Public Power New York recently released a notice that the New York Power Authority (NYPA) is reviewing 5GW of new public renewables. However, when I tried to find a reference to a NYPA announcement I could not find anything. This post addresses some of the potshots included in their notice and the spin of the announcement.
I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net-zero mandates will do more harm than good because the energy density of wind and solar energy is too low and the resource intermittency too variable to ever support a reliable electric system relying on those resources. At the same time the environmental permitting for the renewables buildout has is causing unacceptable environmental impacts. I have followed the Climate Act since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written over 650 articles about New York’s net-zero transition. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to generate summaries and references included in this document.
Background
Keith Schue sent me a copy of an email from Public Power NY. He described them as a “Democrat Socialists of America -created group “Public Power NY”, which is really “Solar & Wind NY”. The group’s about page notes:
Public Power NY is a statewide, grassroots movement of New Yorkers who know the truth about our energy system: that to build a future we can be proud of, we must take our power back from corporate control, and put it in the hands of the people.
To make it happen, we passed the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), the biggest climate and green jobs bill in the nation. The BPRA unleashed the power of New York State to build publicly owned, 100% renewable energy, create a new era of green union jobs, slash rising energy bills for those who need it most, and make New York a national leader in the fight to build a future we’d be proud to pass on to those to come. Now we’re fighting to make sure our full vision for a Green New Deal in New York becomes a reality.
Our movement is made up of over 20 of New York’s most effective climate, community, and advocacy organizations, and thousands of volunteers who have taken action everywhere from Brooklyn to Buffalo. Our campaign is also endorsed by labor unions representing over one million members in New York, including 1199SEIU, NYSUT, UUP, PSC-CUNY, and UAW 9A.
Build Public Renewables Act
The BPRA requires NYPA to build renewables to backstop private developments. When it passed in May 2023 advocates claimed NYPA can build “more quickly, affordably, and democratically than private developers,” largely because it can issue low‑cost bonds and can tap into the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA is no longer in play and Schue points that it now more about subsidizing the projects of private foreign and out-of-state solar/wind developers. The fact is that the same problems facing private developers also limit what NYPA can do. Those problems include:
Capital cost vs. total system cost: Low borrowing rates do not solve interconnection queues, supply chain constraints, transmission limitations, or local opposition, all of which dominate project timelines today.
Execution risk: Scaling up development is a problem for private developers because there are not that many people with appropriate backgrounds. NYPA has not been a greenfield utility‑scale developer on this scale; it is being asked to stand up a quasi‑developer arm while simultaneously managing its legacy hydro fleet and transmission assets.
Labor and procurement constraints: Strong prevailing wage, PLAs, buy‑American and just transition provisions may be politically desirable, but they also raise project costs and reduce vendor flexibility, which undermines claims that public projects will automatically be cheaper than private ones.
Academic work by Matthew Huber has argued that much of the BPRA rhetoric obscures the difficulty of actually organizing the existing utility workforce and overstates the extent to which a political win on statute translates into a practical Green New Deal‑style industrial program.
PPNY Criticisms of Nuclear
The email states “This is a hopeful step in a dark time for New York as Governor Kathy Hochul works hard to dismantle New York’s world-leading climate law in favor of deadly fracked gas and expensive nuclear.” Schue points out that this potshot at “expensive” nuclear in their materials is unwarranted:
That ignores the fact that system level costs actually make a predominately solar/wind grid the most expensive due to the need for massive amounts of battery storage, 2-4 times more transmission infrastructure, grid-stabilizing equipment, and backup generation–plus the fact that solar/wind/batteries require frequent replacement.” Yes, a robust, reliable nuclear power plant has a higher up-front cost than inefficient, sprawling weather-dependent solar panels (that fall apart in the weather) and are made with slave-labor in China. But it will last five times longer and does not force you to reinvent the entire grid. DOE analysis that has occurred under both the Trump and former Biden administration show this. Even NYSERDA’s own analysis indicates that adding more nuclear capacity would save the state billions over attempting to do it all with a gargantuan amount of solar, wind, batteries, etc.
There is an old adage that you get what you pay for. Nuclear is an investment in the future that conserves rural land. A grid without it destroys both.
