Retrain Workers for Long-Term Work Lives and to Build Energy Infrastructure that is Sustainable and Long-Term Cost Effective for NY State
“…By its own account, 2016 was a “monumental year” for Exelon, for good reason. It’s not every year that a company gets a $7.6 billion boost courtesy of New Yorkers.
Exelon is slated to reap that windfall over the next 12 years through a fee on just about anyone who gets an electric bill in New York, all to support its nuclear power plants in the state. That’s an energy tax by any other name, but as a fee levied by a state commission, it has drawn far less attention than, say, an income tax increase of that scale would receive.
Lawmakers, however, will have a chance to take a closer look at this huge corporate subsidy for a company with an annual net income of more than $2 billion. They’ll also have a chance to look more closely at how this new tax came about in yet another example of New York’s shadow government at work.
The money will be raised in the form of Zero Emissions Credits, which, simply put, translate into a fee on electric utility bills in the state. It will go to Exelon as part of a deal to keep open its two Nine Mile Nuclear Station plants and its James A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Scriba, and its R.E. Ginna Plant near Rochester, for a dozen more years.”