The Rush to Build Data Centers is Driving Higher Utility Bills &
An Enormously Unaffordable $100 Billion NY Nuclear Energy Plan
That Won’t Produce Power for Over a Decade
Better to Call a Temporary Moratorium on Data Center Centers &
Expand Cheap Solar & Wind with Battery Capacity That Now Provides Reliable Power 24/7
In her Tuesday State of the State speech, Governor Kathy Hochul announced her plan to add 5000 megawatts of new reactors, despite soaring electricity rates during her tenure and recent game-changing price drops in batteries that offer far more affordable options.
The rush to build data centers is driving higher energy bills and a shockingly bad energy plan. The NY Master Energy Plan acknowledges the recent “surge in large load interconnection requests” in the state and nationwide is “driven primarily by data center development.” A September Bloomberg analysis of thousands of locations nationwide found “wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers.” New York saw some of the largest increases, with Buffalo’s wholesale prices tripling from 2020 to 2025. No wonder the state’s residential rates rose 40% during that time.
It’s time for a moratorium. According to Dr. Joseph Romm who authored an analysis of the Governor’s plan (my analysis of the state’s Energy Plan,), here’s why:
The only U.S. commercial reactors built this century—the only ones the state modeled in its deeply flawed new thousand-page Energy Plan—are the twin 1100-Megawatt AP1000 reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle plant. Vogtle was “the most expensive power plant ever built on earth,” a 2023 analysis noted, with an “astoundingly high” electricity cost. The final Vogtle cost was $18.5 million per MW, according to a 2024 MIT analysis, or about $40 billion. As a result, Georgia ratepayers’ bills are rising by over $220 a year, a 25% increase. In 2023, state regulators made customers pay for most of Vogtle “on top of a monthly surcharge” they’ve had to pre-pay for years, totaling $1000. South Carolina consumers still pay for two never-completed AP1000s.
Yet the Governor asserted Tuesday that nuclear power will help “make energy more affordable.” And in a statement released Monday, she said her new reactors will “help keep the lights on and rates down.”
Based on an analysis by Dr. Romm’s she’s getting very bad advice. The Plan’s underlying cost analysis is so flawed that it includes an unprecedented disclaimer that neither the state nor the contractor who wrote it stands behind its accuracy or the consequences of using it.
Batteries, wind, and solar have achieved stunning price declines. Batteries dropped 40% in 2024 alone and saw another huge drop in 2025, as a December study noted. But the prices for new nuclear have risen steadily, which I detailed in 2008 Senate testimony.
Nuclear is the only option that worsens the affordability problem but can’t be built fast enough to matter. The reactors will drive up rates for a decade before they are finished—or even if they aren’t, since many experts warn the data center boom is a bubble that may burst.
“Clearly, the Governor and the state do not have a plan for making New York’s electricity affordable or dealing with data centers. So, the state should enact a moratorium on new data centers while developing both clear rules that ensure they won’t raise rates and an affordability-centric energy plan, said Dr. Joseph Romm
“An affordable energy plan must be built around the battery revolution, combined with solar, and advanced efficiency, such as replacing inefficient electric heating, cooling, and hot water with heat pumps. That plan could by itself meet all projected data center demand—affordably”, he added.
Dr. Joseph Romm (PhD Physics, MIT) is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, a former Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of the new report, “New York’s Nuclear Anti-Affordability Fiasco.”