Filed Under: Local | New York City | Energy | Air | Energy

Nuclear EnergySince New York’s energy market was deregulated in the mid 1990s, Con Edison and other utilities sold their power plants and now buy energy on a wholesale market where supply and demand determine ever-changing prices. As the market was evolving, a coherent energy policy went missing, resulting in conservation efforts dropping off as demand for energy kept growing. With no new generators coming online until deregulation played out, electricity grew more expensive. A tight supply of natural gas, often used to fire power plants, made it worse. From 1999 to 2001, New York City energy consumers witnessed a 40% increase in their electricity bills. From 2000 to 2003, peak summer electricity usage has grown from nearly 10,400 megawatts to 11,000. With Con Edison predictions that usage will grow by between 200-250 megawatts per year over the next five years, new power generating facilities are slowly being brought online. As a result of the Northeast Blackout that hit in August 2003, for example, an underground cable that had been built between Connecticut and New York’s Long Island was turned on for the first time and after subsequent debate, has been kept on. The New York Power Authority initiated plans to build 10 small (less than 100 megawatt) turbines at six sites in the City and have them operating by June 1, 2001. To speed the process, NYPA avoided typically required environmental reviews by planning to run the turbines for an output of no more than 79.9MW (80MW triggers the review). Although the mini-plants are to be as clean as possible, they still emit significant amounts of pollutants. Recent attempts to address expected energy shortfalls are resulting in campaigns to reduce consumption and greater adoption of alternative energy sources. Although renewable energy sources account for only 3% of the world’s electricity supply, they are poised for explosive growth of 9.2% year over year. This is in comparison to traditional sources growing just 2.4%. Locally, six “tidal turbines”, or underwater wind farms, will be placed in the East River in August 2004 and begin generating approximately 150 kilowatts of electricity. If all goes well, 200-300 turbines could be installed by 2006 to produce 10 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power more than 8,000 homes. This could save the city the equivalent of 65,000 barrels of oil a year and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 33,000 tons. Outside of New York, power plants to the west continue to send acid rain and smog-causing pollutants our way. Since the late 1990s, New York's Attorney General has filed a number of lawsuits under the Clean Air Act to get power plants to clean up their acts. In April 2003, one of these lawsuits resulted in the largest settlement ever under the act: Dominion Resources, the eighth-largest polluting utility, was instructed to spend $1.2 billion over 12 years to clean up eight coal-burning power plants. New York is also one of three states suing the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent it from relaxing regulations that brought about the Dominion settlement. They are fighting a move announced in August 2003 that relaxed the new source review to enable thousands of industrial plants to upgrade facilities without installing pollution controls. The utility industry had lobbied the administration on this issue for two years using the argument that other regulations already addressed this.