Patrick Robbins

And, you know, that continues to position, you know, affordability and reliability, you know, against the transition.

I think about how.

You know, under, you know, the Build Public Renewables Act, which Nat and I worked together on, you know, that was, when was that introduced?

That was introduced in 2020?

Right, and if we had had the political will to use this incredible historic engine, this legacy New Deal project that already governs New York's hydropower resources and has this kind of built-in bond model that you can use, we could have been doing so much more so many years ago.

And that's why I think it's...

It's so frustrating when, you know, I hear elected officials say, you know, oh, well, we're just going to have to keep these power plants on for a little bit longer.

It's like the answer to shutting down these dirty and expensive fuel sources.

You have you specifically have had the answer at your fingertips for years now and you haven't you haven't done it.

So we need political leadership that will actually, you know, have a spine and get us to the.

cheaper electricity and cleaner electricity sources that we need.

Well, I would completely agree with all that.

And to your point about dams, you know, you can't build dams everywhere for sure, but hydroelectric is such a stable source of power that one thing you can do is reinvest the revenue from that power back into the things that you want to see and back into the grid.

And that's what we've been trying to do here in New York

with the New York Power Authority.

You know, when you are fortunate enough to have a resource like that, you know, and up in the Northwest, you have the Bonneville Power Administration, you have these other kind of legacy institutions.

There are these kind of untapped financial engines that can be put to the service of the planet and the ratepayer.

It's also very bipartisan, the kind of indignation that you see about this issue and that you see about high electricity bills.

I mean, I'll tell you, I've done door knocking and canvassing and organizing on kind of a variety of issues over the course of my life.

And I think that probably the easiest canvassing I've ever done is talking to people like, hey, how do you feel about Con Ed?