Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2025
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by Alina Voss
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1 Comments
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New York City is on the edge of an energy disaster. The Indian Point nuclear plant—which had supplied roughly a quarter of the city’s electricity—is struggling to get back online in the face of environmentalist opposition. Meanwhile, New York City’s electricity bills are reaching record highs and are expected to rise even more next year.
Enter Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats’ socialist nominee for mayor. If Mamdani’s vision for the future wins out, the Big Apple’s energy crisis could turn into a catastrophe. Here’s how.
Mamdani entered the scene at a time when New York’s energy troubles were turning dire. In 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which called for New York to run on 70 percent zero-emission energy by 2030 and 100 percent zero-emission energy by 2040. His successor, Kathy Hochul, continued Cuomo’s wild green crusade with new spending on renewable projects and other schemes.
But it didn’t take long for Governor Hochul to recognize reality. The ironic result of the green activists’ fight to shut down zero-emissions nuclear facilities is that New York City is now powered almost entirely by fossil fuels. It is simply impossible to switch the largest city in the United States to carbon-free energy in such a short amount of time using renewables alone.
New York’s only hope to reduce emissions, as its leaders want, while keeping the lights on, is to build even more nuclear—and to her credit, that’s exactly what Governor Hochul proposed. Hochul announced that she wanted to restore Indian Point and “lean into nuclear power.”
“We’re going to have to do more than just rely upon wind and solar and thermal,” she said.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party’s new radical left rising star has different plans. Where Governor Hochul recognized the only way to keep emissions down and lights on is by using nuclear power, mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani – who has a sizable lead in the polls – has stayed eerily silent on the Indian Point plant that would power the city he intends to run. In fact, he’s said almost nothing about nuclear at all.
The little we do know about Mamdani’s approach to nuclear power is that he campaigned last year with NY Renews, which supports a renewables-only path to zero emissions and condemns nuclear facilities.
Whether Mamdani is ambivalent toward nuclear or opposes it like his campaign comrades doesn’t matter. New York City needs nuclear now more than ever to keep energy flowing and costs down.
Refusing to endorse necessary nuclear is bad enough, but Mamdani also appears to share NY Renews’ support for total reliance on renewables and a rejection of fossil fuels. He was the sponsor of the Clean Futures Act that would ban all new fracking gas-powered plants across the state, and has said that investing money in fossil fuel facilities is akin to “climate denialism” and “climate racism.”
Besides the fact that natural gas is very often a cleaner alternative to current sources of energy, Mamdani’s stance is impractical. If he rejects all fossil fuels, refrains from endorsing nuclear, and will only publicly support renewables, he is in effect saying that he doesn’t want New York City to have enough power to function.
Such a terrifying future is even more likely in light of Mamdani’s most radical energy plan: socializing the energy sector.
Socialism is synonymous with shortages and blackouts. State control over the energy system won’t solve New York City’s energy crisis, bring down prices, or keep the lights on. Only producing more energy can do that.
If New York fails to choose a future of pro-nuclear energy abundance, it will continue to remain a national outlier. While other left-wing states like California have decided to embrace nuclear power and retain gas power, New York is enduring an energy crisis of its own making. New York residential electricity rates are already more than 50 percent higher than the national average and set to rise.
Even so, ideologues like Mamdani refuse to accept reality and embrace the diversity of energy sources that New York City and the entire Empire State need.
Mamdani didn’t create the New York energy crisis, but his policies will worsen it. If he’s elected, America’s biggest city may not just have to contend with Mamdani opening government-run grocery stores, making bus trips free, or freezing rent. They may also have to worry about him keeping the power running so they don’t freeze this winter.
Alina Voss is a fellow with ConservAmerica.
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