Terra Praxis Files with New York Public Service Commission: New York’s Retired Fossil Sites Are the Fastest and Cheapest Route to Delivering on Clean Energy Commitments
NEW YORK, September 15, 2026—Terra Praxis has released REPOWER New York, a discussion paper outlining how New York can meet both electricity and industrial energy demand at the scale, cost, and speed it requires, while simultaneously decarbonizing and expanding its industrial economy. The paper, filed as comments in Case 26-E-0335, sets out the evidence, data, tools, and a roadmap for delivering 5 GW of new nuclear capacity under the state’s Nuclear Reliability Backbone faster and at lower cost, by repowering retired and at-risk fossil sites rather than building on greenfield land. REPOWER New York arrives as the state prepares its Advanced Nuclear Master Plan, due in 2026, and as eight upstate communities have volunteered to host projects.
The finding rests on New York’s own record. NYSERDA's June 2026 Advanced Nuclear Policy Options Paper concludes that siting a large reactor at a brownfield site rather than greenfield lowers overnight capital cost, cuts the deployment schedule from twelve years to ten, and reduces the required contract price materially. The Terra Praxis paper applies that evidence to repowering fossil and industrial sites with advanced nuclear—replacing existing boilers with nuclear heat while retaining the site, grid connection, and workforce.
The paper also warns that the opportunity is perishable. A retired plant’s interconnection rights can lapse within about a year of shutdown. Constellation’s Three Mile Island restart, fully financed with a signed offtake contract, kept its 2027 target only through a June 2026 FERC waiver transferring another retiring plant’s interconnection rights; without it, full grid connection would have waited until 2031. The unit’s main transformers, scrapped at retirement, incurred a replacement cost of roughly $100 million.
“Most of what New York needs is already in its own analysis,” said Kirsty Gogan, Founding Director & Co-CEO of Terra Praxis. “The decision in front of it now is not which reactor to buy, but how it is bought, built, and delivered—and that decides whether this arrives on time and at a good price for New Yorkers.”
The paper sets out five decisions for five New York actors: the Governor’s office, the Public Service Commission, NYISO, NYSERDA, and NYPA. The paper’s most time-critical recommendation is that the Public Service Commission require owners of retiring fossil plants to keep switchyards, transformers, cooling-water rights, and interconnection capacity in service-ready condition until each site has been screened for repowering. Once a switchyard is dismantled the site reverts permanently to greenfield cost and schedule. The savings are quantifiable: based on NYSERDA’s own numbers, siting that first large unit at an existing site rather than greenfield cuts its required contract price by 27% and takes two years off the schedule. Every switchyard dismantled before its site is screened forecloses those savings.
Eric Ingersoll, Founding Director & Co-CEO of Terra Praxis, said, “New York’s retired fossil sites are worth more than the power they used to make. One repowered site can send firm electricity to a data center campus, steam to the factory next door, and heat to the town around it, from an interconnection that already exists. Bought as a repeat-build program, the Backbone gives New York’s manufacturers a real order book to invest against—concrete, pumps, valves, and electrical systems now, reactor pressure vessels and steam generators next—for an industrial energy market far larger than the grid alone. And the cheapest dollars in the whole program are the ones spent before construction starts: completing the design and the site work before the investment decision saves nearly a quarter off a first unit’s as-built cost. Once you buy that work for the first unit, every subsequent one benefits from these learnings.”
Terra Praxis will speak at Nuclear Symposium 2026: Partnerships for Success, September 23–24 in New York City, joining leaders from around the world during Climate Week NYC. Hosted by Nuclear New York, the Symposium is New York’s premier nuclear energy event, advancing the dialogue on the future of nuclear energy.
The report, REPOWER New York, is available at www.TerraPraxis.org.
About Terra Praxis
Terra Praxis is a global nonprofit organization committed to universal access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy that empowers people and protects nature. Powered by philanthropy, we innovate and accelerate scalable, equitable solutions to decarbonize the largest sources of global emissions.
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