NY Nuke Plan Calls for $24 Billion in Public Subsidies Based on Severely Flawed Analysis
Albany Logic: State Drives Up Demand by Giving Ultra-Cheap NYPA Power to Mega-Industrial Users; Wants New Yorkers To Pay Billions for Nukes
Reinvent Albany has no position on nuclear energy. However, we do feel strongly about the NYS government being honest with the public about important decisions. Unfortunately, the State is asking average New Yorkers to pay more than $24 billion in taxes or higher electricity charges for new nuclear power plants based on a severely flawed analysis and circular reasoning.
Yesterday, Reinvent Albany commented to the Department of Public Service (DPS) on its 2026 NY Advanced Nuclear Policy Options Paper, which is based on the 2025 NYS Energy Plan.
Reinvent Albany’s Key Points:
- Building new nuclear plants will cost New Yorkers at least $24 billion in taxes and electricity charges they would not otherwise pay. Crucially, the State has not said what share of costs will be paid by the federal government, state taxpayers, NY residential ratepayers, or the NY industrial users driving demand.
- There is a substantial financial risk to New York taxpayers and ratepayers. The only two reactors built in the U.S. in the last 35 years, both in Georgia, were $20 billion over budget and seven years late.
- The NYS Energy Plan says power use will increase 24% by 2040. NYISO projects that 61% of that new demand will come from commercial and industrial users, about 1.7 gigawatts from manufacturing (mostly Micron) and 1.7 gigawatts from data centers.
- The State’s projections ignore the artificially increased demand from the 2 GW in ultra-low cost power NYPA allocates to large load users. Pricing power far below the market price results in waste and discourages large electricity users from investing in energy-saving technology.
- The State did not model potential reductions in demand from charging recipients of cheap NYPA power the market price for electricity. The elasticity of demand for U.S. industrial electricity users is known: on average, a 50% increase in electricity prices would reduce the power consumption of large load users by 9.8%.
- NY residential customers pay at least 2.76 times more than industrial customers for power. According to 2025 NYSERDA Patterns and Trends (ES-2), the cost for Residential (B-12) was $263.90/MWh versus $95.5MWh for Industrial (B-13).