October 15, 2023 — NEW YORK OFFICIALS followed the lead of regulators in Massachusetts on Thursday, rejecting bids by four offshore wind developers to renegotiate the prices they were awarded in previously approved contracts because of sharply rising and unexpected costs.
The decision means the developers will have to either stand by the terms of their current contracts — which they say are unable to do because the prices are no longer sufficient to obtain financing — or cancel the agreements, pay termination fees, and possibly rebid their projects in future procurements.
The ruling by the Public Service Commission raises questions about whether New York will now be able to reach its 2030 goal of building a power grid with 70 percent of the electricity coming from renewable sources. But members of the commission unanimously held that granting huge prices increases to the developers in a non-competitive process would undermine the state’s regulatory framework.
“While we do not doubt that recent national and global events have affected electric generation developers, we are not confident that the relief proposed in the petitions would adequately protect ratepayers,” the commission said in its ruling. “As explained below, granting the requested relief would result in significant rate impacts unsupported by the discipline of competitive solicitation without providing commensurate assurance that the projects at issue would be developed in a timely and cost[1]effective fashion.”