Gov. Cuomo achieved a political victory earlier this year when he reached an agreement to shutter the Indian Point nuclear facility. While Cuomo has repeatedly claimed that the nuclear plant’s electricity can be replaced with other sources of “clean” energy starting in 2020, the hard reality is that renewables won’t do the trick.
Worse, the state is well on its way to a self-imposed shortage of natural gas-fired generation, despite the governor’s April 11 statement to the editorial board of the Buffalo News supporting natural gas pipelines, “as long as they’re done well and they’re done correctly.”
Consider the numbers. According to data published by the New York Independent System Operator, the independent entity that operates the state’s high-voltage transmission grid and coordinates generating-plant operations, in 2015 all of the wind turbines in the state together generated less than one-fourth as much electricity as Indian Point.
What about offshore wind? It costs at least twice as much as onshore wind. The one contract that has been signed is an agreement between....
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Jonathan A. Lesser, PhD, is the president of Continental Economics, an economic litigation and consulting firm. He is the author of the Manhattan Institute report The Economic Impacts of Closing and Replacing the Indian Point Energy Center.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post