As LIPA looks to future, it is altering past assumptions about wind, fossil-fuel plants

A sharply altered energy picture has LIPA rethinking basic assumptions about its future energy mix as renewables shift to a backseat and traditional power plants get a new lease on life.

While the shift started before 2025 when the economics of offshore wind power was impacted by higher supply costs and rising interest rates, a year of assault by the Trump administration against incentives for wind, home solar, heat pumps and electric vehicles has LIPA changing prior determinations contained in a 2023 road map for future energy sources.

It also comes as a state planning board on Tuesday approved a sweeping revision of New York's energy future that includes updated assumptions about roadblocks to the widespread adoption of green energy and the need for legacy fossil-fuel plants, nuclear power and natural-gas distribution to fill in the gaps in coming decades.  

"Refreshed" road map

In a wide-ranging interview with Newsday last week, Gary Stephenson, senior vice president of power supply for LIPA, noted that many basic assumptions from three years ago have changed, while uncertainty continues to rule the day over where power usage will go in future years. The changes will lead to a "refreshed" road map, with much of the work having already begun.

"There’s a lot of uncertainty for sure on the demand side," he said, as newly expired federal incentives for EVs and heat pumps could upset basic assumptions about electric load growth and a shift away from a current summertime demand peak.

For LIPA that means "being realistic about when wind power will actually get built and battery moratoriums will get lifted," Stephenson said. It means pushing completion dates into the future, and canceling plans to retire existing plants.

That idea stands in sharp contrast to the state's 2019 vision of an emission-free grid by 2040 primarily on the backs of wind and solar, a vision conceived by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and embraced by Gov. Kathy Hochul. More recently, Hochul has taken an "all-of-the-above" approach to energy, which includes potentially upgrading aging fossil-fuel plants, building new nuclear plants upstate, and even approving a controversial gas pipeline into the downstate region.

On Tuesday, the New York State Energy Planning Board voted to approve a plan that includes the new assumptions, including continued reliance on traditional power plants, the planned addition of new nuclear plants and a natural gas system that "remains a significant energy delivery resource," through 2040, according to board documents. 

The plan sets state energy planning and policy "moving forward in a manner that is grounded in reality," Doreen Harris, president and chief executive of the New York Energy Research and development authority, who chairs the planning board, said in an interview Monday.

"Over this planning horizon, we do anticipate needing to continue to rely on the fossil assets that we have today in the state and in some instances those assets will need to be repowered," said Harris, noting more than half of those plants in the state are at least 45 years old.

LIPA’s next move, Stephenson said, will be to examine the fleet of dozens of traditional fossil-fuel power plants, large and small, and make determinations about how to augment or replace them over time. One thing for certain right now, he said, is that the 2023 vision of a grid run primarily on wind power won’t happen.

"You can’t run a modern electrical grid on wind, solar and lithium-ion batteries," Stephenson said. "You just can’t do it. You need dispatchable resources," such as natural gas-fired plants that can be scheduled and switched on when power is needed, versus intermittent power of sun and wind.

At the same time, he said, LIPA is "starting to get concerned about the age of the [traditional power] plants," noting that "Plan A cannot be that in 2045 we are still relying on Barret One," a unit of the National Grid power plant in Island Park, which "will be 90 years old at that point."

Looking back to the future

Part of the plan for 2026 and beyond will involve examining plans from a decade ago to repower the older plants, including in Island Park, Northport and Port Jefferson, though the cost of doing so could impact those plans, Stephenson noted. A more modern and efficient type of fossil-fuel plant known as "combined-cycle," similar to the Caithness plant in Yaphank, may prove more economical.

Stephenson said a more cost-driven decision could also involve contracting for new so-called peaker power plants, which are smaller and fossil-fuel based, to replace older ones. That would allow LIPA to upgrade them in the future to any new fuel technology that is lower emission. They might even be replaced by long-duration battery plants, he said.

If repowering was to prove the right choice for one of the bigger plants, Stephenson said, it likely would happen first in Island Park, where a new source of natural gas is on the way from a proposed new pipeline called the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, as well as a connection point to the pending Propel New York high-voltage power project, due online in 2030. "The devil is in the details there in terms of cost," he said.

