Follow the Law
The primary mission of the New York State Department of Public Service is to ensure safe, secure, and reliable access to electric, gas, steam, telecommunications, and water services for New York State’s residential and business consumers, at just and reasonable rates.
Approval of the costly and unnecessary conversion of the Cayuga Operating Plant from coal to methane gas would violate the legal requirement that the PSC ensure that electric rates are “just and reasonable.” Because there insufficient demand for the power produced by the Plant, and approval of the conversion would require the ratepayers to assume significant expense and market risk related to gas price volatility, system reliability issues should be addressed by the far less expensive transmission upgrades that NYSEG has proposed. Further, both the NYS Energy Highway Blueprint (p. 78) and the PSC Order governing retirement proceedings (Case 05-E-0889, Order Adopting Notice Requirements for Generation Unit Retirements, p. 19, note 10) specifically prohibit local economic issues, such as potential loss of tax revenues or jobs resulting from plant retirement, from being considered, much less forming the basis for a decision, in this type of proceeding. No doubt, the economic impacts on the communities where the plants will close could be significant. Yet if the PSC were to keep every power plant open because of the harm closing would cause to the community where it resides, our State's energy policy would never advance. And it must advance. We are at brink of irreversible climate change. TheState must not, under any circumstances, look to bring new fossil fuel plants into existence - we should be investing in renewables instead. Use the webform to the right to tell the Public Service Commission and Governor Cuomo to not succumb to political pressures related to jobs and school taxes. Instead they should follow the law and do what's best for the ratepayers and the planet. |
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