Keith and I commiserated that this logical approach is being ignored by most climate advocates.
Huber’s article discussed the DSA focus on worker benefits of the transition. He explained that there is a disconnect between the DSA insistence on renewables and union worker preferences. He noted that “it’s worth noting that industrial/electricity unions also promote a much broader vision of decarbonization beyond just renewables and explicitly promote nuclear power (and this aligns with the state of the art models on what is required as well).” Huber concludes:
Even before such a transformation, public power advocates must stop basing their organizing and coalition building on Green NGOs and their narrow, infeasible technical visions of decarbonization, and start listening to what the actual skilled workers in this sector see as a viable path to good union jobs, reliable electricity, and decarbonization.
Announcement Spin
When I tried to find a reference to a NYPA announcement related to the PPNY claim “This week, the NYPA board met and discussed building 4.8GW of new public renewable projects in addition to the 5.5 GW they already have planned. I could not find anything. My initial search could not find any such announcement, so I asked Perplexity AI to look. The Perplexity response said nothing was released that matched that claim. then I asked Perplexity AI to comment on the PPNY notice relative to what was available. In the interest of time, I am just going to quote the response.
They’re spinning routine NYPA planning numbers into a political “we’re winning” story about BPRA-style public power, while glossing over how contingent and preliminary most of this capacity actually is.
What the 5 GW claim actually refers to
- Public Power NY’s teaser text says NYPA is “reviewing nearly 5 GW of new public renewables as it implements the Build Public Renewables Act.” [publicpowerny](https://publicpowerny.org)
- That number is basically NYPA’s internal *pipeline* of potential solar, wind, and storage projects under its Renewables Strategic Plan, not 5 GW of shovel‑ready, financed projects NYPA is about to build as a Soviet‑style green TVA. [nypa](https://www.nypa.gov/News/Press-Releases/2025/20250729-strategic-plan)
- The updated NYPA Renewables Strategic Plan approved in December 2025 talks about a total of ~5.5 GW of capacity in its portfolio (39 solar, 3 wind, 149 storage, and associated low‑income/REACH projects), which lines up with the “nearly 5 GW” talking point once you account for rounding and how they slice “new” versus existing efforts.
How this fits with BPRA and NYPA’s legal mandate
- Under the Build Public Renewables framework, NYPA was authorized and directed to plan, own, and operate large‑scale renewables to help meet CLCPA’s 70% by 2030 target, and to phase out its small fossil peaker fleet subject to NYISO reliability findings. [
- NYPA responded first with a 3.3 GW draft renewables plan in early 2025, then—after a wave of criticism from BPRA advocates—came back with an updated plan that roughly doubled the target to 7 GW in drafts and ultimately landed at 5.5 GW in the approved version.
- -The coalition is seizing on “nearly 5 GW of new public renewables under review” as evidence that their campaign forced NYPA to scale up, even though NYPA is still operating within conventional utility planning constraints (transmission, NYISO interconnection, capital limits, bond ratings, etc.).
What’s being glossed over
- “Reviewing” means these projects are in various stages: some are just concepts or early‑stage site screens, some are contingent on developer responses to NYPA’s RFQ, and many will be pruned or delayed by NYISO studies, local opposition, or cost escalations.
- NYPA must keep a majority stake in projects but is heavily reliant on private developers and EPCs from its RFQ list (about 90‑plus prequalified firms) – this is not a pure state‑builds‑everything model that BPRA rhetoric implies.
- None of this solves the underlying NYISO reliability concerns around downstate gas plants, transmission bottlenecks, or the economics of long‑duration storage; the press‑release framing makes it sound like “5 GW of public renewables” is a done deal that will cleanly displace fossil capacity on a political timetable, which is very different from what NYISO and NYPA actually state in their own documents.
Conclusion
Reality is catching up the DSA BPRA vision, and its adherents have not figured that out yet. The BPRA is not going to accelerate the transition to renewables. The union workers that the PPNY claims to represent have figured out that the real decarbonization job jackpot would be nuclear development but their notice downplays the value of nuclear. Characterizing the NYPA planning process as evidence that there are substantial resources in the pipeline is flawed on every level. All those beliefs are incorrect.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 