The plans to fire up the massive 640 megawatt Competitive Ventures Power (CPV) plant in Orange County continue to move forward, even as residents concerned about pollution and climate change continue to try to stop it. 

Members of Protect Orange County demonstrated in Albany on August 10, in an attempt to persuade Gov. Andrew Cuomo to block the plant from becoming operational by halting the construction of the Lateral Valley Pipeline, which is being pursued by Millennium Pipeline to carry gas from Pennsylvania to the CPV facility.

The protestors’ frustration with the Governor is understandable. He likes to paint himself as one of the most environmentally progressive politicians in the country, and he often behaves that way. After all, he allowed hydraulic fracturing to be banned in the state. Why then does he allow the use of fracked gas from Pennsylvania to power a plant that will pump 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air, causing negative impacts to human health, the climate and property values?

Cleary the fight to switch to clean energy has a way to go, and it appears that ultimately the forces that want to power up the CPV plant will prevail over those that want to halt it. But the movement toward sustainable power started to get serious more than a decade ago and will surely continue for another decade or two, perhaps with increasing momentum.

When we look back at actions by state officials, there has been steady, if not always consistent progress for quite a while. In 2005, the Office of Climate Change was created within the Department of Environmental Conservation to develop programs and policies to mitigate climate change.

According to The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (www.c2es.org), two years later the state legislature created the Sea Level Rise Task Force to deal with the impacts of that phenomenon.

In the summer of 2009, Gov. David Patterson created the New York Climate Action Council (CAC), which was tasked with writing a Climate Action Plan that would include mitigation and adaptation measures.

Also according to the Center, “New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s scientific panel ClimAID published ‘Responding to Climate Change in New York State’… It includes key impacts and adaptation strategies for the following sectors: Water Resources, Coastal Zones, Ecosystems, Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Telecommunications and Public Health.”

The state-level response is not limited to New York; 20 different states have established targets for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Gov. Cuomo’s Reforming the Energy Vision program seeks a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from 1990 levels, and the program calls for half of all energy used in the state be generated from renewable sources by 2030.

The effort to respond to climate change has also been taken up by many cities. Mayors from cities across the country pledged at a conference of mayors in June to work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the country out of the Paris Climate Agreement.  As reported in The Guardian (tinyurl.com/ydejom7s), “Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans said at an annual meeting in Florida, ‘I think most mayors in America don’t think we have to wait for a president’ whose beliefs on climate change are disconnected from science, Landrieu said.

“The U.S. Conference of Mayors supported the Paris agreement, and according to preliminary results released on Saturday morning from an ongoing nationwide survey, the vast majority of U.S. mayors want to work together and with the private sector to respond to climate change.” This movement is also growing among mayors around the globe.

So while the fight for renewable energy continues, and there are disappointments, ultimately renewables will likely prevail. Former Vice President Al Gore, who is currently promoting his film “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” (tinyurl.com/yauq5z24), was quoted in The Blaze (tinyurl.com/yauq5z24)as saying, “The climate movement, is right now in the tradition of all the great moral causes that have improved the circumstances of humanity throughout our history. The abolition of slavery. Women’s suffrage and women’s rights… all of these movements have one thing in common—they all have met with ferocious resistance and have generated occasional feelings of despair from those who knew the right direction and wondered whether we could ever get there.”

Cuomo’s actions on CPV have elicited feelings of despair among some, but if there is continued commitment from groups like Protect Orange County, Cuomo won’t change the likely reality of the future.