'Unplug This Plant:' Schumer Urges NYers To Reject Gas Plant Plan

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) joined climate activists and local politicians in front of an Astoria power plant on Friday, and called on New Yorkers to speak out against a controversial plan to upgrade the plant.

The plan by the plant’s owner, NRG Energy, proposes replacing a 50-year-old turbine with a new natural gas-fired generator, which the fossil fuel company says would significantly reduce gas emissions and create new jobs. This week, a state agency issued draft permits for the plans, meaning that people can now publicly comment on them — and Senator Schumer, along with a host of local politicians, want New Yorkers to comment in opposition to the project, citing concerns about climate change.

“We do not need and cannot afford with the existential threat to our planet anymore coal, oil, or gas being burned and sending poison into our atmosphere,” said Senator Schumer at Friday’s news conference, adding that anyone who thinks that an upgraded plant would benefit the environment or create more jobs than clean energy projects “hasn’t looked at the facts.”

While Senator Schumer pointed out that the fight against Astoria’s peaker plant is alongside citywide fights against fossil fuels, he also said that he particularly opposes a fracked-gas-powered plant in western Queens, because of its impact on the nearby community, which is disproportionately populated by Black and brown residents.

“Over half of the hospitalization rates of asthma in the whole city come from this area,” he said, referring to the area as “asthma alley,” a colloquial title used to describe the higher than average asthma rates among area residents. “They [nearby neighbors] cannot afford the expansion of more dirty, dirty stuff being put into the air,” he said to a chorus of people chanting “unplug this plant.”

On Friday, Schumer was joined by Astoria politicians at all levels of local government — including State Senators Michael Gianaris and Jessica Ramos, State Assembly Member Zohran K. Mamdani, and Astoria’s soon-to-be City Council Member Tiffany Cabán — all of whom have already been involved in efforts to oppose this plant.

“Who the hell thinks it’s a good idea to build a fossil fuel plant in today’s day in age,” said State Senator Gianaris, pointing to Thursday’s citywide flooding amid severe thunderstorms as a “sign of things to come” if we don’t invest in clean energy and jobs.

“The only people that want to build fossil fuel plants now are the people that make money from building fossil fuel plants,” said the State Senator, describing the proposed plant upgrades as “absolutely bonkers” in the face of climate change.

In addition to calling on New Yorkers to voice their opposition to the Astoria peaker plant proposal, State Senator Gianaris called on his legislative co-workers to pass the Clean Futures Bill recently introduced by State Senator Ramos and Assembly Member Mamdani, which would ban new fracked-gas power plants from being built statewide.

One opponent of the plan who was missing from Friday’s press conference was Queens’ Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who Schumer said is “with us too” in this effort — a point that’s substantiated by a letter that the Congresswoman, and eight members of New York's congressional delegation, wrote to Governor Andrew Cuomo in March, asking him to invest in green infrastructure instead of gas-power at the power plant.

"Gas-powered energy and the process of extraction is not clean energy as some have touted," they wrote, adding that “even if every coal plant were replaced by fracked gas electricity by 2030, emissions would remain on track to grow through 2050,” alluding to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) that Cuomo passed in 2019, which aims for the state to be operating with 70 percent renewable energy by 2030.

But Friday’s conference wasn’t just attended by politicians: representatives from the No Astoria NRG Plant Coalition — which is organized by NYC DSA, Food & Water Watch, Sane Energy Project, Queens Climate Project, NYPIRG, Sierra Club, New York Communities for Change and 350Brooklyn — were also in attendance.

Sebastian Baez, an organizer with the NYC-DSA Ecosocialist Working Group, spoke out against the project saying that “NRG and Astoria is a symptom of a larger problem and that’s fossil fuel capitalism” — the system where fossil fuel companies “kill us” with expensive energy that fuels deathly heat waves and asthma rates.

“We need public power and the start of a Green New Deal here in New York State, here in New York City, and here in Astoria so that we can create green new jobs that empower workers, empower communities that have been so [affected] by fossil fuel capitalism,” they said.

Baez wasn’t the only person to mention public power, a campaign to make the energy grid publicly owned instead of it being owned by for-profit power monopolies — namely Con Edison.

When Schumer was asked directly if he supports public power, he said he has long supported Jamestown, New York, which has a publicly owned energy system, and would have to “think about and study” it before taking a more definitive stance.

By contrast, NRG spokesperson Dave Schrader, said that the peaker plant's upgrade is a step towards creating a “reliable future electric system for New York City.”

He noted that the need for "reliable power" was highlighted by recent storms, and that "modernizing" the peaker plant would ensure "that schools, hospitals, and homes are powered more efficiently and with dramatically lower emissions."

"NRG looks forward to receiving input during the public comment period and working with the [Department of Environmental Conservation] to ensure the Project is consistent with New York State's aggressive climate goals," he stated.

However, according to Mamdani, 2,000 New Yorkers have already submitted public comments to the project, which he thinks will demonstrate peoples’ readiness to “defeat this plant.”

Public comment on the project must be submitted to comment.nrgastoriagas@dec.ny.gov by August 29.