My utility provider, Con Edison, recently announced yet another increase in utility prices and many of my neighbors are incensed. According to their website, “New York City residential customers may see an 11% increase in summer bills due to higher delivery charges. For the same reason, Westchester residential customers may see a 12% increase.” This is on top of continuous increases over the past few years.
But their anger is misplaced. Instead of blaming Con Ed, they should be outraged at the state and local legislators who have irrationally pushed wind and solar projects to the detriment of the utility consumer.
NY residents have been subjected to the closure of nuclear power plants, the closure of extraordinarily efficient, natural gas plants, and the construction of extraordinary, wasteful, wind, and solar projects. Several of these have monumentally failed — but these huge financial losses are now built into our utility cost base!
It is now commonly understood that the wind and solar projects that have been imposed upon us in recent years will have virtually no effect on the climate. But what it has done is add tens of millions of dollars of increased wasted costs that are now built into our utility cost base for the consumer to bear through increased prices, like the ones announced by Con Ed last week.
The most distressing part about this is not what our government has done to us, but that the media, the newspapers, and mostly the elected officials absolutely ignore this reality.
As a tax accountant, a significant portion of my work is now moving people out of New York, because of huge living costs as well as huge taxes. I myself expect to be leaving New York, mostly for these reasons. For a constituency that’s supposed to be intelligent, it is extraordinarily disappointing that we continue to elect these people. We should all be ashamed.