Apart from That Mrs. Lincoln, How Was the Play?

New York State has passed a bill mandating the construction of publicly owned renewable power generation.

This sounds good, because what's not to love about renewable energy or publicly owned utilities?

They both just work.  Ask the people who get their power from the TVA.

But there is a fly in the ointment, the New York Power Authority, which is charged with developing this generation capacity, was NOT a fan of the idea, at least this was the case when the bill was making its way through the legislature.

This attitude has changed, and appears that this is at least in part because of the consultant that they are bringing in,  McKinsey & Company.

Well, we now know why they changed their tune.  Now senior officials see the opportunity for corruption, fraud, waste, and inefficiency to be introduced in the program, which will both enrich their political allies, and kill public power in New York for a generation.

In 2022, Justin Driscoll, the then-interim head of the New York Power Authority, was no fan of the Build Public Renewables Act, which would empower the organization to build renewable energy projects to help the state to meet its climate goals. At a hearing, Driscoll told lawmakers that New York state was unable to undertake its own renewable power buildout, calling it "simply unworkable." Which is why it was surprising when, this past March, Driscoll was seemingly ebullient about the new "expanded authority" that the passage of the BPRA in last year's budget had given NYPA.

At a New York Power Authority board meeting last month, he talked about the "excitement we're seeing around the organization to be involved in this." He discussed how well-positioned the authority was to begin delivering clean, cheap energy to New Yorkers: "It's an opportunity for NYPA to make a big impact on the state's energy infrastructure and footprint."

What changed his mind in the intervening 18 months? For one, Governor Kathy Hochul, his boss, got on board with the BPRA. But a second clue came during that board meeting, when he shared who exactly would be helping to plan the buildout of NYPA's ability to once again build, own, and possibly operate new renewable energy infrastructure—the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Investor owned utilities provide for both bribery and campaign donations (but I repeat myself), and Mr. Driscoll, as well as his ally the honorable (I joke) Kathy Hochul, Governor of the State of New York, see the appointment of McKinsey as an opportunity to turn this into yet another source for patronage and campaign donations.

"[We're] closely with McKinsey, as I previously discussed with you," Driscoll said. "They're helping us ensure our operating model internally and our internal governance around the buildout of renewables for the state, and with that support, we're finalizing a target operating model that leverages our strength and development, ownership, and commercialization to quickly deploy renewable projects for the benefit of the state and its residents."

Buried within that consultant-speak was insight into what exactly McKinsey was going to be working on with NYPA—essentially, forming the operating model for a buildout of public renewables that Driscoll had spent years fighting, but is now implementing at the behest of the governor.

In a statement, NYPA spokesperson Paul DeMichele told Hell Gate that McKinsey would be helping NYPA identify how they could better help the private sector develop renewable energy projects.

So, we won't see publicly owned power, we will see public private partnerships (PPP's) where the energy will be expensive, and profits accrue to the private side of the PPP, while the public bears the cost of cost overruns and the occasional disaster brought on by penny pinching.

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The contract with McKinsey immediately rang alarm bells for environmental advocates, who had pushed for NYPA to begin building publicly owned renewable energy infrastructure as it became clear that the state would miss hitting its clean energy targets, which relied almost entirely on the private sector. They pointed to Driscoll's opposition to the BPRA, NYPA's own backtracking on climate goals, and the secretive nature of the rollout of NYPA's "expanded authority" as reasons to be worried that just a year after its passage, the BPRA is already in peril.

The BPRA was meant to fast-track a cleaner, publicly owned power grid—and passed after a concerted push by environmental groups and the Democratic Socialists of America, when New York included the first-in-the-nation climate measure as part of the state budget in 2023. The BPRA gives NYPA the ability to build out renewable energy infrastructure—wind, solar, battery storage, and more—if it found the private sector was unable to meet the state's legislated goal of 70 percent clean energy in its grid by 2030, and 100 percent clean energy by 2040.

McKinsey, known for aggressively advocating for privatization and market-oriented solutions, most recently made headlines in New York for its botched report on the danger posed to nursing homes by COVID-19. When it comes to its work in the energy industry, McKinsey has been implicated in everything from the Enron scandal, to rolling blackouts in South Africa, to undermining United Nations climate talks on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.

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Driscoll told the board that while NYPA was ramping up staffing to fulfill its new mission, it would take years to get the right kind of expertise in-house to help run a renewable energy buildout.

This is, of course, a lie.  The NYPA could get up to speed quickly and hire trained and experienced people in a few months, but then all the records regarding how the decisions wold be made would be a matter of public record, whereas McKinsey's process is proprietary "Secret Sauce" and not open for public scrutiny.

"Horrified" is how Eleanor Stein, a long-time former member of the New York Public Service Commission, which regulates and oversees the electric power industry in New York, described her reaction when she found out that McKinsey would be helping to shape New York's renewable buildout. "To me, it signaled they're not actually serious about building anything—they're more interested in partnerships, in contracting out the work," she said.

Stein worries that by once again offloading the work to private actors, much of the spirit of the BPRA would be gutted, and that the BPRA's goal of providing cheap, clean energy to communities that need it the most won't be achieved.

That is the goal.  This is why Hochul used a loophole to appoint investor owned utility shill Justin Driscoll to head the NYPA.

They are both opposed to publicly owned power and publicly owned utilities.