When Gov. Kathy Hochul took office in 2021, New York was in the middle of a complicated energy transition. Albany had passed one of the nation’s most ambitious decarbonization laws only two years earlier, yet the state had just shuttered its single largest source of carbon-free power: the Indian Point nuclear station.

Five years later, the situation has flipped. Hochul, a Democrat who is up for reelection in November, watered down the state’s decarbonization goals this spring and is now calling for the biggest buildout of new nuclear reactors in decades.

“Expanding our nuclear energy capacity will play a key role in my all-of-the-above energy strategy to ensure we have enough reliable power to keep the lights on and costs down for New Yorkers while helping attract 21st century economic development opportunities,” Hochul said in a statement to Canary Media.

If successful, the 5 gigawatts of new nuclear power plants that Hochul aims to build would make New York the No. 3 state in the country in terms of atomic generating capacity.

It’s an ambitious target. The entire U.S. has built just over 3 GW of new nuclear capacity over the last 20 years, and most of it came from the first-of-a-kind AP1000 buildout at Southern Company’s Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating plant in Georgia, which was plagued by cost and deadline overruns.

Hochul’s nuclear embrace comes as federal support flows toward efforts to build both smaller next-generation reactors and larger-scale facilities similar to the three New York already has.

“This is part of the return of energy realism to the Western world,” said Isuru Seneviratne, the co-founder of Nuclear New York, an advocacy group that has pushed for more atomic energy in the state.

Not everyone is happy with the move. Influential local groups such as NY Renews say the state has not done enough to maximize wind and solar power, and some state lawmakers have called for a moratorium on nuclear.

Hochul, for her part, has cast nuclear energy as necessary for long-term decarbonization. The state has struggled to execute on its plan to build large-scale renewables upstate and ferry the power downstate, and President Donald Trump has all but crushed the offshore wind industry that New York was otherwise banking on for clean power.

“While dangerous policies coming out of Washington, D.C., threaten to halt our progress, I am doubling down on our efforts to strengthen our grid and invest in the clean energy we need to power New York,” Hochul said in the statement to Canary Media.

Changing tides

The Empire State’s turnaround marks a major shift in state energy policy.

Indian Point station, north of New York City — at one point the state’s largest nuclear plant — shut down its last reactor in April 2021, following a decades-long campaign by those who believed the facility represented a grave risk from a September 11–style terrorist attack; among them were then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who also argued that the warm water the facility discharged harmed wildlife in the Hudson River.

Hochul took office later that same year, but it wasn’t until 2024 that she began calling for the state to revisit nuclear energy.

In January 2025, Hochul issued a nuclear ​“master plan” for the state. Five months later, she ordered the New York Power Authority (NYPA) — the largest state-owned utility in the country — to help bring down the cost of building the first gigawatt of new nuclear capacity.

That December, New York inked a partnership with Ontario, where the conservative government is building what will likely be North America’s first small modular reactor: a 300-megawatt BWRX-300 from the American Japanese giant GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy. The pact was aimed at working together to settle on one or two reactor designs that the entire Northeast could get behind, allowing for a regional supply chain to form that would bring down the costs of building the second, third, and fourth versions of the same technology.

In January 2026, Hochul upped the target, adding another 4 GW of capacity to the state’s nuclear goal while announcing that eight upstate New York communities had responded to NYPA’s request for information to express their interest in hosting nuclear facilities.

Two months later, she spearheaded a deal with the governors of all six New England states to coordinate plans for new nuclear projects with the hopes of further cementing a regional standard for nuclear. In June, her office kicked off the Public Service Commission process to begin siting the plants.