Last month, when my work took me to India, I learned a surprising lesson: When it comes to green energy, the “developing world” is light years ahead of New York.
And the current crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, where fossil fuel costs have skyrocketed for New Yorkers, brings the Empire State’s wind ball into sharp focus.
Gov. Kathy Hochul implicitly acknowledged Albany’s failure to grapple with the practical realities of its insistence on the need to shift the state’s entire economy from fossil fuels to renewables.
Now it’s trying a new strategy: New York’s groundbreaking 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that preserves memory.
Ironically, in the years since this bill was passed, the state’s reliance on fossil fuels has only decreased moreOur leaders have seriously erred on the green energy side of the equation.
Hence its turnaround in the CLCPA’s election year, despite the continuing need for new energy sources.
Halfway around the world, the country best known to many New Yorkers as the origin of street food memes is leading the way in high-tech renewable energy sources.
Meanwhile, the state that designed the subway system, the Empire State Building, and the Erie Canal is struggling to support a fraction of India’s windmills and solar panels.
Strategically, India has adopted a Trump-style “all of the above” approach to energy — while policymakers in New York have favored gas bans, wild rhetoric, bureaucracy, and general incompetence.
Tactically, India views private energy producers as partners, not as evil companies that can be punished for generating electricity for the rest of us.
The end result is that India crossed the line last year: more than 50% of its electricity capacity comes from renewables — five years ahead of its 2030 deadline to meet that mark.
(Actual power generation 70% of it still depends on fossil fuels, but progress is still noticeable.)
For its part, New York has embraced an absurd central-planning path toward unrealistic 2030 climate goals, and is now pursuing them. 20 – Maybe – never as It deletes references to the CLCPA from its websites.
In Kavda, for example, a huge salt region along India’s western border, Adani Green Energy installed its first 9 gigawatts of electricity just five years after its hybrid wind-solar project received government approval.
When completed in 2029, the site will be the largest renewable park in the world, generating a total of 30 gigawatts, enough to power every home in New York State at peak summer load.
Adani uses a combination of solar panels, wind turbines and battery storage systems to continuously feed the grid.
Sure, the Sun is a little stronger at Khavda’s latitude, but the winds aren’t stronger, and their batteries aren’t made of some unknown Martian metal.
The fundamental difference is that the Indian government has realized that unleashing the private sector—not regulating it to death—helps both achieve their common goals.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid out the map; Adani and its competitors built the roads.
Here, Albany laid out a road full of potholes, bumps and turns, ensuring that almost nothing would happen.
It’s a pattern that holds true across the country: Blue states like ours “lead out” on climate mandates and press releases, while less-regulated red states actually implement and develop green energy projects.
Compare New York with Texas, which is the No. 1 producer of wind power and No. 2 in the country for solar power.
The Lone Star State focused on expanding its network of high-voltage transmission lines to allow more private landowners to connect to the grid, then granted them an expedited permitting process for turbines and solar panels.
Meanwhile, New York is approaching 20 years in its side quest to build the Champlain-Hudson power line, miring it in permitting problems.
This makes New York more vulnerable to current global energy pressures than Texas.
Even before the federal government revoked licenses for new offshore wind projects, New York’s regulatory burdens had dampened their prospects.
The state tied developers to using special turbines that had never been built before, required them to be manufactured in fake factories in politically important constituencies, and deemed them to be launched from non-existent port facilities.
All of this requires subsidies worth hundreds of millions of dollars to offset unnecessary costs.
When it came to solar energy, scandals like the Buffalo Billion got in the way — and when corruption didn’t exist, inefficiency reigned.
The state is now using special permitting laws to fast-track the Fort Edward solar project, destroying 600 acres of protected wildlife area, angering environmentalists who generally promote green energy.
The truth is that green energy deserves to play a role in New York’s future, and part of the mix of energy sources that power our state.
Renewables are not the problem: regulations are.
The sooner New York’s leaders realize this, the sooner they can begin to see their press releases bear fruit.
Meanwhile, if they want to see what future energy policy looks like, India shows the way.
Joe Borelli is a Managing Director at Chartwell Strategy Group and former Minority Leader of the New York City Council.