The northeastern US is a genuinely difficult place to decarbonize. Not many good sites for onshore wind. Offshore wind is intrinsically expensive and now a victim of national politics. You can build solar but it's strongly seasonal. You can also build transmission from elsewhere but again, politics.
And they’re retiring nuclear …
Decarbonizing the New England electricity grid is no harder to do than it is in Germany and they're doing it. It also looks like Massachusetts is figuring it out up there judging by how they're keeping up with California in terms of generating electricity from solar.
Careful: MA imports about half its electricity, and that plot shows %s of generation, not consumption. Germany is windier than the northeastern US and, of course, doesn't have the political barriers to offshore wind. Remember too that US per-capita consumption is much higher than in Germany.
But I certainly agree that NY could do better. Every state could do better. I was just trying to understand Hawaii...