The New York Affordable Clean Power Alliance, the mouthpiece for the wind and solar industries, just came clean with a warning about the perils of Albany’s plan to phase out fossil fuels, while Gov. Kathy Hochul’s minions last week quietly kicked a costly Climate Plan can past her next election — two more signs that this madness should end now.

Instead, state leaders mean to keep on pretending, and so inflict billions in needless costs on utilities and taxpayers. 

The Alliance’s latest report warns that the state’s “ambitious renewables targets” pose clear threats to “maintaining reliability” — meaning blackouts when electric demand soars.

Which could be in the dead of winter if the state succeeds in pushing everyone to depend on electric heat.

The state’s insane Climate Action Plan is forcing the closure of reliable natural-gas power plants, even as it’s failing to replace them with enough (expensive and less reliable) solar and offshore wind installations.

Intrinsically less reliable, as the Alliance admits: “Renewables depend on weather conditions, making real-time supply and demand balancing more complex.”

Meanwhile, Hochul’s Department of Environmental Conservation has announced that it won’t be imposing the “cap and invest” program — which means added taxes on carbon fuels — before 2027.

When she’ll have won or lost her next, and likely last, election.  

But New Yorkers are paying for this plan now, in double-digit utility rate hikes.

Hochul pretends it’s not the climate mandates, ordering the Public Service Commission to investigate executive pay and bonuses at Con Edison and utilities, but she knows the truth.

New York won’t come close to its “mandatory” goal of slashing gas emissions by 40% by 2030, let alone achieving 100% zero-carbon-emission electricity by 2040, but the state will inflict needless expense until it faces up to that fact.

It’s beyond shameful that the state’s leaders are fine with inflicting these ruinous expenses on the rest of us, simply to save face for them.