A pair of recently inked contracts to fuel more than one-third of New York City’s electricity grid with renewable energy will raise monthly electricity bills for upstate ratepayers up to 9.9 percent once the projects are on-line.  

Both downstate (ConEdison) and upstate (National Grid) customers will bear the project costs equally based on load share, but upstate customers—who tend to have lower electricity bills—are expected to experience roughly double the percentage increase. 

That’s according to petition just filed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which is now seeking to have the contracted projects approved by the Public Service Commission. 

The projects seem headed for approval, since Governor Hochul signed off on them and her office issued a press release Tuesday trumpeting their expected contribution toward achieving the seemingly-quixotic milestones for greenhouse gas reduction and alternative energy development required under the state’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). Those metrics include the state (somehow) achieving 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 and a zero-emissions electricity supply by 2040. 

Those goals would necessitate greening New York City’s electricity grid, since the city consumes about one-third of state-wide electricity, and it does so by relying overwhelmingly on fossil-fuel generated electricity, especially after the decommissioning of the Indian Point nuclear facility.  

The dual projects contracted for are a 375-mile transmission line to bring hydropower from Quebec, and a 174-mile transmission line from Delaware County, that would transmit solar and wind energy from Central New York. The expected total cost of the two projects is nearly $24 billion, according to the petition. 

In related news Tuesday, the New York State Climate Action Council (Council) held a virtual public meeting at which it discussed a strategy to continue dodging — in its long-awaited “draft scoping plan” to be issued later this month—the question of who will pay the hundreds of billions of dollars required to achieve the CLCPA’s climate goals. 

A draft plan circulated in advance to the Council members (but not the public) prompted member concern regarding the need for an analysis of “energy affordability and impacts to consumer pricing.” But the “proposed resolution” to that concern was to point to the Council’s cost-benefit analysis. As we recently noted, however, that analysis makes no attempt to estimate ratepayer impact on the grounds that it’s currently unclear what specific policies will be adopted to achieve the law’s climate goals.   

But if the Council is not going to propose such policies, what will it do?  And if neither the CLCPA authors nor the council created by the law are determining how the law’s clean energy metrics are to be met, who is? 

Judging by the NYSERDA petition filed Tuesday, the unelected members of the Public Service Commission will be making a lot of the calls, as they decide the fate of ratepayers on a case-by-case basis, in a decidedly non-democratic forum, far removed from the public eye.   

You may also like

NY 2nd in the Nation for Homeschooling Growth

A Washington Post analysis of homeschooling trends revealed that families in New York have flocked to home education at rates Read More

Don’t Tell The Grownups: NY Still Hiding State Test Scores

State education officials are refusing to release the results of federally required assessments in grades 3 through 8, deliberately keeping parents and taxpayers in the dark—not only about how New York’s public schools performed, but also about how that performance was measured. Read More

In a Tight Budget Year, New York’s Hospital Lobby Shoots for the Moon

As Governor Hochul calls for spending restraint next year, influential hospital lobbyists are pushing what could be the costliest budget request ever floated in Albany. In a , the G Read More

What You Should Know: NY’s changing graduation requirements

Months after lowering the scores to pass state assessment exams, New York education officials are considering eliminating the Regents diploma. Read More

Putting the Mission in Hochul’s Health Commission

Last week Governor Hochul answered one big question about her Commission on the Future of Health Care – the names of its members – but left a fundamental mystery unresolved:  W Read More

Medicaid Drug ‘Carve-Out’ Led to Double Payments

The state's Medicaid program has effectively been double-paying for prescription drugs for the past six months due to a glitch with the roll-out of its pharmacy "carve-out." Since A Read More

Rikers and Wrenches Help Push NYC Overtime to $2.5 Billion

A total of 864 New York City employees last year collected more than $100,000 each in overtime, with nine of them—including three NYCHA plumbers—collecting over $200,000 each. Read More

No More Villages?

Dr. Gerald Benjamin, one of the top authority's on New York state and local government, makes the case for changing how villages are created as two related bills head to Gov. Hochul's desk. Read More

Empire Center Logo Enjoying our work? Sign up for email alerts on our latest news and research.
Together, we can make New York a better place to live and work!