As temperatures hit 100 degrees last week, New York City\u2019s unconventional mayor did something pretty conventional: He urged people to use less electricity.<\/p>\n
But when Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged residents to set their air conditioners<\/a> to 78 degrees (a past practice of both Democrats and Republicans alike), he revealed something far more harmful than the heat index: how much Albany\u2019s policies have driven New York City\u2019s power grid to the point of collapse.<\/p>\n Several factors are at play every summer.<\/p>\n About 90% of homes today have air conditioning; as recently as the 1980s, most didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Portions of the electric system are extremely old by national standards, and the sheer physics of generating and distributing the appropriate voltage and amperage to every corner of such a dense and diverse cityscape borders on the miraculous.<\/p>\n Tighter ozone-emission rules began taking effect in 2023, forcing about a dozen of the city\u2019s smaller power plants to close \u2014 making it even tougher to get juice to every corner.<\/p>\n Recall that the city nearly had rolling blackouts a year ago, as temperatures spiked and older plants broke down in the heat.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why, as far back as the 1990s, mayors have made public appeals on the hottest summer days asking New Yorkers to set thermostats to 78 degrees.<\/p>\n Rudy Giuliani, hardly an \u201cecosocialist,\u201d did it.<\/p>\n So did Mike Bloomberg, and Bill de Blasio, and Eric Adams.<\/p>\n To be sure, 78 isn\u2019t an especially comfortable temperature in a withering heat wave, and the actual benefit for\u00a0the grid is tiny.<\/p>\n And, as The Post reported, Mamdani\u2019s City Hall didn\u2019t exactly lead by example<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fifteen out of 20 spots in municipal office buildings were found to be maintaining much cooler, and much more bearable, temperatures.<\/p>\n Critics were right to mock Mamdani\u2019s hypocrisy.<\/p>\n But what they missed is that his call inadvertently revealed a problem he himself helped cause: the frightening weakness of NYC\u2019s electric grid \u2014 a weakness that makes a 78-degree floor an urgent demand.<\/p>\n The state\u2019s energy policy went off the rails last decade, when Albany set unreachable climate goals, then forced electric utilities to implement them.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Mamdani has fiercely defended that 2019 climate law<\/a> at every turn, even as the negative consequences have piled up.<\/p>\n