A quarter of New York City’s residents struggle to pay the monthly power bill. Con Ed shut off power to 88,000 households in the first half of 2025, and under our privatized system prices are expected to rise even more than the 13% hike we already saw last year. Even as we pay more, New Yorkers will still face increased risk of blackouts this year. All while fossil fuel oligarchs and corporate utilities get richer.
New Yorkers agree it doesn’t have to be this way. In November, more than a million of us cast our ballot for Zohran Mamdani and a more affordable city. We believe that agenda must include tackling the rising cost of utility bills for working people. Fortunately, as members of the Democratic Socialists of America, we’ve spent years working alongside our new mayor to bring down utility costs while fighting the climate crisis using the strongest tool we have to fix our broken energy system: public power.
But we need Gov. Hochul to embrace it. So far, she hasn’t, but it’s not too late.
In 2023, New York State passed the most ambitious Green New Deal legislation in the country — the Build Public Renewables Act. BPRA tasks the state, through the New York Power Authority, with building renewable energy owned by and for the public, not by and for corporate profit. NYPA and BPRA show the way forward: a publicly owned energy system that lowers bills, reduces pollution, creates good union jobs, and saves us from the polluting, union-busting, rate-hiking regime that most New Yorkers live with.
That’s why New Yorkers across the state are demanding the governor commit $200 million for public renewable energy in the state’s 2026 budget, including at least 30% for projects located downstate. New York City still gets most of its energy from toxic, expensive fossil fuels, and massive carbon pollution is the result. Building public renewables like solar panels, battery storage, and geothermal will not only guarantee lower prices, it will shut down the smokestacks driving up asthma rates in working-class communities like our neighborhoods of Astoria and Long Island City, and create thousands of union jobs in the process.
But instead of embracing public power to protect us from predatory fossil fuel corporations, Hochul has doubled down on dirty energy. Last year, she sided with another investor-owned utility, National Grid, by resurrecting the fracked-gas Williams NESE pipeline after it had already been defeated by New Yorkers three times. This was a victory for fossil fuel and utility lobbyists that have spent millions influencing the governor — whose husband’s law firm has the Williams NESE pipeline as a client.
In this all-too-familiar cycle of fossil fuel giants and their collaborators lining their pockets, the working class pays: the Williams NESE pipeline will raise bills for National Grid customers by nearly $100 a year.
Public power is the answer to this fossil-fuel graft. NYPA can build all the renewable energy New York needs. Today that means at least 15 gigawatts of renewable generation — enough to power roughly 13 million homes — so New York can finally swear off fossil fuels and keep our energy affordable. And if Hochul keeps courting tech oligarchs to build their energy-sucking, power bill-raising data centers here, we’re going to need even more public power.
Right now NYPA has only planned to build 5.5 GW of renewables, less than half of what we need. That’s why the next state budget must keep investing in our best solution. A $200 million commitment means another step toward shutting down toxic peaker plants in low-income neighborhoods, greening our schools, lowering prices for New Yorkers, and creating good union jobs.
We don’t need pipelines or pipedreams to create the future we deserve. Public power is the proven solution. The alternative is higher bills and more blackouts, as soon as this summer. It’s time for Hochul to get real on affordability, because we can’t afford to wait.
Moreno is the Democratic Party candidate for the Feb. 3 special election to fill the vacancy in the Astoria Assembly seat held by Zohran Mamdani until he became mayor. Valdez is an assemblywoman representing Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Maspeth, and Ridgewood and a candidate in the Democratic primary for an open congressional seat.
