park-wind-farm-3704939_640-150x150-5886927Upstate electricity customers could shell out more than $1 billion to cover the state’s initial round of subsidies for offshore wind turbines, the Cuomo administration’s energy agency has now revealed.

Documents filed today by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) with the state Public Service Commission place the total pricetag on the subsidies as high as $2.2 billion (in 2018 dollars), essentially by promising to pay the operators about double the current wholesale price of electricity on Long Island and New York City for a 25-year period.

Those subsidies will be collected using the PSC’s rate-setting powers, as electric utilities and large electric customers are forced to buy offshore wind renewable energy credits (ORECs) commensurate with the amount of energy they handle on the state’s grid. That funding mechanism means utility customers as far away as Buffalo and Plattsburgh have to chip in—and more than half the funds will come from electricity customers north of New York City.

(Electricity companies, by the way, are prohibited from showing the cost of these subsidies on customer bills).

The awards cover less than 20 percent of the 9,000 megawatts of wind turbines the state is slated to subsidize under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act signed in July–meaning upstaters can expect to be tapped again in the next few years.

The costs of these turbines, which Governor Andrew Cuomo says are necessary to reduce the state’s carbon emissions, were needlessly inflated by the Cuomo administration’s insistence that contractors use union labor, abide by the state’s Section 220 “prevailing wage” and by the state’s decision to restrict bidding to just a handful of companies that already hold leases in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Cuomo administration, meanwhile, has blocked less expensive forms of renewable energy (namely most Canadian hydro) from competing for state subsidies. 

You may also like

Hochul Pushes New Energy Tax Past Next Election

Governor Hochul has further delayed what amounts to a tax on energy until after the next general election.  Almost six years after the state adopted an aggressive emissions-cutting Read More

Cuomo’s House Testimony Added New Misinformation about Covid in Nursing Homes

Throughout the scandal over former Governor Andrew Cuomo's handling of Covid-19 in nursing homes, Cuomo and his administration repeatedly spread bad information – misstating how its policies had worked, understating death Read More

What Paul Francis Got Wrong About the Empire Center’s Nursing Home Research

In February 2021, the Empire Center published the first independent analysis of the Cuomo's administration much-debated directive ordering Covid-positive patients into nursing homes. The report found that the directive was associated with a statistically significant increase in resident deaths in the homes that admitted the  infected patients. Read More

Internal Cuomo Administration Documents Showed Evidence of Harm from Nursing Home Order

State Health Department documents from June 2020, newly unearthed by congressional investigators, appear to show harmful effects from a controversial order requiring nursing homes to admit Covid-positive patients. Read More

On Covid in Nursing Homes, There’s No Comparison Between Cuomo and Walz

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo and his political critics have something in common: They're both trying to drag Minnesota Governor Tim Walz into Cuomo's nursing home scandal. Cuomo’s attempt to hide behind Walz, li Read More

A Closer Look at $4 Billion in State Capital Grants to Health Providers

[Editor's note: This post was corrected after it came to light that records supplied by the Health Department gave wrong addresses for 44 grant recipients. The statistics and tables below were updated on July 18.] Read More

Hochul’s Pandemic Study Is a $4.3 Million Flop

The newly released study of New York's coronavirus pandemic response falls far short of what Governor Hochul promised – and the state urgently needs – in the aftermath of its worst natural disaster in modern history. Read More

82 Questions Hochul’s Pandemic Report Should Answer

This is the month when New Yorkers are due to finally receive an official report on the state's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the deadliest disasters in state history. T Read More