The last time we reported on the war against natural gas, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had struck down the Berkeley, CA ordinance that bans natural gas lines in new construction.
Now that California has been stalled in its quest to become a green energy utopia, New York is racing to be the first state with an effective ban on natural gas in construction.
New York state leaders led by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul reached an agreement late Thursday on the state’s 2024 budget which includes a future ban on natural gas hookups in new building construction.Under the budget deal, natural gas hookups will be banned in small buildings beginning in 2025 and large buildings beginning in 2028, according to Hochul. The governor said in remarks that the budget insulates households from “exorbitant energy bills” while helping the state build a “more sustainable future.”
It appears the measure is “conceptual” at this point.
Ms. Hochul said on Thursday the deal was a “conceptual agreement” whose broad strokes needed to be “fine tuned” before a final vote was held. The proposed ban would not apply to existing buildings.Ms. Zielinski said the measure would also allow exemptions for facilities that may need to use fossil fuels for emergency backup power, including hospitals and laboratories. And she said the governor’s office was still “figuring out” how the measure will be applied to new construction in areas where the electrical grid may not be up to the task.“We are looking at reliability issues still, meaning if there is a proposal to build a new building after 2025 but there is a lack of electric capacity in that region, how will we handle that?” she said. “We don’t want to build new buildings if the local grid does not have the energy to be able to power them.”
New York residents are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions about the consequences of these “climate crisis” solutions . . . specifically about whether the state’s energy grid can handle all the shift in light of other bans on fossil fuel transportation.
“Why would they load down the grid with more electric? New York has had so many problems over the years with blackouts in the summertime when it’s hot,” Francine Leibman of the Upper East Side said.This will add to the burdens already imposed by green energy efforts, including a 2022 state law signed by Hochul that will ban the sales of gas automobiles by 2035.“Now they want to have electric cars — which OK, I’m all for that — but they want to make stoves electric too? How will the grid cope?”Fossil fuels made up about 43% of the 10,014-megawatt hours produced in New York state in January compared to the 6% coming from renewable sources like wind and solar power that are supposed to replace natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy information Administration.
Meanwhile, nearly one-third of New Yorkers want to leave the state, according to a recent poll.
New Yorkers are so worried about crime, sky-high housing costs and struggling schools, 27% percent of state residents said they want to move away in the next five years, a survey revealed Wednesday.A stunning 30% of respondents — who also cited inept political leadership and soaring taxes as reasons for wanting to flee — said they already longed to live somewhere else, according to a Siena College Research Institute quality of life poll.Nearly a third — about 31% — plan to leave the Empire State when they retire while even more said they believe it’s not safe for kids.
I expect this number will surge, in direct correlation to energy prices in the Empire State.
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