HUDSON VALLEY, NY — It’s the nuclear option.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler and US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright dramatically called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to reopen the Indian Point nuclear plant Friday — a move they argued would reverse New Yorkers’ skyrocketing energy bills.
The power pair used the shuttered plant sitting on the Hudson River as a backdrop for their argument that a “nuclear renaissance” could help ease a burgeoning energy crisis in the Empire State caused by an ill-thought-out turn toward green policies.
“I’m calling for Indian Point to be rebuilt and reopened,” Lawler (R-Hudson Valley) said.
“Hudson Valley families are being suffocated with rising energy costs, because of Governor Hochul’s failed and disastrous energy policies. It is time to reverse course.”
The closure of Indian Point in 2021 came under the watch of then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who also shepherded the passage of a controversial climate bill that set the state on a swift embrace of renewable energy.
Lawler asserted that the needlessly punishing mandates sent New Yorkers’ home electrical bills soaring to 59% higher than the national average, and climbing.
Many critics argued that decommissioning Indian Point — which provided about 25% of New York City’s electrical power with zero-emissions nuclear energy — ironically made the state turn toward natural gas that increased carbon emissions linked to climate change.
“Nuclear power is the cleanest source of energy,” Wright said.
“The Democrats want to talk about net-zero carbon emissions — this is it. And they have a responsibility. If they are serious about bringing down costs, costs that they drove up, they have a responsibility to work with the administration, work with the local government to bring this back online.”
Hochul herself has called the closure of Indian Point a mistake, especially without a “Plan B.”
The governor, who is up for re-election in November, also has increasingly signaled she wants to delay the stringent mandates of the 2019 climate law, which requires 70% of electricity generated in the state be zero emissions by 2030, and 100% green by 2040.
She admitted those green goals can’t be reached as large renewable energy projects fail to get off the ground — and has taken steps toward at least temporarily re-embracing fossil fuels, such as a natural gas pipeline off New York City’s coast, to forestall energy shortages and exorbitant costs for consumers.
The Democratic gov’s administration recently released a memo warning a cap-and-invest program designed to fulfill the law’s emissions goals could make New York City households pay another $2,300 a year in natural gas costs, with upstate residences facing $4,300 in added annual bills.
“For us to meet the goals on the time frame that was set by the legislature, there’s going to be enormous cost to families,” Hochul argued this week.
Progressive lawmakers and environmentalists have decried Hochul’s openness to forestalling the law, arguing that climate change is an existential threat to the plant that will cause much higher long-term costs of all types to New Yorkers and humanity.
Lawler argued that Hochul, who is pushing to build a new nuclear plant upstate, should take the prospect of reopening Indian Point “seriously.”
A reopened Indian Point would have all the latest safety features, said Kris Singh, CEO of Holtec International, which owns the plant.
“It will be new nuclear, at the old plant,” Singh said. “We are going to make numerous improvements, but it will be the same power output or maybe a little more, maybe 10% more.”
Supporters of closing Indian Point argued that the plant roughly 25 miles from New York City could be a terrorism target or, at the very least, too close to the largest American city in case of a Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster.
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