But some say LIPA, and the state, are giving up on the green-energy transition too soon. "This sounds to me more like a debate over which way to go with our energy future," said Neal Lewis, executive director of the Sustainability Institute at Molloy University, a former LIPA trustee. "If that's the case, I favor the clean-energy path." 

Lewis was on the LIPA board at the time members debated the idea of repowering older plants, and the decision was clear that it would be both costly and unnecessary — power usage at the time was projected to decline for 20 years. He and others also believe LIPA hasn't maximized efforts to increase solar power and efficiency. "I think Long Island is a great leader on clean energy and I think we should keep going on that path," said Lewis.

Fred Harrison, a volunteer leader of the activist group Food & Water Watch, said he believes LIPA must fully maximize the potential for solar power on Long Island before spending potentially billions on new fossil-fuel infrastructure. 

"We know solar works on Long Island," said Harrison, a Merrick ratepayer. "It's been the bright spot," with nearly one in 10 LIPA customers boasting solar rooftops, and hundreds of megawatts of solar production during the periods LIPA needs it the most. He urged LIPA to do a "thorough examination of all the alternatives for solar" before committing to any long-term fossil-fuel plant investments. Solar, he noted, is "cheap, it's available, and it works here." 

Supporting old plants

But others support the idea of upgrading the old plants. State Sen. Mario Mattera (R-St. James), at an affordability panel of lawmakers in Medford on Dec. 10, endorsed the idea of "retooling our existing power plants." He suggested adding carbon-capture technology to help reach emission goals, but also expressed strong opposition to green-energy technologies, including battery storage, which he called an expensive "experiment." 

For now, Stephenson said, the prospect of wind power beyond the three projects already operating or planned for downstate New York — South Fork, Sunrise and Empire Wind — seems far more remote than it did in 2023.

"If I were CEO of one of those [European wind-power] companies, I would have a hard time going to my board and saying I want to put at-risk capital into the U.S. offshore wind business now," he said. "They would need a lot more certainty."

Long Island’s four waste-to-energy plants, also once considered candidates for retiring under a state plan that foresaw all carbon-emitting plants shuttered by 2040, will continue to have a place in LIPA’s energy future, Stephenson said.

"We recognize that they sort of have a special place on Long Island in terms of serving the community," he said, noting that the plants, operated and mostly owned by Reworld in Westbury, Huntington, Babylon and Islip, are vital waste-management resources. "We’ve had discussion with those folks [at Reworld] and we’d like to see [the plants] continue onward. There’s no reason why they couldn’t. They tend to be very reliable units ... and we are certainly open to extending those contracts."

Stephenson said LIPA will likely rely on a state procurement process rather than one run by LIPA itself for future battery-storage plant contracts. "The one thing we don’t want to do is confuse the market, especially with respect to batteries," he said. LIPA has two new contracts for pending batteries in Hauppauge and Shoreham, atop two already operating in East Hampton and Montauk. Hochul's administration has plans for scores of the batteries across the state, but the plans face stiff opposition across Long Island, where most towns have moratoriums on the batteries.

In any case, said Stephenson, a refreshed road map for energy for Long Island will encompass the all-of-the-above strategy akin to one now endorsed by Hochul for the state.

One question mark on the issue of investing in new fossil-fuel based plants, large or small, is that costs for those plants have risen markedly in recent years as all utilities begin eyeing all power sources to meet increasing loads tied to data centers and other big users.

"The lead times have grown substantially" for delivery of these plant components, "and the costs have grown very substantially," Stephenson said. That could even lead to a scenario where green-energy sources could become economical.

"My hope is we figure out as a society how to get wind power built and we can do it relatively inexpensively compared to the alternatives," Stephenson said. The goal is to have enough "wrapping capacity" of steady power from traditional plants to work around the fluctuating power of wind and solar.

The big question is how LIPA does it all while meeting its affordable energy mandate. Stephenson said there will be new costs.

"We have to be realistic," he said. "It’s going to cost something" to replace and strengthen the future grid. "To say it’s not going to cost anything would be disingenuous. We’re seeing every other utility saying the same thing, which is that we need to build more infrastructure and it’s gotten expensive ... Does that mean rate increases? I’m not sure."

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.