Cuomo Banning 3,500 MW of Electric Generation w/No Replacement

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pulling another boner. Under Cuomo’s direction, the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has issued new draft regulations aimed at shutting down most of the state’s “peaker plants”–small electric generating plants that produce electricity for brief periods during high demand. The plants are powered by nasty, filthy fossil fuels and that, according to Lord Cuomo, must end.
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Anti fossil fuel freaks have scored a victory in reducing the amount of electricity available to New Jersey’s southern shore area (rolling blackouts anyone?). There was a plan to convert a now-closed coal-fired electric generating plant to use natural gas, fed to it by a new (very short) pipeline.
There had been an ongoing legal squabble in Trumbull County, OH over a proposed Utica gas-fired electric plant in Lordstown, located next door to another gas-fired plant (see 
The State of Connecticut’s “Siting Council” has changed its mind. In 2016, NTE Energy proposed building a 650-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Killingly. The Siting Council said NTE couldn’t justify the plant and refused to issue a certificate. That was then, this is now. The Siting Council is once again actively considering the project. What changed?
It is beyond bizarre that the Sierra Club, which claims it defends the environment, works so hard to stop electric generating plants from converting from coal to natural gas. As we pointed out yesterday, gas-fired plants produce a small fraction of nasty pollutants like sulfur dioxide, compared with coal (see
Yesterday MDN brought you the story of a so-called acid rain permit issued to Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas-fired electric generating plant (see
Pennsylvania’s largest operating natural-gas fired electric generating plant, Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) near Scranton (in Jessup), will soon receive a permit officially allowing and capping sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant. Should nearby residents be concerned?

Honest to God, we want to know, how do people get this stupid? Four adult men–three so-called farmers and one 38-year-old egghead student–chained themselves to a fossil fuel-belching farm tractor in the middle of a busy road in Connecticut to block a shipment of turbines on the way to a new natgas-fired electric plant under construction…in order to protest fossil fuels.

Last week our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, published a post about electricity generation that predicts that in 2019 more gigawatts of electricity will come online from wind-powered sources than either solar or natural gas. Together renewables and natgas represent 98% of all new electric generating sources coming online in 2019.