GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  According to the NYISO Real Time Fuel Mix dashboard chart that shows what fuels in what percentages are generating electricity in New York on this January 15 Thursday morning, there is this breakdown. These numbers are typical for a winter morning in New York:   Natural gas   – 32.29%   Hydroelectric   – 21.13%   Nuclear   – 20.97%   Wind   – 4.46%   Solar   and other renewables – 1.3 1 %   ( T his percentage includes solar, landfill methane, storage batteries, and the burning of refuse and wood chips)   Which of the emissions free sources could be increased enough to make a significant difference?   Correct. Nuclear.

  One of the great ironies of the first Trump administration was that amid all the talk of  bleach ,  horse dewormers , mask mandates and school closures, most people didn’t pay attention to the policy that essentially ended the pandemic:  Operation Warp Speed .   A president whose pandemic response was viewed by many as incompetent at best and brazen denial at worst spearheaded the development of the coronavirus vaccine, an accomplishment that Donald Trump hardly talks about lest he alienate his MAHA wing. Meanwhile, many in the public health establishment, which today recoils in horror at the current administration’s anti-vax posture,  were skeptical  of Trump’s ambitious timeline for a vaccine.   One year into the second Trump administration, a similar dynamic could be underway around climate change. Trump  has described  it as a Chinese hoax. His administration  has withdrawn  the United States from the Paris climate agreem...

  Good morning and welcome to the weekly Monday edition of the New York & New Jersey Energy newsletter. We'll take a look at the week ahead and look back on what you may have missed last week. SOLAR, EV CHARGING BOOST:  Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to bolster solar for schools and electric vehicle charging infrastructure as part of her State of the State address on Tuesday. The governor plans to advance a sales tax exemption for electricity sold by commercial EV charging stations. New York currently has about 187,000 electric vehicles on the road, according to the governor’s office. That’s  far short of a Cuomo-era goal  of 850,000 zero-emission vehicles by 2025. The state has about 15,000 chargers at more than 4,000 locations. The governor will also propose clearing a barrier for school districts seeking to deploy solar, including ground-mounted arrays. She’s proposing changes to the state’s building aid rules, which can restrict investments by schools. Lawmakers hav...

  Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to pursue perhaps the most ambitious development of nuclear power in America, setting a new goal to build five gigawatts of new nuclear capacity instead of just the one gigawatt she announced last June. That’s more nuclear power than has been built in the United States in the past 30 years. Hochul will announce the plans Tuesday in her State of the State speech, her office told syracuse.com. If her vision succeeds, New York’s nuclear capacity would increase from 3.4 gigawatts today to 8.4 GW. “Gov. Hochul will ensure that New York State leads in the race to harness  safe and reliable advanced nuclear energy to power homes and businesses with zero-emissions electricity for generations to come,’’  her office said in an email. The governor also will announce plans for training and education programs to develop a skilled work force for the plants. Building 5 gigawatts would be the equivalent of building five new traditional reactors. The four nuclear...

  Just a few years ago, the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant was celebrated by a broad coalition of environmentalists, residents and even  actors  as a victory for public safety and environmental protection.   But times may be changing in New York, where rising greenhouse gas emissions are now threatening the state’s ambitious climate goals. State officials are exploring a new generation of nuclear technologies, driven by concerns that natural gas,  solar and wind power may not be enough to meet growing energy demand, especially during peak periods.     “We need to understand how this [nuclear] technology has advanced , what are the current resources that could be used, and to really be quite careful and objective about looking at the opportunity that it may present,” said Doreen Harris, president and chief executive of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).    In September, the agency convened ...

  By  Haley Zaremba   -   Jan 09, 2026   New York City's municipal government has dramatically cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 31 percent since 2006, reaching the lowest levels in decades, but the Department of Education remains a major challenge with only a 14 percent reduction.   The vast majority (70 percent) of citywide emissions still come from buildings, followed by the transportation sector, indicating that significant energy inefficiencies persist outside of municipal operations.   New York State is at risk of missing its clean energy targets but has introduced a new energy plan that explicitly includes nuclear power as a critical component of its decarbonization roadmap to achieve its 2040 goals . New York City’s government has achieved a remarkable drop in greenhouse gas emissions. A new report shows that the city’s municipal operators are using less energy and emitting less carbon than they were twenty years ago. In fact, while greenhous...