.
NY needs to take this seriously and focus on the three sources that reliably and efficiently provide 72% of all the states power – natural gas, nuclear and hydropower. Wind power is ideologically driven expensive folly that the people can no longer afford to indulge.
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously worked for the NYC office of the Republican Assembly Leader and served as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.
