New Yorkers are expected to pay up to $33 billion over the next 20 years to Constellation Energy via their electricity bills.
Contact: Avni Pravin-Buck, Alliance for a Green Economy – avni@agreeny.org, 929-532-1715
Albany – Governor Hochul’s Public Service Commission (PSC) today approved a $33 billion subsidy for the four aging upstate nuclear reactors. The Commission, led by Chair Rory Christian, approved the bailout from 2029 until 2049. This will be the largest single use of ratepayer dollars compared to any other PSC-approved energy program in history. It is also the largest subsidy to any single energy corporation in New York State history.
The massive corporate handout was approved despite strong opposition from organizations across the state, as well as the Onondaga, Tonawanda Seneca, Mohawk, and Tuscarora Nations due to the impacts of nuclear power on their lands and treaty rights. Neither the Governor nor the Public Service Commission have released any information about how they plan to mitigate the impacts of energy bill increases on consumers, particularly the more than 12% of New Yorkers that are already in debt to their energy utility.
This decision runs contrary not only to the governor’s affordability agenda, but also to the State’s Climate Action Plan, developed by the Climate Action Council in 2022. The Climate Action Plan recommends that “If public policy mechanisms are proposed for the continuation of nuclear power generation, effective mechanisms for input and comments by stakeholders and the public should be implemented to include but not be limited to representation from customers, environmental interests, environmental justice communities, labor, local communities, and indigenous communities.” The Climate Justice Working Group goes even further to recommend that “a life cycle analysis of the environmental, health, safety, emissions, and environmental justice impacts of nuclear fuel be conducted and the State proactively plan for the scheduled shutdown of the four reactors upstate.” Neither of these recommendations has been followed.
This is not the first time that New York’s Public Service Commission has approved subsidies for the upstate nuclear reactors. In 2017, the PSC approved a Department of Public Service Staff proposal for up to $7.6 billion through 2029.
“It’s outrageous that New Yorkers will once again be forced to bail out this toxic, money-burning industry with billions and billions more in the coming years. Despite decades of evidence that nuclear power is both inherently dangerous and cost-foolish, Governor Hochul insists on throwing good money after bad, with everyday families footing the bill,” said Food & Water Watch’s New York state director, Laura Shindell. “We’re fed up with the governor’s repeated failure to deliver on promises of clean, affordable energy for this state. She claims she cares about affordability, and then approves this rate increase. We’ve had it.”
“Governor Hochul likes to claim she’s putting affordability first—but frankly, she’s prioritizing corporate profitability at every turn,” said NY Renews Executive Director Stephan Edel. “By allowing her Public Service Commission to approve an additional $33 billion handout to the aging upstate nuclear reactors, she is providing the largest single use of ratepayer money compared to any other Commission-approved energy program, and in the process, providing the largest subsidy to any single energy corporation in the entire state. Despite the growing price tag and opposition from directly impacted communities across the state, including several Haudenosaunee Nations, the Governor is doubling down on this false solution to the climate crisis.”
“Today, Governor Hochul and her Public Service Commission have locked New Yorkers into an expensive and inefficient scheme to enrich Constellation Energy, while taking New York further away from our renewable energy and climate goals,” said Avni Pravin-Buck, Deputy Director of Alliance for a Green Economy. “Every dollar spent on Constellation’s reactors is a dollar that could have gone to building renewable energy and storage, which is cheaper, cleaner, and better for our electricity grid. We’re dismayed to hear that electric ratepayers will now be footing a $33 billion bailout for the upstate nuclear reactors, without any forward-looking plan to transition to renewable resources and storage after these aging reactors must be decommissioned.”
“New York’s nuclear bailout program has always been a classic ‘bridge-to-nowhere’ — forcing households and businesses to fork over pots of gold, only to leave us with an ever-growing pile of radioactive waste,” said Tim Judson of Syracuse, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “Since 2017, we have been charged over $4 billion to prop up old, uneconomical nuclear power plants — 12 times more than we have spent on incentives for renewable energy. The bailout program was supposed to be expensive but temporary, a $7 billion ‘bridge to renewable energy.’ Here we are years down the road, and the PSC has decided not only to make the bailout basically permanent, but to dramatically increase the cost to $33 billion over an extra 20 years. New York needs to pull the plug on it. People in Central and Western New York never signed up to be a colony for nuclear waste, and we could get more jobs, more affordably by ramping up clean, safe renewable energy instead.”
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