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State utility regulators on Wednesday approved a renewable energy policy that is expected to add hundreds of wind turbines to the New York landscape over the next decade in an effort to reduce pollution and lessen the state’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Twenty months after Gov. George Pataki declared that New York would make 25 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind, water and solar rays by 2013, the Public Service Commission established a plan to reach that goal.
The program will subsidize a variety of technologies, such as tidal power and fuel cells, but the biggest impact will be more wind farms.
Roughly 60 percent of the new green energy is expected to come from wind. The PSC estimates that 2,400 megawatts worth of wind power could be built in response to its incentives by 2013 – a 50-fold increase over the 48 megawatts in operation today.
Who’s going to pay it? You are.
Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2005, all investor-owned utilities will begin assessing a new charge on monthly utility bills to pay for the renewables program. The money will go to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which will sign contracts with renewable power projects to meet the state’s targets.
The net cost to utility customers should be "modest," said William Flynn, PSC chairman. The commission estimates that customer bills will increase no more than 2 percent through 2013, and may actually go down as a result of increased competition among generating facilities.
For a typical household using 500 kilowatt-hours a month, a 2 percent increase would raise the $66 monthly bill from Niagara Mohawk by about $1.30.
Flynn said bills will go up initially, and that consumers should look at the new charges as an investment that will boost new technologies and clean the environment.
"I believe that if you asked the people of New York if they would be willing to pay a modest increase in their bills . . . in exchange for a clean environment that has the potential of creating more jobs and economic development, that their response to that would be ‘yes,’ " Flynn said after the PSC’s meeting at Le Moyne College.
Environmental groups cheered the program, which they described as one of the most aggressive in the county. Katherine Kennedy, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said New York’s plans for renewable energy development are second only to California’s. "This is a huge boost for renewable energy in New York and the United States," she said.
PSC officials say the program will reduce air pollution significantly. Emissions of carbon dioxide will be cut by 7.7 percent, nitrogen oxide by 6.8 percent and sulfur dioxide by 5.9 percent.
Pataki first outlined his plan in a State of the State address in January 2003. That February, the PSC launched a proceeding to work out the details, a project that has taken 19 months and has involved more than 150 companies, agencies and interest groups.
Final details about how the program will work will be established by March, Flynn said. The first renewable power plants will begin producing under contract with NYSERDA by early 2006, and additional contracts will be signed in ensuing years.
NYSERDA will buy enough power to reach a target of 24 percent renewable energy by 2013, up from 19 percent today. The additional 1 percent needed to meet Pataki’s goal is expected to come from voluntary purchases by consumers who buy green power from energy marketers, the PSC said.
The premiums paid to renewable power projects by NYSERDA could add between $582 million and $762 million to statewide power costs though 2013, the PSC estimated. But officials also expect the advent of new power plants to drive down the wholesale cost of power by $362 million during that period.
Residential bills are not expected to rise more than 1.7 percent on average over the life of the program, and may decline by as much as 1 percent, the PSC said. Industrial bills could rise by as much as 2.2 percent, or decline by as much as 1.5 percent, the PSC estimated.
PSC officials said building the new power supply, including the equivalent of 50 or more average-sized wind projects, will be a challenge. New wind farms will still require state and local permitting, often a time-consuming process.
Bill Moore, a principal in Atlantic Renewable Energy and the state’s leading wind farm developer, said the plans are realistic. "It is a lot, but I think it’s eminently doable," he said. Moore’s company developed the Fenner and Madison wind power sites in Madison County, which account for more than 80 percent of wind power produced in New York.
The New York program will allow wind developers to sign long-term contracts with the state, giving them better prospects to finance projects, Moore said. In addition, Congress is expected to extend a federal tax credit for wind farms that had expired.
Moore said he plans to install 300 megawatts of wind power – that’s 187 turbines, each reaching 390 feet into the air – by the end of next year at the Flat Rock Wind Project on the Tug Hill Plateau.
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