Study claims closing Indian Point would have serious impact on electric bills and the economy

White Plains – Westchester County faces an energy crisis, and state and local officials must act quickly to avoid the prospect of power shortages, blackouts and skyrocketing electricity bills that will hurt the county’s quality of life and undermine economic growth. These are some of the warnings issued Thursday by a coalition of major regional business groups.

Electricity consumption in Westchester is rising two percent a year -- or 100 megawatts to 150 megawatts a year -- which will result in 800 megawatts of increased demand by 2015 on top of current demand of 5,000 megawatts, according to a report released by the Westchester Business Alliance.

There are no new power plants on the drawing boards and if the Indian Point nuclear power plants are not relicensed in 2013 and 2015 when their current licenses expire, power bills in Westchester will jump more than 150 percent by 2017, according the study by Energy Strategies Inc., a national consulting firm based in Albany, NY.

Business Alliance President Marsha Gordon said action must be taken now.

“There is absolutely no quick fix and we needed to start planning years ago so we need to absolutely start planning now and the planning has to include business and government and labor and environmentalists,” she said. “It has to be a coalition of stakeholders who are all working together to make sure we have the energy needs to support our future economy.”

If Indian Point were to shut down, an estimated 11,000 full- and part-time jobs will be lost in Westchester County by 2017 because of higher energy prices, Energy Strategies says, resulting in a reduction of $2.1 billion in cumulative lost wages and nearly $5.5 billion in cumulative lost economic output. 

“It takes eight years to build a new power plant and secure the required licenses, so officials need to act now to prevent a crisis in the future,” said Ross Pepe, president of the Construction Industry Council/Construction Advancement Institute of Westchester and Hudson Valley, Inc., another member of the Westchester Business Taxpayers Alliance.