Con Edison: A look into the future

How corruption and crime turned the lights off in New York City

“Fifteen years into the electricity crisis we are still here. We are survivors!” the NPR host announced triumphantly, her soft monotone voice a mix of coastal education and casual coffeehouse faux intellectualism.

The year is 2045. America is in decline.

The interview cuts to a street scene where a man in New York, an El Salvadorian migrant who has been in the US since the mid-2020’s, wears a reflective vest while waving a rag and bottle of soapy water. “There is no electricity here. Nothing is working!” Car horns blare in the background as the streetlights remain off.

Con Edison is the electricity provider for the whole city. For years the provider Con Edison has struggled with mismanagement, inefficiency, corruption. Con Edison was a corrupt corporation in between a rock and a hard place: it was at the mercy of some very large, organized crime cartels and also a treasury to be looted by those in government looking to grow their own net worth, power and influence. In the case of one CEO, Mr. Robinson, he had been drinking coffee laced with poison for week before almost dying. An investigation later produced information that the daughter of a former State Senator and President had been behind the poisoning when political blackmail failed. No charges were brought, however, as the national courts were as useless as the unpowered streetlights.

But why were the streetlights off in the biggest city in America? Load Shedding. Americans had taken a cue from 2020’s South Africa and reduced to zero output during certain portions of each day. However, instead of selling the public on the idea that this was to prevent the grid from collapsing due to mismanagement, Vice President Ocasio-Cortez constantly reiterated that it was due to Progressive Climate Policy. She always quoted the same statistic: “By load shedding, we are reducing our daily carbon footprint by 12,000 MCTO2e per day. With this happening in every major city across the nation, we are all on the front lines of climate justice. This is our fight!”

She always ended it the same. “This is our fight!”.

As if we had a choice. They turned the power plants off. But ask any person on the street and they’ll tell you: “The Load shedding as a whole needs to come to an end.”

Ask them a follow up, when that is going to happen? They’ve got no idea.

CON EDISON AND LOAD SHEDDING:

Con Edison is the economic engine of New York City. It provides, today, 100 per cent of all of the power within the city. And as the ageing electric power stations get yet older and yet more inefficient, the breakdowns occur with staggering regularity. The powerplants built under the Green New Deal when Vice President Ocasio-Cortez was just a young member of Congress never produced 1/5 of what they were quoted, and the high costs to keep them up and running has resulted in less than half of those originally planned to be built. But even so, there isn’t a lack of capacity, truthfully. All New Yorkers know this. There is a lack of capacity that is being managed properly.

So, for more than a decade, New Yorkers - Americans of every major city - have suffered from something once relegated to places like Johannesburg, South Africa. Something called “Climatological Load Shedding”. These planned power cuts are typically 2 hours a day. However, sometimes they can be 6. They can even be 12 hours a day. And updates on how long they will last don’t go out because, of course, the power is down. So, what do people do? They wait.

This is when whole parts of the city are blacked out. Load shedding is stealing time. It is stealing opportunity from the East Coasts most powerful economy. It is cutting off electricity to customers who are paying for it, in order to prevent a total collapse of the grid- Ahem “…for climate justice. This is our fight!” The words of the Vice President ring hollow across a city without power.

The impact of load shedding on day-to-day life in New York is enormous. And that could be anything from traffic lights not working, to when you go to the shops and the CBDC card machines don't work. You can't make phone calls. Wall Street, data centers, the ports- they're all affected.

The US Federal Reserve Bank cut GDP growth this year by two percentage points to 0.2 per cent. It said that load shedding would have a half-a-percentage-point increase on inflation, because businesses have to pass on the cost to consumers. These things add up day after day, and it really does have quite an oppressive psychological impact as well. Suicides are up in major cities 45% since the mid 2020’s. Violent crime is up 270% in just the past decade.

Ultimately, Con Edison is run by the government, and ultimately the government is the Democratic Party It's run the country since 2020. If Con Edison is failing, then in the people's minds, the Democrat Party is also failing.

The NPR host cuts to a Brooklyn restaurant run by a long time native New Yorker.

