Comments on: “Carbon emissions and costs associated with subsidizing New York nuclear instead of replacing it with renewables”

Read, N and Cosgrove, P (2021) Comments on: “Carbon emissions and costs associated with subsidizing New York nuclear instead of replacing it with renewables”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 290. ISSN 0959-6526

Abstract

We respond to the paper “Carbon emissions and costs associated with subsidizing New York nuclear instead of replacing it with renewables” (Cebulla and Jacobson, 2018). The paper found that it would be cheaper to build new renewable energy infrastructure than to continue to subsidise existing nuclear power plants via Zero Emission Credits. We identify a possible error in the calculation of the total annual energy produced by these power plants that, if corrected, could invert the paper's central finding regarding cost.