There is opposition from Suffolk County environmentalists to Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposal to delay for a decade New York State’s climate goals because, according to her, the state can’t meet its targets for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
When the act became law in 2019, it was heralded nationally. “New York climate plan among nation’s most ambitious,” was the headline in the Christian Science Monitor. Its article spoke of the plan leading to “solar panels on every roof” and energy generated by wind power.
The act requires, by 2030, a 40% reduction from 1990 levels of the primary cause of climate change or global warming—emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. And it calls for an 85 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2050.
But as the headline that covered the front page of Newsday last month said: “HOCHUL: PUT BRAKES ON STATE’S CLEAN ENERGY GOALS.” In the accompanying article, Hochul said: “We need more time, and so I am proposing that we amend the law.”
Hochul is also facing criticism, including from Suffolk, for her staunch advocacy of nuclear power. In Suffolk decades ago there was a plan to build seven to eleven nuclear power plants. Grassroots opposition and the state and Suffolk government challenged nuclear power here. The first plant constructed, at Shoreham, was stopped from going into operation.
At the start of this year, the state Public Service Commission under Hochul approved a $33.3 billion state subsidy for four aging nuclear power plants upstate, money to be paid by every electric ratepayer in the state between 2029 and 2049. The billions would go to Constellation Energy, the owner of the plants. “This will be the largest single use of ratepayer dollars compared to any other [state] PSC-approved energy program in history,” said the statewide Alliance for a Green Economy. It follows a $7.6 billion, 12-year statewide ratepayer-paid bailout for the four plants that began in 2016.
Also, Hochul is pushing for five gigawatts of new nuclear power in New York, the equivalent of five large nuclear power plants. She said in a speech last year: “I’m the first Democratic governor in a generation to say to nuclear, ‘I’m embracing this.’ My state will embrace this.”
But from Suffolk, Michelle Santantonio of the South Country Peace Group said last week that her organization “opposes Governor Hochul’s proposal to abandon New York’s commitment to clean, renewable, and affordable energy as envisioned in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act and instead promote nuclear power plants, the most expensive and dangerous way to produce electricity ever invented. At a time when the world is closer to nuclear annihilation than ever, we need to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons and the nuclear reactors that enable them. In 2020 and 2021 alone, the world added 464 gigawatts of wind and solar power-generation capacity, which is more power than can be generated by all the nuclear plants operating in the world today. It is those sources of power for the people that the governor should be supporting.”
Long Islanders—some from Suffolk—gathered last month at the Nassau County Executive Building in Mineola, for, as an announcement said, “a rally urging Long Island state legislators to defend New York State’s landmark climate law from Governor Hochul’s stated intention to weaken it.”
Among those addressing the gathering was Eric Weltman, senior organizer with the Washington, D.C.-based organization, Food & Water Watch. He declared: “We’re proud to stand with so many incredible allies today to speak out against Governor Hochul’s efforts to weaken New York’s climate law—and to urge our state legislators to stop her cynical scheme.” Among the groups present that he named included: the South Shore Audubon Society, New York Public Interest Research Group, Long Island Progressive Coalition, New York Communities for Change, Grassroots Environmental Education, and the Sierra Club.
Weltman said, “We’re in a climate crisis, and our energy bills are too darn high. Yet Hochul is consistently siding with the greedy fossil fuel industry. Hochul’s Trump-like track record includes approving costly fracked gas pipelines, fumbling efforts to build renewable power, and failing to implement clean energy laws. Now Hochul is attempting to sneak a revision of our climate law into the state’s budget, using phony statistics to roll back pollution reduction requirements.”
“Long Island is ground zero for the devastating impacts of climate change, including the pain and suffering and damage from Superstorm Sandy,” he said. “The good news: policies to move off fracked gas and other dangerous and costly fossil fuels and lower utility bills, create good jobs, and reduce air pollution while reducing the threat of climate change…. Our legislators must stand up to Hochul and defend New York’s climate law.”
On March 11—the 15-year anniversary of the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan—a letter was sent to Hochul signed by more than 200 organizations, including groups from Suffolk County.
It began: “The undersigned organizations write to you in strong opposition to your plan to build five gigawatts of nuclear power plants in New York State. New nuclear reactors are not a climate solution and are a sure path to wasting ratepayer money, driving up our bills, and failing to reduce emissions.”
The nuclear fuel cycle—including mining, milling, and fuel enrichment—emits greenhouse gases, and nuclear power plants themselves discharge a radioactive form of carbon, Carbon-14.
“To fulfill your affordability agenda, you must implement solutions proven to reduce energy bills quickly, such as distributed solar, energy efficiency in buildings, rate redesign, and thermal energy networks,” said the letter. “New nuclear reactors will perpetuate all the waste, cost, health, and safety problems of New York’s aging reactors.”
“One need only look,” it continued, “to Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plants.” The first nuclear power plants constructed in the U.S. in 30 years, the two plants “took 17 years to build and cost $36.8 billion, more than twice the originally approved timeline and cost,” and will generate “the most expensive electricity in the world.”