One the country’s bluest regions is learning about the high cost of going green.
Customers of New York’s Consolidated Edison, the electric and gas utility that services New York City, is proposing a massive rate increase that would cost Big Apple customers paying utility bills almost $2,000 more a year than they did in 2020, the New York Post reported Thursday.
And the company blames energy mandates imposed by the New York state government, led by Gov. Kathy Hochul, for the hikes.
The proposed rates are being reviewed by the state Public Service Commission, the Post reported
And one former member of that commission told the newspaper the hikes are a sign that the state is headed in the wrong direction.
“We have to take a breath,” former Commission John Howard said, according to the Post.
“We’re not telling Mr. and Mrs. New York how much this transition to clean energy will cost them.”
The Post based its figures on customers using 600 kilowatt-hours per month — the average for New York state households, according to the electricity marketplace website Electricchoice.com.
Con Ed officials argued that New York City customers use less electricity than others in the state and claimed the Post’s figures were too high — that its proposal would amount to a hike of 15.7 percent, or about $46.42 to $289.41 per month, but there’s no denying that a rate increase is a rate increase.
And there’s no denying that New York’s Democratic-run state government has a mania for electricity mandates.
According to the Post, Con Ed argued New York state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act — signed into law in 2019 by then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — is forcing it to make expensive upgrades to the electric grid in pursuit of environmentalist goals.
“The aggressive plan under the law requires New York to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and achieve 100% zero-carbon-emission electricity by 2040,” the Post reported.
New Yorkers interviewed by the Post, predictably, weren’t happy about the proposed hikes.
“I have a lot of bills to pay — rent, credit cards, grocery. Eggs are $10 a dozen and now you want to add this to it?” one Bronx resident told the newspaper.
Yeah, well, for the environmental extremists in the Democratic Party, concerns about rent and eggs and so forth are for the little people.
If saving the world from a phantom menace like “climate change” is going to hurt what Howard called “Mr. and Mrs. New York,” then Mr. and Mrs. New York are just going to have to suck it up — and pay it out.
To be fair to Hochul, she inherited New York’s calamitous climate policies from her predecessor. But to be fair to the truth, she’s now been governor for more than three years, since she took office after Cuomo was forced to resign in disgrace.
She could have put a halt to — or at least tried to put a halt to — the state’s feud with fossil fuels, but she hasn’t. (For instance, fracking — the method of extracting natural gas from the ground — remains banned in the state, while even Democrats in neighboring Pennsylvania support it.)
That, more than any statement by the governor’s office, tells rational Americans that she could not, frankly, care less about her residents when their welfare is stacked up against a liberal goal.
And speaking of statements, the Post report included one from a Hochul representative saying she would “scrutinize” the Con Ed proposal.
“The governor strongly opposes any effort to increase the cost of living for New Yorkers and is directing the Department of Public Service to thoroughly scrutinize the request by Con Edison to raise utility bills,” the statement said.
So maybe the rate increase won’t be granted in full. Maybe it will be trimmed just enough that Hochol can claim some kind of victory, and claim to be representing the masses.
But the reality is different. For the Democratic Party’s radical left — like the ones in control of New York — ideological pursuit is always more important than actual people.
Like its lefty sister state of California, on the left side of a U.S. map (another basket-case place with a basket-case governor), New York under Hochul remains committed to its environmental lunacy (along with its Democratic leaders’ distaste for President Donald Trump).
The state’s voters could do something about that, of course, but they don’t.
In 2022, when Hochul ran for her own term, they almost did by supporting Hochul’s Republican opponent Lee Zeldin just enough to make it close, but in the end, Hochul won by almost 6 points. (By contrast, Cuomo won re-election in 2018 by 23 points.)
In fact, New York City residents who will be affected by the Con Ed rate increase turned out for Hochul in strength, with 81 percent of voters in Manhattan and 76 percent of those in the Bronx casting their ballots for her, according to New York’s Spectrum News 1.
They’ve been paying a price for years in the form of dangerous streets, rampant crime, and out-of-control politicians whose only guiding principle seems to be hatred of all things Trump (and civilians who stand up to criminals).
Soon, they’re likely to see that price in their utility bills, too.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Citizens Face $2,000 Energy Bill Increase as Dem Gov’s Green Energy Push Moves Forward: Report appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.