Senator Avella Urges New Yorkers to Ask Governor to Reject PSC Nuclear Bailout

Queens, NY – This afternoon, Senator Tony Avella urged his fellow New Yorkers to contact the Governor and ask him to reject the Public Service Commission’s (PSC) plan to tax New York residents in order to bail out a number of upstate nuclear power plants. The subsidies were announced by the PSC as part of the Governor’s Clean Energy Standard, which calls for 50 percent of the state’s energy to be renewable by the year 2030.

While Senator Avella strongly supports the Governor’s ambitious, yet desirous, Clean Energy Standard, he finds the PSC’s plan to tax New Yorkers who get no benefit from the nuclear plants totally unfair.

Senator Avella currently has two pieces of legislation in the New York State Senate regarding this inequitable plan. Bill S4800A seeks to place a three-month moratorium on the nuclear specific Zero Emissions Credit program included in the PSC’s plan to give state legislators time to hear directly from PSC why such an increase is necessary. Bill S4417 seeks to prevent the PSC from requiring downstate residents to bail out upstate nuclear plants that they will never use.

In a March 2^nd New York Post op-ed, Senator Avella wrote, “New Yorkers, particularly downstate communities like the one in Queens that I represent, are already paying huge electric bills. It’s unfair to tack on additional charges — particularly when those extra costs can be avoided and when many people cannot afford them anyway. As it is right now, some 800,000 New Yorkers are behind on their energy bills.”

“I urge my fellow New Yorkers to contact the Governor and let him know that they find the PSC’s plan unfair and poorly thought out. It is unreasonable that the PSC is taxing residents across the state to keep open failing power plants that might not even help reach our goal of 50 percent renewable energy by 2030,” said Senator Avella.