“We're actually preparing the Pizza, which is a New York staple. It’s good too because we use a wood fired oven, so even when the power is off - and thank God we do that, ya know, because it’s saving the environment - so like I was saying, even when the power is off, we can make pizza. We can’t sell em’ because ya can’t take CBDC without power, but we make em’ anyhows. People line up, trade us anything for em’ and so we do that. Ya know, we got a good thing going on here. The struggles that we're experiencing here in New York because of the climate emergency, which is hopefully being helped by load shedding, you understand, that will be one of the topics when people are just sitting, they will talk about, and how the climate is being destroyed so we have to load shed.”

‘What?” the store owner barked loudly over the crowd gathered outside looking to trade anything and everything for a pizza.

“Oh, no. We don’t do pepperoni pizza. We don’t do any meat pizza. Meat is what got us in this climate emergency in the first place. Had people just listened to the Vice President when she was in Congress 20 years ago instead of making cow fart jokes, we might not be here. Also, we don’t keep meat because we don't want to keep it in the fridge, in case Con Edison decides to switch off the grid, and then it becomes a problem. And then it's a wastage. And meat is expensive - and again, harmful. It’s bad, anyhows.”

The NPR interviewer goes inside with the owner after the crowd clears and any number of trinkets and items have been traded for a slice of pizza.

“This is the point of sale, right, so when the electricity goes off, we can't use the system at all. I'm taking a photo and video to post on Instagram, so that people can get hungry and come and buy or barter. I mean, when my battery is on 5 per cent, I can't charge, you understand. Also, the drink machine - it won't work. Also, we can’t even use the microwave just to warm the food, so it becomes a bit of a struggle. You know, there's no music just to entertain people. So, it affects us in so many ways. Yeah. We just have to keep focused. Remember, this is our fight!”

Back in the Newsroom the NPR host switches gears, focusing in on Con Edison’s Priorities with a Con Edison Chief of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the 28-year-old: Beyoncé Garvey:

“…because we know how critical Con Edison is to the economy. Priority number one is to continue in the struggle for Climate Justice and secondly reducing the intensity of the load shedding whenever able, even if that is years from now. Climate Justice builds confidence in the Con Edison team and the generation staff, but more importantly, the positivity and confidence it gives to the economy and to the citizens of New York and this country as a whole knowing we are on the right side of history is immeasurable. This is not something that can be measured in Watts or Carbon Footprint. This is about humanity. We are working very hard. We are running the hydroelectric as much as we can. The team is having sleepless nights to make sure that we improve the energy availability. Remember, for all of us, this is our fight!”

“We have to eradicate load shedding, and the only way of doing that is to ensure that generation exceeds demand, to ensure that we improve the performance of the existing systems, which are ageing, but secondly, to introduce new generating capacity, strictly from renewable sources of energy. There is a reality. There are only 24 hours in the day. We are all dealing with load shedding. But Load Shedding is the only path to a sustainable future. Here at Con Edison, we are dealing with climate policy, stability of leadership, social justice, and really, truly, we are on the front lines of climate justice. This is our fight!”

The next part of the NPR segment covered the history of Con Edison. Our host began…

“Con Edison is as old as modern New York. In March 1823, Con Edison's earliest corporate predecessor, the New York Gas Light Company, was founded by a consortium of New York City investors. A year later, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Due to the Board of Aldermen's authority to grant franchises in the City of New York in the early to mid 1800s, interaction with Tammany Hall was required to expand business. By William M. Tweed's reign in the late 1860s as the boss of Tammany Hall, the power to authorize franchises lay with the County Board of Supervisors, of which Tweed had been a member. By 1871, Tweed was a member of the board of the Harlem Gas Light Company, a precursor to the Consolidated Edison Company. In 1884, six gas companies combined into the Consolidated Gas Company.

