Hedge fund with Trump ties moving into New York solar power market

A renewable energy company aligned with the world's largest hedge fund — whose owner is President Donald Trump's jobs czar — is looking to build solar farms in the Capital Region, Adirondacks, and the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Currently the company has either built or planned renewable energy projects totaling about 1 gigawatt — equivalent to the energy from two fossil-fuel fired plants and enough to power about 750,000 average homes. The report also examines the issue of a tax assessed on greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide, which an international scientific consensus agrees is driving man-made climate change. BlackRock's report called a carbon tax the "most cost-effective way" for countries to reach goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, market prices for oil, coal and natural gas do not yet reflect the social costs of burning fossil fuels. On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order that called for producing more oil and coal from federal lands, forced through oil pipelines including Dakota Access and Keystone XL, relaxed fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and potentially revoked President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants nationwide 30 percent by 2030.