According to a new report, the forced closure of New York’s Indian Point nuclear power plant in 2021 led to an 83 percent spike in electricity costs for residents – while also making the state even more reliant on fossil fuels and leading to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The saga has proved to be yet another stark warning about the consequences of the left’s war on nuclear power and the failure of so-called “green” policies.
The 50-year-old Indian Point plant, located about 35 miles north of Manhattan on the Hudson River, was consistently rated “safe” by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and provided ample electricity for America’s largest city. Despite this, environmental activists – aided by now-former Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo – spent decades trying to shutter the facility.
In 2017, the pressure campaign waged by Cuomo and his liberal allies finally succeeded, and Entergy, the plant’s owner, agreed to cease all operations by 2021. “I have personally been trying to close it down for 15 years,” Cuomo bragged at the time. “After extensive litigation and negotiation, Entergy has agreed to end all operations at the facility.”
But the actual results of the closure have been far from the green utopia Cuomo promised.
A study out earlier this month from The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity found that the closure “significantly increase[ed] the state’s reliance on natural gas and affect[ed] electricity costs and reliability.” Specifically, the median electricity price in the state spiked from $24.70 per MWh to $45.39 per MWh or 83.77 percent. Moreover, “if Indian Point had remained operational, New York would have produced 8.03 fewer metric megatons of CO2 in 2022.”
The report also notes that, despite liberal insistence that the plant be closed to meet “green energy” goals, New York is now more reliant on natural gas than ever. In 2017, natural gas accounted for 39 percent of the state’s electricity generation. Now, it accounts for over 50 percent.
In fact, according to an analysis from JP Morgan, New York’s power grid now uses more fossil fuels than Texas.
“From a climate change point of view, it’s been a real step backwards and made it harder for New York City to decarbonize its electricity supply than it could’ve been,” Ben Furnas, a climate and energy policy expert at Cornell University, told The Guardian. “This has been a cautionary tale that has left New York in a really challenging spot.”
Nonetheless, current Governor Kathy Hochul is plowing ahead with the implementation of a radical climate law which mandates that New York get 70 percent of its energy from non-carbon fuels by 2030, and 100 percent by 2040.
As The New York Post Editorial Board has pointed out, the Indian Point closure pushed the state further away from that goal. But Hochul, denying observable reality, has continued to insist that New York will be able to meet its increasing energy demand solely through wind, solar, and hydroelectric power in just 16 years’ time.
The Indian Point debacle has raised serious questions about the approach and even the intent of progressive environmental activists who believe all energy should be supplied by wind and solar. They claim nuclear power is “too expensive, too dangerous and dirty, and takes too long to deploy.” Yet, as the case of Indian Point proves, many of the costs incurred by nuclear power plants are artificially contrived by activist legislatures specifically seeking to drive them out of the market.
Additionally, the Democrat-dominated government of New York has mobilized billions of dollars to create a “net-zero” state and has utterly, and predictably, failed. Despite progressives extolling the virtues of solar, New York’s natural geography and general climate make it one of the worst states for solar power usage. Even a state like California, which has one of the best solar energy climates, still relies on natural gas during off-peak hours. Reliability and consistency in output are among the most significant factors in keeping energy prices low.
Yet, the “renewable or nothing” approach is not the only vision for America’s energy future. In an interview with AMAC Newsline, American Conservation Coalition (ACC) CEO Danielle Butcher Franz stated, “We need an all-of-the-above energy approach that capitalizes on the benefits of each energy source and balances their trade-offs.”
ACC is a nonprofit founded in 2017 by a group of young conservatives to mobilize “young people around environmental action through common-sense, pro-innovation, and limited-government principles.” Their strategy for emissions reduction calls for a hybrid energy mix that optimizes the peak efficiency of each form of energy.
Franz said of the Indian Point failure, “After Indian Point closed, New York’s emissions spiked because the alternative to baseload nuclear energy isn’t wind and solar — it’s coal and natural gas.”
As Franz pointed out, Indian Point is a stark example of how the strategies employed by left-wing environmental activists undermine their own stated goals. By adhering to ideology over science and basic reality, leftist leaders like Cuomo and Hochul have forced their constituents to pay more to keep the lights on while making their state even more reliant on the fossil fuels they claim to abhor.
For as long as the left insists on a “wind and solar or bust” approach to energy and continues its war on nuclear, Americans will find themselves increasingly reliant on traditional energy sources – and at risk of being left in the dark.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.