Letters

The battery energy storage system commercial facility in residential Hampton Bays continues to incite blasphemy from naysayers at the altar of green, renewable energy. Another smoldering BESS facility, this time in Jefferson County, points to the rational basis of the heretics’ dissent, but the godlike magistrates of state continue to sling their arrows against all things carbon-based.

Consider this: The New York City Council has banned all gas hookups in new buildings, effectively requiring only electricity to inefficiently heat and cook in your home. New York State has a stated goal of 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent zero-emissions energy by 2040.

An August 1, 2023, audit report of New York State energy goals shows, as of 2022, we produced 29 percent of our energy from renewable sources, 75 percent of which is hydroelectric and the other 25 percent is wind and solar. We will have to more than triple our renewable energy sources.

Hydroelectric certainly has environment downsides, to wildlife, hence further exploitation is severely limited, or it should be. This leaves us with wind and solar, which currently makes up 7.25 percent of our electrical power grid. Simple math shows our renewable energy sources of wind and solar will have to expand by a factor of almost 10 times 2022 levels. That’s a whole lot of BESSes, folks.

Local homeowners truly have more at stake than just their own backyards if current zoning is ignored or changed to accommodate this ill-conceived location for the proposed BESS facility. They are fighting future government land grabs to accommodate an intermittent, unreliable and inefficient energy resource. All who dissent from this obvious folly are deemed skeptics and climate deniers. Reason and logic have no agency in this fight to save the planet.

Where will future BESS facilities be located in New York City to power all the new buildings being constructed? Nowhere, I should imagine. Towering infernos are not a good business model.

Where are the minerals and materials going to come from to store all the necessary electricity required? There are not enough known minerals on the planet. To witness a prelude to the predictable damages of switching to only renewables, look no farther than Germany, where insanity reigns at the Temple of Green.

Any plan to completely abandon fossil fuels is a certain recipe for hardship and failures. Recent reports of rising energy costs will only be compounded by the necessary extra costs required to build the infrastructure to accommodate the transmission of all this proposed renewable energy.

Those folks on the financial margins will most certainly be severely affected. This myopic energy goal will further burden affordable housing and become a state-sanctioned barrier for entry.

John Porta

Westhampton