Power to the people

With a historic agreement, Gov. Cuomo is about to get what he and fellow New York environmentalists have long yearned for — a phaseout of the Indian Point nuclear plant along the Hudson River, just 30-odd miles north of the city of millions it powers.

Which necessitates a full-court press to wire New York City to the ample affordable energy soon to be lost. More power to him? More power to us. Cuomo’s opposition to Indian Point is as consistent as anything in his long political career.

Shut Indian Point down, he demanded running for governor in 2002, warning of a radioactive terrorist attack that could pose an evacuation nightmare.

Shut it down, Cuomo as attorney general vowed in 2007, promising to deny renewal of Indian Point’s operating license.

Shut it down, Cuomo has insisted in recent years — mounting a legal assault that now forces operator Entergy to bargain for the terms of Indian Point’s euthanasia no later, excepting unforeseen disaster, than 2021.

And so, winning a chess game expertly played, Cuomo is set to repeal the source of one fourth of New York City’s electricity — and, much like Congress as it takes a mallet the Affordable Care Act, now has the obligation to replace, without causing consumers crushing financial pain or a loss of vital services.

Trashing nuclear power is an easy move in a fearful world, all the more so following Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster. Now Cuomo needs to show as much vigor in nurturing alternatives into being — alternatives that fulfill the governor’s separate commitment to generate half of New York’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

Crucially, New York looks to spark construction of an underground cable to transmit power from hydroelectric dams in Quebec all the way down to Queens, where obsolete smokestack power plants increasingly sit idle in Astoria.

So far — and holding up the project — no electric company has yet agreed to receive that flow of electrons and convert it into usable electricity.

The governor insists that the looming Indian Point shutdown, spelling an end to a major competing source, will finally jolt companies into action with the promise of a payday at transmission cable’s end.

Necessarily, and with no small whiff of hypocrisy for a Cuomo who buckled to political pressure and banned fracking statewide, the Indian Point shutdown will also likely force increased reliance on power generated by natural gas — gas that New York will import from other states.

The biggest unknown remains the ultimate cost to Con Ed customers here in fast-growing New York City, who already pay the highest rates in the country outside Hawaii, and who are as thirsty for electricity as they come.

The governor must not allow a repeat of his father Mario’s costly shutdown of the Shoreham nuclear plant, which burdened Long Island with outsize utility payments for years.

In his chock-full-of-big-plans State of the State address Monday — the first of six such speeches in a tour around New York — Cuomo basked in the glow of his Indian Point achievement. He must be just as ready to own responsibility going forward for keeping the lights on and the bills low.