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New Yorkers are getting burned by Democrats’ green delusions.
The average monthly ConEd bill today is $154 higher than five years ago, despite a near tripling of US wind and solar capacity since 2017, which advocates promised would bring prices down.
Now, ConEd wants the state utilities regulator to allow another rate hike — 11% for power and 13% for gas — just so it can keep pace with the state’s green energy targets.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo dug this hole, but if the Democrats are going to climb out of it — and show that the party can still respond to voters’ needs — Gov. Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins must correct the failures of the past decade.
According to the latest federal data, New Yorkers statewide pay 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for power — 50% above the national average. City households are hit even harder, paying over 31 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvanians pay just 17.6 cents.
The contrast lays bare the failures of the green policies Cuomo and the Democrats have championed since 2011.
First came Cuomo’s statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas in 2014. The Empire State remained on the sidelines while Pennsylvania leveraged game-changing technology into lower energy costs and thousands of solid middle-class jobs.
Worse, Cuomo then blocked New Yorkers’ access to Pennsylvanian gas via new pipelines. In 2020, builders ditched the Constitution Pipeline project after endless state delays.
In 2019 Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, mandating zero-emissions electricity by 2040 — prompting exorbitant grid reconfigurations to accommodate unreliable wind and solar that have translated directly into rate hikes on New Yorkers’ bills.
The worst decision of all was the 2021 Indian Point nuclear power plant closure, a personal objective of Cuomo’s. The loss of Indian Point, which generated one-eighth of the state’s power emissions-free, made the city’s electricity generation more dependent on fossil fuels.
In his sitdown with The Post’s editorial board last week, Cuomo himself hinted at the impracticality of the Democratic Party energy agenda.
It’s time for Dems to make a change. Spiking blue-state energy prices are wedging them between their climate-activist base and middle-income New Yorkers feeling the pinch.
But as much as he wishes he did, Cuomo doesn’t hold the keys anymore. Hochul and the state Legislature do.
If they want to avoid an even deeper political backlash than the party saw nationally in November, they need an immediate pivot to energy pragmatism.
Step 1 is lifting the fracking ban. Greater gas supply would ease downstate utility bills while opening up desperately needed jobs upstate.
Step 2 is approving the gas pipelines Democrats have made a rule of blocking.
With President Donald Trump suggesting he’ll step in to revive the Constitution Pipeline, state Democrats risk letting him own the return to energy affordability. That’s a political gift they shouldn’t want to give.
Step 3 is reforming the CLCPA. Scrapping it would be ideal, but as a middle ground, the Dems should strike its rigid renewables targets and set tech-neutral emissions targets instead.
Finally, New York should embrace nuclear as the cleanest, safest and most reliable source of power ever devised. State leaders should cooperate with Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council to fast-track nuclear projects here.
If they don’t, New Yorkers can expect to see their bills jump by double or even triple digits yet again. ConEd plans to make $21 billion in infrastructure upgrades over the next three years — largely to comply with the CLCPA’s impossible targets.
And while Hochul and Heastie are the powerbrokers for now, Cuomo is right to recognize his own opportunity.
He can turn his attempted political rehabilitation into a template for the Democrats nationally, by offering an energy mea culpa and putting some meat on the bones of his affordability platform.
He could, for example, call for scrapping or delaying the city’s Local Law 97, which will soon fine large residential and commercial buildings that exceed emissions limits.
This draconian and unworkable carbon mandate will raise already eye-watering housing costs, pushing even more New Yorkers out of the city — and into more car-dependent places.
With the party at a leadership deficit nationally, Cuomo and his counterparts in Albany have a chance to hit the reset button on an agenda that drove the national electorate — and even millions of New Yorkers — toward the Republicans last November.
If Democrats want to regain the trust of middle-class voters, energy pragmatism is the place to start.
Jordan McGillis is the economics editor of City Journal. John Ketcham is director of cities and a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.