ALBANY, New York — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s successful quest to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant dirtied the grid of the city he’s now fighting to lead and spiked costs for consumers.
Cuomo fought for decades to shut the nuclear plant located 25 miles north of the city. He raised concerns about the safety of the aging plant and its proximity to the city, where an evacuation — if the worst happened — would be impossible.
When the plant was shuttered, gas power plants filled in the gap. The state’s electricity emissions increased 22 percent from 2019 to 2022 after the nuclear plant closed, making the state’s and city’s climate goals more challenging to achieve.
“The city is much more reliant on its in-city fossil generation in a way that didn’t have to happen the way it did,” said Dan Zarrilli, former chief climate policy adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. “It was clear that natural gas was going to fill that gap.”
