A program created by Andrew Cuomo in 2016 to keep vital nuclear power plants running is now up for renewal. As New York faces rising energy costs, declining grid reliability, and a flawed climate law that was written for headlines instead of households, it’s time to stop discriminating against nuclear energy.
The New York State Department of Public Service (DPS) is requesting feedback on its proposed extension of New York’s nuclear Zero Emission Credits program (ZEC). The program originally was created as a way to keep the Lake Ontario nuclear plants open, while allowing Indian Point to close prematurely, through ratepayer subsidies. The DPS wishes to continue the program, justified through the plants’ contributions to NYS’s economic, climate, and electrical goals. The existence of this program brings up a question: Why can’t we just roll nuclear into the wider renewable framework so it can benefit from already existing programs?
To put it more bluntly: why not just call nuclear renewable?
The current definition of renewables in NY was set by the state’s climate law in 2019:
“renewable energy systems” means systems that generate electricity or thermal energy through use of the following technologies: solar thermal, photovoltaics, on land and offshore wind, hydroelectric, geothermal electric, geothermal ground source heat, tidal energy, wave energy, ocean thermal, and fuel cells which do not utilize a fossil fuel resource in the process of generating electricity.
This definition is the one used by the major environmental policies in NYS: the aforementioned climate law (CLCPA), the clean energy standard that created RECs (Renewable Energy Credits) and ZECs, the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), and the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES). The major benefit would be that new nuclear power plants could then benefit from already-existing subsidies. The ZECs program as such is worded so that only existing Upstate nuclear plants can benefit. However, if nuclear power was classified renewable, the power generated could be used for mandatory and voluntary Tier 1 RECs (reserved for new renewables) and Tier 4 RECs (reserved for renewables that are used in NYC). It would also allow batteries that are charged through nuclear power to count as renewable. This, combined with the baseload nature and already zoned industrial sites of nuclear, would make the two a perfect match.
The arguably biggest upside would come from expanding the capabilities of the BPRA. Though NYPA has been directed to build 1 GW of new nuclear power, it cannot use its expanded BPRA authority to get the job done:
Nuclear power plants do not meet the current definition of a renewable energy system in New York State and are therefore outside of the scope of strategic plans issued under PAL § 1005 (27-a)(e).
The simple addition of nuclear to the renewables definition would let NYPA use already-granted authority to hit the ground running on new nuclear projects beyond even the 1 GW already ordered.
Classifying nuclear energy as renewable could also force needed reforms for the Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission (ORES), which has raised many concerns for upstate and western New Yorkers. The process of siting any kind of energy infrastructure must address legitimate community pros and cons so that they are built for the true benefit of all. Removing the solar and wind silo from ORES could enable important dialogues about “energy democracy” where a community that rejects intermittent renewables can be more empowered to say yes to nuclear or hydrogen, hydropower, geothermal and more through the same office, or vice versa, with full awareness of the tradeoffs of union jobs, land use concerns, tax and ratepayer benefits.
The ZEC program was crafted to allow then-Governor Cuomo to keep the Lake Ontario plants open while closing Indian Point, the most expedient political move for him at the time. In the same way, a redefinition of nuclear as renewable would be the most expedient political move for the majority of New Yorkers, allowing for the quick reversal of NY’s energy policy from irrational to rational.
This proposal would take the tools built to destroy NY’s energy infrastructure and instead use them to build a reliable, cheap, and industrious grid for all New Yorkers.
Note: The author’s views are only representative of NYEA and not any employer past or present.