Cuomo Unveils Ambitious Green Energy Program for New York

Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled an ambitious plan to bring more green energy and what he says will be thousands of jobs to New York State.

Plans include new solar farms and off shore wind turbines, and more transmission lines across the state.

Cuomo, in the third of a series of four State of the State speeches, says $26 billion dollars will be spent in public-private partnerships on nearly100 projects, including solar energy farms in Saratoga, Cortland, Livingston and Lewis Counties, and the building of two major off shore wind farms, with 90 turbines each, off of Long Island.

One will be 20 miles off of Jones Beach; the other, 60 miles off the coast at Montauk, producing 2,500 megawatts of power .

“Don’t worry. Neither will be visible from the shore,” the governor added.

In addition, the Port of Albany will become a center for manufacturing the wind towers to be used at the off shore sites, and an existing facility in Brooklyn will be beefed up.

To move all of that new power around, Cuomo says he’s opening a competitive bidding process for three projects involving hundreds of miles of new or strengthened transmission lines.

They include two along the entire length of eastern New York that would bring Canadian hydropower through the North Country, the Capital Region and the Hudson Valley to New York City, where the demand for energy is greatest.

A third would run the length of the Hudson Valley. And 26 miles would be added in Western New York to distribute power more efficiently from the hydro power dam in Niagara Falls.

“All of these projects will break the congestion and open the grid,” Cuomo said.

It’s the second time in his decade as Governor that Cuomo has proposed major green energy projects. His first attempt, a solar panel factory at a former steel plant in Lackawanna in Western New York, known as the Buffalo Billion, did not work out as planned.

A state Comptroller’s report in August found that the project is yet to produce the hundreds of jobs initially promised, and that the state entity in charge, Empire State Development did not properly manage the enterprise.

Scandals related to the Buffalo Billion resulted in prison sentences for several involved, including the governor’s former closest aid, Joe Percoco, and the former head of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, and Buffalo area developer Louis Ciminelli.

Environmental groups praised the new initiatives. In a statement, NYPIRG’s Liz Moran says the governor is right that global warming poses an “existential threat”, and she urges Cuomo to go further and eliminate tax subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.