New Jersey lawmakers will hold a hearing tomorrow on a bill that calls for raising the cost for electricity customers to keep two nuclear plants in Salem County open.
Public Service Enterprise Group CEO Ralph Izzo told lawmakers earlier this month that the nuclear facilities could become unprofitable to operate in two years and might have to be shut down.
Governor-elect Phil Murphy supports the objective of keeping the nuclear plants open as long as they can be operated safely.
“We are all in 100 percent to keep them going until the last day assuming they’re run responsibly. They employ both directly and indirectly thousands of people in the southern part of the state. There’s no question about that. And they are the biggest bridge we’ve got to the 100 percent clean energy future.”
But Murphy says legislation should not interfere with aggressively developing the alternative-energy economy. Environmental groups worry it will.
The state’s ratepayer advocate says the subsidy measure could add about 40 dollars a year to the average homeowner’s utility bill.