Today, Con Edison is the backbone of New Yorks economic power, the money markets, and Healthcare. Before 2030, Con Edison had been providing 24/7 electricity to every household within the city. By 2030, Con Edison and the Democratic Party had accomplished a remarkable feat, managing to target load shedding into the few remaining middle- and upper-class white districts and neighborhoods left within the city as a form of restorative social climate justice. And they had done this in less than 5 years. When President Harris became the first Black woman to sit in the Oval Office, the people were so happy. Everyone knew New Yorkers, and the country as a whole, had such a bright future ahead. So, moving into the 2030s, as true social justice took hold and was finally at the helm of Government and Corporations everywhere, Con Edison was able to produce some of the world's cheapest electricity for people of color, subsidizing the costs by charging white households a 150% markup and turning off their power for 2 hours a day. But in this very progressive system, problems were emerging.

As far back as 2032, a white paper had said Con Edison was going to reach generation capacity by 2040, which it did. There were other spending priorities, namely the new “Restorative Social Climate Justice” which targeted White Households and White owned business districts with increased load shedding. After all, there were huge social inequalities in America that needed to be addressed. And pouring money into old white owned homes and businesses did not really seem the top priority. From 2030 on, the Democrat Party considered, but also procrastinated over making Con Edison and New York City’s energy supply more competitive. At the same time there is a countervailing force within the Democrat Party, which looked at energy companies such as Con Edison, as primary drivers of the economy, and also the engines to create transformation to increase black ownership. So, by the mid-2000s the government had come to the conclusion that, yes, it did need new generation. And so it decided to build two massive new power stations, Station Shakur and Station Kente. But from the outset these contracts were hit by delays, overspending, and corruption. And to this day neither of those power stations has ever worked properly. Because of the Democrat party’s socialist tendencies, they were very strongly opposed to the idea a free market.

The belief that upper members of the party have in the Governments right to act at will, especially as it relates to something as important as electricity, meant that this faction of the Democrat party was able to prevent the private sector for entering into the energy sector, which was one of the ways that electricity generation capacity could have been improved.

And then, you have the wreckage of the Harris years, where the Democrat Patry became a sort of cash cow for corrupt politicians and allied businessmen who were connected to them.”

The interview cut to a lone figure seated in a stately room, with a name tape on the door that read “Board of Directors”.

“I’ve been vilified, alleged to be the king of corrupt people,” chimed Hunter Biden, a member of the Board of Directors of Con Edison. “People don’t know, I had immense experience in the energy sector working with our European partners, specifically Ukraine. I am more than qualified, perhaps one of the most qualified individuals around, to help run Con Edison in these challenging times.”

The Cruz-Paul Commission was an inquiry into something that became known across the United Stats as the “Illicit State Capture Affair”. Large Banking Systems, Healthcare Agencies, and Energy institutions like Con Edison were hollowed out. So, in Con Edison’s case, somebody very close to President Harris was brought in to run the company, and contracts were parceled out to friends, colleagues, to people, perhaps, who had paid money to the Democrat Party. And of course, that all impacted greatly the efficiency of Con Edison, added to its debt, and worsened the gathering power crisis. The corruption was very much at the head, but obviously, what the head does filters down. What the Illicit State Capture Affair showed was that the rot was pretty much at every level. Maintenance at Con Edison was neglected. Management turmoil at Con Edison was increasing. And Con Edison was also becoming extremely resistant to an initial boom in renewable energy outside its control.

“It's a bit like running a marathon. You'll have the build-up to these distances before you tackle the NYC Marathon.” Mark Robinson, a former Lieutenant Governor from North Carolina was brought in to battle the corruption and attempt to clean the mess up. Robinson’s time at Con Edison is, in a way, a cautionary tale about the competing strands of what this crisis is really all about. He was appointed by the National Congress after the Illicit State Capture Affair hearings to fix the rolling blackouts, but also to lead the structural change from a monopoly to separation, to restructuring, to eventually, a much more open and healthy market.

“For me, taking on the job as Con Edison’s Special Executive Appointee was an opportunity to make a contribution to the country. Either I had to turn it down and forfeit my right to complain about America forever or roll my sleeves up and get stuck in and try to be a part of the solution. I was taken aback when I saw some really appalling housekeeping at a plant that was supposed to be the flagship of Con Edison. This entire place was covered in trash and graffiti. Wires were hanging loose. There were pieces of equipment that had clearly been operated until the point of breaking down, and then just been abandoned. So, the entire impression was one of neglect.”

