The Business Council will survey member businesses on issues related to the cost, supply, and economic importance of energy in New York State.
The survey will be sent to businesses that are Council members later this month. Responses will be tablulated in late June, with a release of the results tentatively scheduled for early July.
The survey is intended to clarify business's views various issues, including:
- The relationship between New York's competitiveness and the cost, supply, and reliability of energy in New York.
- How high energy costs and uncertainties about supply affect the competitiveness of individual companies.
- The importance of siting more power plants and expediting the plant-siting process.
- The relative merits of siting plants fired by oil, natural gas, coal, and/or nuclear power.
- Various proposals to reregulate energy markets.
- The benefits of conservation.
The Council is conducting the survey as the state is revising its energy master plan. The state established an energy plan in 1992 and revised it in 1998. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is the lead agency overseeing the revision of the plan, which was announced in April.
The new plan will focus on trends in energy in New York as well as energy needs, said Johnny Evers, The Business Council's legislative analyst specializing in energy.
"The plan is intended to be a road map to energy security and planning," Evers said. "It should include detailed long-range projections and serve as an all-encompassing inventory of statistics about energy in New York State."
NYSERDA has said the plan will focus on competitiveness in energy markets as well as issues related to prices, the environment, transportation, economy, and various "public benefits."
Issues to be studied in depth in the creation of the new plan include: wholesale markets and prices; new generation and transmission capacity; distributed generation; natural gas pipeline capacity, fuel diversity; the state's Article X plant-siting process; how New York's prices compare to other states'; and the effects of taxes on the cost of energy.
Written comments on the energy plan can be submitted until June 18. NYSERDA staff is also reaching out to interested parties for their comments.
After a draft energy plan is released late this fall, statewide public hearings will be held before the final new plan is adopted next spring.