Environmental activists celebrated the closure of a key nuclear power facility in New York state, but the state’s power sector emissions have increased in the years since the plant shuttered.
State officials finally closed the Indian Point nuclear facility in 2021, a development that climate activist groups commended because of purported safety and environmental risks posed by the facility. [emphasis, links added]
However, about three years after the plant shuttered, the state has seen a sharp increase in the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to power generation due in large part to increased reliance on natural gas to make up for the closed plant’s output, according to a March 2024 analysis conducted by JP Morgan.
“In 2020 and 2021, New York State shut down Indian Point’s nuclear plants with the intention of replacing its generation with renewable energy,” JP Morgan wrote in its analysis.
“That’s not what has happened so far: three new natural gas plants (Bayonne Energy Center, CPV Valley Energy Center, and Cricket Valley Energy Center) have filled the gap along with mostly gas-fired electricity imports from states like Pennsylvania.”
New York State has established goals of producing 70% of its electricity with green generation by 2030 and having its grid reach zero emissions by 2040, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Proponents of the Indian Point closure frequently asserted that the retirement of zero-emissions nuclear generation presented a prime opportunity for green energy to step up in the void, but JP Morgan’s analysis demonstrates that natural gas and imports have plugged the gap much more than wind or solar, for example.
This outcome is not the one that environmental activists cheering the plant’s closure expected.
“Once Indian Point is closed, we won’t need to rely on fossil fuels to make up for its energy. Peak demand in the region will have declined by more than the 2,000 megawatts the plant generates, and the replacement power will be carbon neutral as the State further increases its clean energy investments,” Paul Gallay, the president of Riverkeeper — an organization that was involved in the 2017 agreement to eventually shutter Indian Point — said in a statement after the agreement was finalized.
“There will be little impact on electricity bills — between $1 and $2 dollars a month — which is a small price to pay for minimizing the risk that this plant poses. Going forward, new efficiency and renewable energy projects will drive still greater savings for consumers, thanks to aggressive energy investments by the state. It’s a new day for New York and the Metro region.”
Natural gas has largely filled in the supply gap opened by Indian Point’s retirement rather than the wind, solar, and hydropower projects that officials planned to pick up the slack, the JP Morgan analysis demonstrates.
The change in New York’s energy profile has also altered the emissions intensity of its energy, especially the energy fueling New York City and Long Island, according to JP Morgan.
Read rest at Daily Caller
How deluded are these activists?
Don’t they read the news about what’s happened in Germany after they shut nuclear plants?
They are idiots !!!
Most all of those Eco-Freaks are total idiots who read Ehrlich and Gores books and watch Captain Planet Marathons until their Brains Melt
To say that these “environs” are an incredibly ignorant group is denigrating the ignorant. These people are being ignorant by design not because they are of low IQ. But they are acting on emotions not facts.