Public Power: One Big Solution to Runaway Climate Change

In 2019 New York State climate activists won the most progressive climate law in the nation, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. It committed the state to ensure 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040 and legally bound it to get off fossil fuels completely by 2050, with 35% of the total CLCPA benefits to go directly to disadvantaged communities. It was intended to transform our state’s energy system while lowering the cost of electricity and dramatically expanding good-paying union jobs. 

It is not panning out. We are years behind on the pace of reaching the law’s goals. The State signed contracts to build wind turbines, solar panels and geothermal networks with private corporations that ultimately reneged on doing the job. The State’s reliance on for-profit corporations to meet the law’s mandates has kept New York stuck at just 4% of its power being generated by wind and solar power. Demands for profits, supply-chain problems and high interest rates on loans put corporate renewable-energy projects on the back burner, while the state and the world continue to burn. 

Read the full piece here.