Blue states blow hot air on wind-power boondoggles

Your electricity bill reveals a stark political divide: Red-state residents pay less, while blue states gouge their citizens and businesses with exorbitant electric rates. 

But even worse are the bald-faced lies of blue-state politicians who defend the gouging.

Instead of admitting that expensive electricity is a choice they’re deliberately making — your budget be damned — they constantly claim wind and solar power are “affordable” and “reliable.” 

The shameless gaslighting was on full display last week, after President Donald Trump’s Interior Department paused offshore wind farm construction along the East Coast near Virginia, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The administration claims the huge installations obscure radar detection of potential foreign incursions, threatening “east coast population centers.”    

Within minutes, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont accused Trump of “making things up.”  

Gov. Kathy Hochul called the pause “B.S. “

Maybe. The announcement was short on evidence backing up the administration’s security pretext.

But the possible deception on Trump’s part is mild compared to the lies spewed by Democrats in response.

Hochul declared wind power will “keep energy costs down” and “strengthen reliability.” 

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong insisted wind power will save ratepayers “hundreds of millions of dollars.”  

Lamont claimed a “diverse energy supply” that includes wind “will lower utility costs for families.”

Nonsense. 

In fact, worse than nonsense. Deliberate lying.

Each state has the authority to decide the mix of energy sources that go into its electric grid. 

Blue states have mandated ever-increasing reliance on wind, as well as solar, instead of fossil fuels, per the Institute for Energy Research.

New Yorkers pay 58% more for their electricity than the national average, because of green mandates imposed by state politicians and the power sources they exclude, like natural-gas fracking.

Connecticut ratepayers are fleeced even more, paying nearly double the national average rate for electricity.

Climate-driven pols, almost all of them Democrats, should at least admit they’re making decisions based on ideology — as well as pressure from the renewable-energy lobby.    

Instead, they parrot falsehoods about “affordability” and “reliability.”

In truth, offshore wind power is at least twice as expensive per kilowatt as natural-gas-generated electricity, for example.

Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus, citing data from 70 countries, concludes “the evidence is clear: Adding more solar and wind to the energy supply pushes up the price of electricity.”

How about “reliability,” the other word blue state pols repeat ad nauseam to defend their green obsession?

Germany learned how unreliable renewables are when it installed massive solar and wind generators meant to meet 70% of its grid’s needs. 

But on cloudy or windless days, these renewables deliver a mere 4% of the nation’s power demands. Hardly “reliable.”

Germany has had to maintain two generating systems, at massive cost — so Germans pay 43 cents per kilowatt-hour, more than twice what Canadians, who still rely largely on fossil fuels, pay.

In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has flip-flopped over whether he will meet or miss his own plans to remove almost all fossil fuels from the UK’s electricity supply by 2030, because the cost is just too high.  

He and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband are jostling over whether adding more renewables in the mix will push energy bills to unaffordable levels. 

Renewables are budget busters, burdening consumers and slowing economic growth, and they’re learning that the hard way.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed an increasing reliance on renewables — now up to 39% of its grid’s mix — which is why its residents and businesses pay the second-highest rates in the nation, behind Hawaii.

Those crippling costs are hobbling growth and causing “energy poverty,” with low-income residents unable to pay their electric bills.

Electricity costs were a hot-button issue in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election last year, where bills had skyrocketed because outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy retired fossil-fuel sources just as statewide power demand was soaring.  

Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill promised that investing in offshore wind would “lower energy costs for families,” a blatant falsehood — but her fib won out.

As Sherrill takes office this month, New Jersey voters should remember her promise — and watch their power bills.

Blue-state Americans struggling to pay for electricity need political leaders who will make affordability a priority.

But to do that, voters need to hear the truth.

So far, they’re getting a pack of lies from windbag politicians like Sherrill, Hochul and Lamont.

And no one is discussing wind farms’ visual blight, as their towering hardware mars our magnificent oceanscapes, and their harms to whales and other animals. 

If Republicans were demanding lines of similarly towering oil rigs across Long Island Sound or Nantucket Bay, the left would be screaming bloody murder.

Trump’s pause must force an honest discussion of wind power’s costs and consequences.

On the facts, instead of the lies, it’s a loser.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.