To the Editor:

New York state’s energy policy is a bundle of contradictions.

Several recent reports project a statewide human population decline by 2050.

Many climate activists are demanding the state completely electrify the economy without fossil fuels.  While most people favor wind and solar, many oppose the state imposing giant solar installations in unwilling upstate towns.

Battery-storage systems have safety concerns and will face increased scrutiny in the wake of the recent multi-day lithium battery facility fire near Monterey, California.

Constructing the non-fossil fuel energy infrastructure will require mining huge quantities of minerals and lead to considerable habitat destruction, pollution, worker exploitation, and opposition around the world.

The Business Council of New York State asserts the renewable energy requirements in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) are unachievable.

The state government and some of its corporate allies are vigorously promoting a vast increase in electricity-intensive artificial intelligence, cryptomining, data centers, and chip-manufacturing industries.

Much of the state’s fossil-fuel electricity-generating infrastructure is old and at or near the end of its workable life.

The state government allows construction of the Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission line between Quebec and Queens, knowing that placing CHPE cables in Lake Champlain violates the “forever wild” clause of the state constitution.

Several times in January, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the state government will support efforts by Constellation Energy to site a new nuclear reactor in Oswego County. Constructing new reactors will draw increased attention to the three operating reactors located there, two more than 50 years old.

The four operating reactors in New York are uneconomical and heavily subsidized by the state's electricity customers.

The nuclear fuel cycle has a huge and often denied carbon footprint and causes widespread, long-lasting terrestrial and water pollution.

Many nuclear reactors are old and another large radiation release anywhere in the world, but especially in North America, might quickly terminate construction of new reactors and force closure of operating reactors, as the 2011 triple Fukushima meltdowns did in Japan.

Chernobyl and Fukushima remain unstable today and will cost hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars this century to contain. Nuclear disasters can unfold in more ways than can be predicted, prevented, and remediated.

The state government assumes residents/voters will accept whatever combination of dangerous technologies the state tries to impose. Rural upstate New York is not an energy colony.

Humanity is presently in a planetary environmental/health emergency: accelerating worldwide climate chaos, habitat being wrecked at a ferocious pace, and species disappearing hundreds of times faster than naturally.

New York has reached the end of the unlimited electricity growth era and must democratically chart a new truly sustainable path forward. 

Tom Ellis

Albany