New Tax to Fund Renewable Energy
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

ALBANY – New Yorkers will pay a new surcharge on their electric bills to subsidize the development of more wind power, solar power, and other forms of “renewable energy” under a regulatory decision by the Pataki administration yesterday.
The surcharge, to begin in the fall of 2005, was approved by the Public Service Commission as part of Governor Pataki’s plan for New York to get 25% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2013, up from 19% today.
Commission officials said the amount of the surcharge has not yet been determined. Previous estimates said the policy, known as the “renewable portfolio standard,” would add an average of 2% to electric bills.
Supporters of the policy, including environmentalists and alternative-energy developers, say it will improve air quality, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and possibly save money in the long run.
“Today’s decision is going to help New Yorkers breathe easier and stimulate clean-air technologies in New York,” an official with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Katherine Kennedy, said yesterday.
Critics say the state shouldn’t be adding to electric rates, which are already among the highest in the nation.
“A wire charge by any other name is a tax,” the chairman of the Assembly Energy Committee, Paul Tonko of Montgomery County, said yesterday. “Anytime government puts something on your bill that you didn’t ask for, I think they should see that as a hidden tax.”
The director of an energy consumer group, Gerald Norlander of the Public Utility Law Project, said the policy will be good for average New Yorkers.
“Consumers, particularly low-income consumers, pay a heavy price today for the effects of fossil fuels,” he said. “Most power plants are in poor neighborhoods. And a move to get away from that and toward less harmful sources of generation is good.”
The money collected from the new surcharge will go to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which will sign contracts with developers of windmill farms, small-scale hydroelectric facilities, and other renewable-energy projects.