FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Contact: Michael Paulson, info@publicpowerny.org, 917-690-0520

PLAN EXAGGERATES OBSTACLES TO SHUTDOWN AND DOWNPLAYS NYPA’S ROLE

New York, NY — This week the New York Power Authority (NYPA) released a report on the question of retiring its super-polluting peaker plants by 2030, as mandated by the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) of 2023. But the report, released a week after the legally binding deadline set by BPRA, fails to offer a detailed pathway to shutting down the peaker plants as required by law. Instead, it exaggerates the obstacles to peaker decommissioning while downplaying the many steps NYPA can take to ensure that peakers are phased out, such as increasing their plans to build utility- scale and distributed renewable energy. In response, Public Power NY has published a paper demonstrating the shortcomings of the plan and offering solutions to ensure peaker shutdown.

Public Power NY released the following statement:

“The Build Public Renewables Act directed NYPA to shut down their peaker plants by 2030 and begin to redress the environmental injustices and extreme public health impacts caused by peakers. Unfortunately their plan is short on detail and long on excuses for potential failure. Their report argues that there will be insufficient clean energy on the grid to ensure peaker retirement, even though New Yorkers have specifically tasked NYPA with ensuring we have enough public renewables to retire peaker plants, create thousands of green union jobs, lower utility bills, and meet our legally binding climate goals. Instead of rising to the challenge of transforming our energy system, NYPA’s Republican CEO Justin Driscoll appears intent on preserving the status quo of massive carbon emissions, extreme air pollution, skyrocketing utility bills, and a lack of renewable energy projects to ensure a just transition for workers. We deserve better: a proactive plan to shutter the peaker plants and a commitment to build 15 GW of public renewables to ensure that this historic injustice is corrected.”

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The Public Power NY Coalition is a statewide movement of community and advocacy organizations fighting for an environmentally sustainable energy system that’s also racially, socially, and economically just. We believe energy and a habitable planet are human rights, and that we need to avert the climate crisis by eliminating the use of fossil fuels and transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy. We aim to accomplish these goals by taking over our for-profit energy system and bringing it under public, not-for-profit, local, and democratic ownership and management.