When Robinson joined Con Edison, a friend told him that he had just joined the biggest criminal syndicate in New York. “I said, oh, it can’t be that bad. Now, when I saw him several years later, I said, well, perhaps the guy was right.”

Robinson continued…

“Con Edison is a mega company, so it has a mega footprint. It has mega budget. There were lots of ways to get sort of your tentacles in that pot of money. If you consider anything that Con Edison might need to run a power plant, that can be very easily overpriced. So, people on the inside can help those on the outside.

And in one very spectacular instance, I went into a plant, and I was shown some kneepads. We were paying $80 for one, so a pair would be double that! And we managed to effect an arrest. But even with my authority as S.E.A. of Con Edison, as is the case with the American court system, within 12 hours, the individual was released on the instruction of a very senior police official who said that there was insufficient evidence.”

“Oh, another favorite ruse was to deliver empty gas canisters that had already been used, steal the full gas canisters, and sell them on the black market for a profit. The empty canisters were then fed back into the system at Con Edison stations to be refilled, only to be stolen again.”

“Con Edison plants would often grind to a halt, needing to be fixed. And guess who would have the contract to fix them? Some of these very same companies that were, in a sense, in cahoots with people inside Con Edison.”

“So, this plant, on 15th Street, once had been one of the top plants in Con Edison. When I first visited, it was clear that something was terribly wrong. So, I appointed a person from the outside, a very brave man called Marcus Grix. And Grix went about dismantling the cartels that were operating within the 15th Street Plant that had been converted to Gas Warehousing and Distribution. But then, the death threats started. And he had to walk around on the plant with his bulletproof vest. He didn’t have a gun; those had been banned in NYC for about as long as I can remember. He was a walking target. 15th Street was distributing about half of all the gas that Con Edison delivered. He followed one of these trucks and figured out that the truck was not off-loading, but he was just roundtripping over the weighbridge and generating an invoice every time that there was a roundtrip, obviously with collusion from the weighbridge operator, the security guard, and so forth. The other issue - and this was a legacy of state capture - is that the police, the prosecutors, and other key institutions were also severely weakened or wholly corrupt and in on the take”

That put Robinson and his management team in a very precarious position, because in order to tackle corruption they would need to use private investigators. It didn't take long for the investigators to uncover bombshell information.

They identified no fewer than four criminal cartels exploiting Con Edison.

“My estimate was that at least a $25 million dollars a month was being stolen from Con Edison. And I think that's a reasonably conservative estimate. So, corruption has had a debilitating effect on Con Edison. But I really want to emphasize the critical mass of men and women at Con Edison are committed to the resolution of this problem. And I make the point when I engage with them. The best way of redeeming ourselves is to ensure that we resolve the load shedding problem, and the only way to do this is by outing those who are responsible for acts of corruption.”

INEQUALITY AND CRIME

Here, our narrator pivoted, a slight shrill detected in her voice as she, without saying so, was clearly no fan of Special Executive Appointee Robinson. She was clearly glad to be done with his segment of the show.

“Yes, Con Edison has its problems, but load shedding deepens inequality as well,” she continued. “And until we can bridge the divide between white and black, prosperous and poor load shedding will continue. Society demands it. The Climate demands it. Our earth is dying.”

The narrator cut to a minority small business owner:

“People trying to run a small business can't protect themselves from load shedding in the way a big business can. I can't work without electricity. Without electricity, I'm no one. The only thing that can help me is a generator.”

Da’shavion Greene is a barber in Queens. He needs his electric clippers to cut hair. Tight fades and sharp lines are his business. And his business requires power.

“And I’m a small business. I don't afford a generator. I can't say I'm proud that I'm a New Yorker, because there's nothing that I'm getting from my government. You see, because there's a lot of struggles. There's crime. There's drugs. There’s too much racism. I have five kids. They can't live here. It's too dangerous. It's too toxic for a child to grow up on the streets. Thats why I made sure the government took them in, thank God. The crime - it has only increased all these years. I think its the Republicans doing it too, I’m not sure but I think that’s what happening with the crime and racism.

