August 8, 2018 — New York state ratepayers will pick up the tab for the Cuomo Administration’s multi-billion dollar plan to jump-start the offshore wind industry, but most won’t benefit from the energy produced.
Only consumers in Long Island and New York City will be able to access the wind-powered energy that’s going to be generated in the waters off the state’s Atlantic coast in the years to come.
As soon as 2020, typical residential ratepayers could see an increase of up to 76 cents a month in their electric bills as the state goes all-in on offshore wind as a critical piece of the state’s renewable energy future, The Journal News/Poughkeepsie Journal has learned.
That’s in addition to the average $2 per month charge state ratepayers are already paying for the bailout of three struggling upstate nuclear power plants for the next ten years.
The New York State Public Service Commission announced last week that it had agreed to procure some 800 megawatts of offshore wind energy over the next two years, the first phase in an effort to develop 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, enough to power 1.2 million households in New York City and Long Island.
“Robust offshore wind development is not only critical to meeting our clean energy and carbon reduction goals, this investment has the potential to create thousands of jobs and fuel a $6 billion industry for New York as it combats climate change,” Cuomo said.
The Long Island Commercial Fishing Association (LICFA), based in Montauk, have joined a lawsuit challenging the decision by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to allow thousands of acres off the Atlantic coast of Long Island to be leased to offshore wind companies.
The six areas available for lease could hold up to 200 wind turbines.
“The historical, traditional commercial fishing communities of Long Island, which include hundreds of small business owners, the very tax and rate-payers whose businesses help to support other small businesses throughout Long Island, are ground zero for having their very livelihoods and businesses destroyed,” Bonnie Brady, the executive director of LICFA wrote in April.
Read the full story from the Poughkeepsie Journal at the Ithaca Journal