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In a Time of Cheap Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Power Companies Are Seeking — and Getting — Big Subsidies

Illinois and New York have approved hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-energy incentives for nuclear power companies. New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland could be next. Pro Publica  by Talia Buford, April 17,  19“……….It would be a “safety net” for the company’s nuclear operations in New Jersey, Izzo said. ([Ralph Izzo,  chairman, president and CEO of energy company PSEG]  It would not, he emphasized, be “a bailout.”

On Thursday, regulators in New Jersey are scheduled to decide whether PSEG has shown that it needs the subsidies, which would be paid for through a surcharge on all customer bills in the state. If the Board of Public Utilities approves the requests, New Jersey would join two other states, Illinois and New York, in giving nuclear power plants hundreds of millions of dollars in order to stay competitive in the wholesale energy market.

The campaign for the subsidies took to the pages of the state’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, this week. A full-page ad on Monday signed by the employees of the Salem and Hope Creek plants, and another on Tuesday, signed by eight former New Jersey governors, praised the subsidy plan and warned of the consequences of not acting.

………..In recent years, the nuclear power industry has ramped up efforts to cultivate influence with legislators and alliances with environmentalists.

The industry’s gains thus far haven’t been easy, or cheap.

In New Jersey, PSEG spent nearly $4 million over the course of 2017 and 2018 lobbying the Legislature on the nuclear subsidies. By comparison, groups lobbying on marijuana legalization, the other big issue of the last two legislative sessions, spent $1.7 million, according to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission………

In each state, the push for subsidies has come after warnings that the plants would have to close. But critics of the programs say that in many instances, the plants are profitable, and the companies are using scare tactics to bully legislators into subsidizing shareholder profits.

“They rattled their saber many times,” said Abe Scarr, state director of Illinois Public Interest Research Group, a consumer organization that opposed the subsidies. “Regardless of whether it was a bluff or not, certainly their threats were a ploy to build pressure on Illinois decision makers.”

Threatening to close plants in the name of shareholder profits is a tactic Stefanie Brand, director of the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel, a state-appointed advocate for utility customers, said she hadn’t seen before.

“It’s a level of coercion that is really unprecedented,” Brand said………https://www.propublica.org/article/in-a-time-of-cheap-fossil-fuels-nuclear-power-companies-are-seeking-and-getting-big-subsidies