Bill Clinton made headlines this week when he openly attacked ObamaCare as a “crazy system” that “doesn’t make any sense.”
Something similar is now occurring in New York state. Specifically, environmental groups and others on the political left are openly maligning the crony capitalist utility boondoggle that CFIF has been exposing since its introduction in August.
The “Clean Energy Standard” (CES), approved by the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) composed entirely of Governor Andrew Cuomo appointees, mandates that 50% of state energy derive from carbon-neutral sources by the year 2030. And guess what? The CES’s subsidies, which will cost at least $1 billion in the first two years and an estimated $8 billion over the course of the plan, will benefit financially struggling upstate nuclear energy plants owned by a single company named Exelon. Ultimately, of course, that excessive and needless cost will be paid by New York consumers and businesses.
But CFIF and fellow conservative and libertarian groups are hardly alone in opposition to the CES. As highlighted by North Country Public Radio in Canton, New York, environmental groups are openly opposing what it describes as Governor Cuomo’s “$8 billion bailout of three upstate nuclear power plants”:
“Cuomo plans to transition 50 percent of the state’s power to renewable energy by 2030. Part of the program includes a multi-billion dollar subsidy to Exelon, the company that now runs two upstate nuclear plants, Nine Mile Point in Oswego and Ginna near Rochester, and is hoping to run a third plant, FitzPatrick, also in Oswego.
But some environmental groups, including New York Public Interest Research Group, say ratepayers, who were not consulted about the deal, will be stuck with the bill in the form of increased utility rates.
NYPIRG’s Blair Horner said the deal will result in $2.3 billion in increased payments for residential utility customers and even more for businesses in a state that already has among the highest utility rates in the nation, according to a study by the Public Utility Law Project. ‘These charges are essentially a tax to keep aging nuclear power plants online,’ Horner said.”
It’s good to see that bipartisan wisdom isn’t completely a thing of the past.
It bears re-emphasis that nuclear power is a safe, clean, reliable domestic energy source that CFIF favors, one that the U.S. should utilize to a far greater extent. Governor Cuomo’s crony capitalist, global warming alarmist CES scheme, however, is the wrong way to go about that.
New York citizens and businesses shouldn’t have to subsidize this sort of boondoggle, and hopefully the growing bipartisan opposition will force a course correction from Cuomo and the PSC.
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