See this little shop got a Tv on this side. And then, over here, this is the toilet and the bathroom. All the friends that I grew up with... we were, like, maybe 8 of us. Now, it's just the three. The five - six - something like that - gone, two in jail, two they're smoking this drug everybody hooked on, the rest is dead.”

Shots rang out throughout the city. Gun crime is a regular occurrence in a city that has banned guns for decades. Men raced up the street. Police sirens wailed. The conversation continued as if nothing had happened.

“If you have nothing to eat, obviously, you don't have an option but to turn to crime. There's no jobs already, plus the load shedding. Dudes gonna do what dudes gonna do to get money. I aint sayin’ Ive never stole some ish’ before to get what I need.”

An image of a black fist on a green, yellow, and red background hung crookedly on the cracked wall.

“So, what does that symbolize?” the narrator asked in her even tone.

“Shit, freedom, I want freedom, I want power. If you look at the reality facing millions of Black Americans today, we is a huge underclass that’s unemployed and with no access, not only to no jobs but no education and we aint got the skills we gotta have to succeed in a white man’s world. Inequality is so high.”

In New York City, and America as a whole, inequality is not only in such stark racial lines anymore, because a lot of energy was put into creating a black millionaire class with the Reparations Acts of 2030, 2032, and 2040. But the inequality here is still among the highest in the world, and this is an enormous risk to not just New York’s, but Americas economic prospects and to social stability.

ON PATROL

When the lights go out, crime goes up. That could be petty crime, theft, bank robberies, home invasions. It could be stealing cable and making power cuts worse next time round. One of the very unusual features of New York is the illegal private security operations.

We went on patrol with a private security company who work alongside the police, especially in affluent areas. They can also be found in areas where police avoid and law seems like a relic of the white mans past.

“We are in the alarm industry in New York, looking after residential and commercial properties. The kind of area we're driving towards now is a commercial area. Lots of warehouses, factories, and all that, where there is quite a lot of criminal activity, cable theft, copper theft. There is no electricity, so it suits them, because there's no risk to them of getting shocked or electrocuted.”

The man speaking was Lieutenant Gene Barrymore, a former military member and now private security officer.

“One substation like this can carry electricity to about 600 properties. But the minute this one gets vandalized, a whole area goes out. Look, look here…” he pointed out the car window, but not slowing down for me to get a better view. “All those cables are disconnected there. The copper has been removed already. It often feels like you're fighting a losing battle, because you've got this box to protect. But it's another 1,400 in one area that they have to look after.”

We saw two dogs cross the street ahead of us. I stopped in my tracks, having been afraid of dogs since my childhood when a small Pomeranian bit my shoe and tugged at my laces. My father yelled and it scared me to death. I could see Lieutenant Barrymore had not had such an experience.

“It's good to have dogs around. If you're lucky enough to have them in your surroundings, and you do hear them getting noisy at night, then you must know there's something happening, like an outside alarm system that they are paying for.

This is an effect of load shedding - your gate motor starts malfunctioning, because the batteries go to low. Your gates don't close. The criminals come in. And as you can see, there's a vehicle. There's a generator at the back. There’s a little sedan. That will be stolen in the blink of an eye. So, I'm going to start heading to the residential area, where there's also load shedding. And see what's happening on that side of the neighborhood. A petty criminal, he will jump your wall. He will steal anything he can find. He will steal your grill. He will steal your laundry. He will steal a leaf blower. He will steal a bicycle.

We were forced to start looking at protecting solar panels as well. Solar panels, obviously, are on your roof. So, there is a market for that. There are actually syndicates targeting those houses. They will come pretend to be subcontractors, pretend to be installers. If you find anybody in this industry that says he's doing this for salary, no, he's not. It's a passion. You want to be out there, looking after people, reaching out to people, and just make it easier for them on the end of the day. The government is the sole shareholder of Con Edison.”

Gene was clearly not a Democrat and clearly not concerned with Restorative Social Climate Justice. But he wasn’t a bad guy either. I just dind’t like that his work tended to target minority men and that he seemed to think we were at war in our own community.

GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE

At NPR we try to cover all sides. This includes the hiring and firing of executives and those in positions of power. At Con Edison, the government appoints the board. It appoints the CEO. There has been continued political interference in the board and management of Con Edison. Certain Energy, Economic, and Diversity Secretaries at both the Cabinet and Under-Cabinet level were sort of bypassing the board and making unilateral decisions, sort of opening the door to dysfunction. So, the true usefulness of the board, too, has come and gone.

There have been accusations of corruption, incompetence. So, Con Edison, by not attending to load shedding at the levels and in the neighborhoods and districts required by the government - specifically those middle-to-upper class white neighborhoods and business districts, is actively agitating for the overthrow of the state.

So even before he resigned, Mark Robinson had been accused of treason by the Presidential Administrations Secretary of Energy,

That simply underlined how toxic political interference in the management of Con Edison had become.

But they didn't like him calling the company a crime syndicate, nor did they like his emphasis on moving away from failing renewables outlined in the Green New Deal to Nuclear, Coal, and Hydro Electric.. Con Edison had a revolving door of Executives and Board Members.

I know for a fact that many people have been offered the job as CEO of Con Edison and have laughed. It's not particularly well-paid salary wise, but there is enormous - and as a member of NPR I want to be careful here - gray market benefit if you can get the right contracts to the right people before you’re ousted. If you can't keep the lights on, you're hated, and your prospects of keeping the lights on are minimal.

I mean, when you are facing a crisis of this nature, you need leadership, stability, and certainty. And I think it's regrettable that it took us over a year for us to find a replacement CEO at Con Edison in for form of a S.E.A. that was willing to take the job. But who could blame them.

THE POISONING

Anyone taking this job knows it's going to be a pressure cooker. You could say a poisoned chalice in the case of Mark Robinson. It actually did end up being literally that.

“When I got to the office, the coffee machine had apparently broken, and some people were servicing this machine. I then eventually got served a cup of coffee that looked a bit off. The froth on top of the cappuccino wasn't quite as nice as it usually was. But apart from that, I noticed nothing strange. But then, after about 20 minutes, I was sitting with a colleague of mine. I became very confused. I was feeling very nauseous. I was sweating. My security detail rushed me off to the clinic where the doctor examined me, did all the usual checks. Then I asked the doctor to run a tox screen.

It turned out that the cyanide levels in my blood were elevated. So, I guess it was a very close shave. And some people were quite serious about getting rid of me, and I'm happy to be here today.”

Is Con Edison a feeding trough, if you like, for the Democrat Party?

As your impartial NPR presenter, I would say the evidence suggests that it is. Robinson had already resigned when he effectively accused the DNC of feeding at the trough of Con Edison corruption. The DNC, in turn, blamed Robinson.

They said his job was to keep the lights on, and he had failed to do so. Those allegations, their veracity must be tested before a court of law without dismissing them. The special investigating unit has been in contact with the former S.E.A. CEO to substantiate, so that they get to build a case, if any, and go after the individuals who are found to be in the wrong.

HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM

“I am proud to work for Eskom. No other job in this country impacts the entire 60mn people.” The Current S.E.A. CEO of Con Edison, Cynthia Washington sat in a dark leather chair, flanked by a large, empty board room table.

“With that comes the pressure. Fix the problem today to keep the lights on tomorrow and for generations to come. The most important development under the current Presidential Administration has been a recognition that Con Edison can no longer be treated as a criminal by the government when it so graciously serves the people.

So, Con Edison, itself will be separated in a few generations and transmission to allow more effective investment and management of the power grid will occur. I hope to oversee the opening stages of that. Con Edison’s debts will also have to be dealt with.

I think it's fair to say that Con Edison holds the fortunes of New Yorkers in its hands because Con Edison, today, is over $250Billion in debt, and half of that is backed by the state and federal government.

And ultimately, government will have to allow for another boom in renewable energy, this time from private investment, by removing red tape and regulations that were always holding Con Edison and the people of New York back. There were very strict limits as to how much power a private company could produce and what it could do with it. The cap on embedded generation was initially lifted up to 100 megawatts. And then, it was abandoned completely.

