New York At The Green Energy Wall — What Is The Exit Strategy?

*By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | November 15, 2025*

When New York passed its utopian Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) back in 2019, it set mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the state’s energy consumption. However, none of these mandates were scheduled to take effect prior to 2030.

The earliest goals included:

– 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030
– 40% overall reduction in GHG emissions by 2030

More ambitious mandates were planned for 2040, culminating in a “net zero” target by 2050.

At the time, these dates seemed far off — plenty of time for new technologies to emerge, should they be needed to reach such ambitious goals. Our legislators, seemingly innumerate across the board, had fallen for the fantasy sold by lightweight academics such as Mark Jacobson and Robert Howarth, as well as by promotional groups like the American Wind Energy Association and investment bank Lazard, that wind and solar were now the cheapest ways to produce electricity.

To abolish the “evil” fossil fuels, all that was needed was political will.

The legislators, however, ignored warnings. Beginning in 2016 and continuing consistently until the CLCPA was enacted in mid-2019, this site published one clear warning after another that the costs of a wind and solar energy system capable of providing reliable, full-time power would inevitably be many times higher than those claimed by the promoters.

If you’re interested, my series “How Much Do The Green Energy Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Cost Of Electricity?” dives deeper:

– Part I (August 16, 2016)
– Part II (August 20, 2016)
– Part III (November 29, 2018)

Well, I tried.

**The Missing Regulations Deadline**

There was another important deadline in the CLCPA—not for emissions reductions themselves, but for the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to publish regulations detailing how the mandated emissions reductions would be achieved.

Section 75-0109 of New York’s Environmental Conservation Law states that DEC “shall promulgate rules and regulations to ensure compliance with the statewide emissions reductions limits.”

The deadline for these regulations was January 1, 2024.

That date came and went. Another year passed with no regulations released and no indication when or whether they would be forthcoming.

A reasonable inference is that Governor Kathy Hochul (who took office in 2021), or more likely her staff, realized this plan was not going to work but chose silence to avoid political fallout.

**Legal Action and Court Ruling**

By March 2025, environmental groups had grown frustrated. Citizens Action of New York, People United for Sustainable Housing Buffalo, Sierra Club, and We Act for Environmental Justice filed an Article 78 proceeding in the state Supreme Court of Ulster County to compel the DEC to comply with the law and issue the regulations.

Justice Julian Schreibman presided over the case. The court held hearings on July 25 and accepted supplemental letter submissions from the New York Attorney General’s office on August 11 before issuing a decision on October 27.

**Remarkable Admission from the State**

The Attorney General’s August 11 letter is a remarkable document. It essentially states that the emissions-reduction mandates of the CLCPA are “infeasible,” and requests the court to refrain from enforcing the mandate to issue regulations, arguing that doing so would cause “damage to the public interest.”

The letter frequently references the state’s draft “Energy Plan,” issued July 25, which I previously critiqued in my post “New York’s Official Energy Plan Is No Plan” (August 11). In that post, I called it “hundreds of pages of fluff.”

Here are some excerpts from the letter for context:

> The draft [Energy Plan] itself shows that a 40% greenhouse gas reduction from 1990 levels by 2030 is infeasible under the Climate Act’s accounting methodology and unaffordable for consumers.

> While New York’s current policies and additional action would be expected to raise economy-wide costs for the state energy system in 2040 by less than 10%, the two net zero scenarios the Board considered raise energy-system costs by at least 35% in 2040, which is $42 billion in additional costs for that year alone.

> In sum, under even the most aggressive scenario the State Energy Planning Board considered—one that by 2040 would lead to an added $42 billion in annual energy costs—New York would not meet the Climate Act’s 2030 goal.

> While the draft plan shows that ambitious progress under the Climate Act is achievable, the 2030 goal itself is not practically feasible due to costs consumers simply cannot bear.

So they have actually calculated that attempting to reach “net zero” on the schedule mandated by law will cost consumers an extra $42 billion per year by 2040.

They don’t provide figures for other years, but presumably, costs would be comparable. Let’s settle on $42 billion annually for now, though I consider this a low estimate.

**What Next? Stretching Out the Deadlines?**

The state’s letter essentially advocates allowing deadlines to slip in order to implement the policies more slowly.

What the letter does not mention is whether stretching out the timeline will reduce the total cost—or if costs will remain the same or even grow over a longer period.

I can’t see any reason why spreading costs over time would reduce the total cost. Therefore, if the current cost estimate is “infeasible” for consumers, it will remain infeasible even with a delayed schedule.

**Justice Schreibman’s Response**

Justice Schreibman was unimpressed by the state’s feeble argument. In the court’s opinion (page 8), he stated:

> Faced with this [statutory] mandate, DEC does not have the discretion to say no or to decide that it has the authority to choose not to follow the express legislative direction at issue.

> Under our system of separation of powers, upon concluding, based on its subject-matter expertise, that achieving the goals of the Climate Act might be “infeasible” for the reasons stated, the DEC had just two options.

> One, it could issue compliant regulations anyway, and let the chips fall where they may for the State’s political actors.

> Or, two, it could raise its concerns to the Legislature.

The court gave the state until February 6, 2026, to issue the required regulations. The three-month extension corresponds with the Legislature’s return in January, preserving the option to ask the Legislature to reconsider the statute.

**But What Is the Exit Strategy?**

What happens next?

Will New York embark on a crash program costing $42 billion per year, which would still not achieve the CLCPA’s impossible mandates?

Or will the state ask the Legislature to revise or repeal the statute?

The latter would provoke a massive outcry from progressive lawmakers and environmentalists who believe—without rigorous analysis—that wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels, and that only corrupt oil and gas interests block the energy transition.

Perhaps the deadlines will simply be postponed for a year or two.

But when that time expires, the problem will resurface, only larger.

There is no graceful exit strategy here.

The CLCPA will inevitably be abandoned.

Exactly when and how remains unclear, but it will happen.

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**Topics:** Business/Economy, Science, Society
**Keywords:** leftism

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**Comments**

*To MtnClimber:*

A train wreck of their own making. This is what happens when you chase hallucinations.

*(From MtnClimber)*

Regarding “Our legislators, innumerate to a person, had bought into the fantasy” — this is a great essay, and that line really, really nails it.

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