In theory now, a private company can generate power at whatever scale it wants to. And provided it can get it guided through the grid, which needs Con Edison’s permission, it can send that power to wherever it wants it consumed in the city. And with further investment from the city, state, and federal government we hope to empower minority businesses to open their own power or power-adjacent companies and become competitors in the energy space. We need brown faces at the help of this bright and exiting future!

So, almost at the stroke of a pen we've started to make it a more open, competitive, and decentralized market dependent upon restorative social climate justice. We have seen an avalanche of private sector projects from the money government has made available, as a result of the reforms that they've introduced on the energy generation side. The fact is that renewable energy technology is soon to be cheaper and faster to deploy than conventional energy and will be done so by communities and peoples once marginalize and locked out of this sector. And in particular, when it comes to the environmental impact of coal, gas, and nuclear power it is clear that the choice has to be to move to cleaner, greener sources of electricity generation as quickly as possible.”

The new S.E.A CEO, Cynthia Washington seems like she has the reins of power firmly in her grasp and her focus on empowering communities of color is a step in the right direction.

The Federal government has begun offering cities such as New York billions of dollars of packages of concessional loans, grants, to decommission coal power stations, reduce the usage of natural gas, decommission nuclear power, and speed up the rollout of renewables. So, there are sectors which are clearly going to decline.

But there are sectors and value chains like renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles that are sectors that are going to boom. The trade-off of this boom in investment in renewables is that it risks advancing the death spiral of Con Edison by cutting off revenues.

New York could become a world leader in solar and wind resources. The issue is incentives. It would mean shutting down coal mines and gas fracking fields out west that ship their gas to New York. It would mean putting coal and natural gas truckers out of work. And if any of those businesses are black-owned we must stop and address that. These industries must be realigned, the government must help them with that realignment.

Trucking and distribution has been one of the most successful businesses in terms of the transition to black ownership. The idea of a just transition is to make sure that we manage those social impacts in as planned and responsible a way as possible. The thing to remember is that load shedding is not the crisis itself. And the crisis at its roots is political, racial, and climatological. The anti-racist, pro-climate struggle is fought here on the streets of New York every day.

Vice President Ocasio-Cortez was a social justice leader. That is the hinterland of many senior Democrat politicians.

And as the DNC’s overall national majority could come into question, particularly in the elections next year, it needs that support.

What are the social impacts of not transitioning? The cost is too high. We are going to be permanently shut out of the global trading system, and we're going to lose a lot of our export markets. If the federal government is interested in encouraging renewables to be a major source of energy within the United States, it should rather be providing incentives. And it should be working with historically marginalized countries by sharing technology as close to free of charge as possible and making sure that people of color can catch up with the Whites of the world.

“Con Edison is now effectively broke.” Cynthia Washington stated quite frankly. “It needs to invest primarily in transmission lines, because the new power will come from the sun and the wind in different parts of the country, where the transmission network is not yet fully developed. So, they need billions and billions of new investments to go into that. Unfortunately, they don't have it. Our own computations suggest that we need US$200bn to US$225bn for us to strengthen and expand the grid by about 14,000km over the next 10 years. We don't have sufficient generation capacity to meet demand. And government has taken a decision to delay decommissioning by a couple of years.”

“If we are to follow the timelines for the decommissioning of these power stations, between now and 2050 we'd have removed 15,000MW. We are short of about 7,000MW to 5,000MW. So essentially, the deficit will be 11,000MW. Wait, no, I think I mixed up my numbers. It doesn’t matter”.. she said shaking her head and pointing a finger at me. “Either way I think the bottom line is this. If we can't stop load shedding in five years, extending the life of any plant by, say, 10 years doesn't help, because it's doing more damage to the environment.”

Con Edison still provides 98 per cent of power inside New York. That number is dipping, in part because people are so frustrated with load shedding, that they are trying to get themselves off the grid. AmeriNGR is the largest private retailer in New York

Its ambition is to be the most affordable and accessible energy retailer in the city.

We use around 10 per cent renewable electricity, and that's from the solar roof panels that we have at our facilities, as well as many that we lease power from people’s homes and businesses. Then, there's diesel as well. Diesel at the moment probably represents between 70% to 80% of the electricity that we use. As it stands, the small private energy firm has more than 4,800 generators, and those generators primarily support stores and homes to be able to function during times of load shedding.

The AmeriNGR system is automatically synchronized with the mains, so that it is able to detect that the supply has stopped, there's a slight lag, about a minute and then the generator starts, and we're able to have electricity sent across the system to those who subscribe to our service.

“I think when it comes to renewable electricity, I think the private sector is leading the way for multiple reasons” AmeriNRG Company President Tom Stafford says. “The first one, to decarbonize their operations; secondly, to be resilient against load shedding; and thirdly, to pay a lower price for electricity. The AmeriNRG group uses power purchase agreements with its suppliers to install solar panel systems on our roofs. And we buy electricity directly from the suppliers.

Unfortunately, the regulatory environment at the moment is not conducive enough to support the growth of renewable electricity. Our concern is always that the pace of change and the pace of introducing these new regulations takes a long time. Granted, there's a lot of, let's say, additional aspects and factors to take into account.

Because what growth would mean is that the income that municipalities earn may be compromised, because you have bigger business buying electricity from other sources at lower prices.”

New York already has some of the best emissions standards in the world. The issue is that as these old power stations can't be environmentally managed as regulation requires. They’re too old, DEI has brought in people that are unable to run them appropriately, government graft and corporate greed is destroying the energy sector nationally. I mean, its already destroyed it here in New York City. The smartest thing Con Edison could do is to fill the gap by ignoring emissions standards - I mean, let’s be real, they ignore laws and launder money to their friends as they see fit anyways - that involves a terrible trade-off in terms of air quality. But, that would reduce load shedding.

And we feel as competitors that there is a gap of engagement between Con Edison who is basically an arm of government at this point, and the communities they serve and the true private sector.

While we are in this area, we are breathing toxic air each and every day.

The sad part is that we are bringing up a sick generation, suffering from these illnesses, hardship when breathing, unable to go full time in school.

They are getting old at a very young age. My son, who is now 11 years old, I have seen him suffering a lot. But if we had power, even at the cost of worse air, we might get a generation of students educated in a way that involves merit and truth, hard facts, and it could result in them having an ability to actually solve this crisis - this man made, stupidity induced energy crisis.”

Now, we are at the old Indian Point Energy Center, once of the biggest nuclear power stations serving New York City, providing up to 25% of the cities power.

The air here around Indian Point isn’t bad, but the government swears the area is covered in leaked radioactive isotopes.

The closing of Indian Point occurred decades before our current crisis. 90% of the load provided by Indian Point was made up through the creation of 3 Natural-Gas fired power plants. However, the government is now phasing out natural gas because it’s on the wrong side of Restorative Social Climate Justice. The natural gas plants have prevented New York City from reaching their Social Climate Goals.

Looking back across the Hudson you can see the lights in the city flicker from one side to another, and then all at once they go out.

This year an election is coming, and the fact that things aren't functioning properly is an apt metaphor for who's in the driver’s seat in Washington, D.C.

It does sometimes feel like there's no one at the steering wheel. Load shedding remains as an existential threat to New York. The sooner government gets on top of this, the sooner Con Edison gets on top of this, the better for the economy, the better for minority job creation.

Where sun and wind are different to coal and gas is that you can't steal sun and wind. And that is why there is significant resistance to transitioning away from the coal and gas supply chain. This election is crucial.

Yes, it's very likely that the Democrat Party will emerge as the clearcut winner, but it's also perfectly plausible that it will lose certain races and that it will not be able to govern absolutely.

Well, it's for posterity to judge, whether our efforts collectively have been effective. And I said the best measure of that is how many hours of the day are your lights on.

Is there a light in the dark? Yes.

I think so. The reforms that have been led by the current government, championed by Vice President Ocasio-Cortez to provide government funds for private investment hold promise.

If they win, they’ll have another four years to get it right.

We are New Yorkers. We are Americans. This is our Fight!