After slow-walking the implementation of New York’s climate law for years, Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration has revealed intentions to eviscerate the law through the secretive closed-door budget negotiation process. To aid these efforts, it has prepared a memo on the climate law’s costs with some striking claims: that the way heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution is measured in the law is out of step with scientific consensus and that it will drive up the cost of compliance. 

The memo's claims about accounting for climate-pollution are factually and scientifically wrong, its cost math is disingenuous and flawed and its purported concern for New Yorkers’ energy affordability doesn’t stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

Nearly 70 scientists from all over the world sent a letter to the governor and the Legislature resoundingly refuting the administration’s greenhouse gas accounting claims. It seems that instead of actually reading the relevant scientific reports, the Hochul administration got its talking points from gas lobbyists, who have reportedly spent more than $16 million to influence the governor since she took office.

Is Kathy Hochul really concerned about NY energy costs?

There are other signs that the Hochul administration’s energy policy is being increasingly swayed by the gas industry rather than a real concern for New Yorkers’ energy costs.

For example, the governor’s team greenlighted a massive Trump-backed fracked gas pipeline citing concerns over the reliability of the downstate natural gas distribution system. However, this costly project, which New Yorkers will pay for, had been rejected thrice before and would have never been resurrected had the result of the 2024 presidential election been different. Has the state left the reliability of its gas network at the mercy of election results? Clearly not, and clearly the pipeline is a favor to the gas industry rather than a real need.

In another glaring example, the State Energy Plan released recently by the Hochul administration identifies “long-term affordability risks” due to “investments in the gas system that might otherwise be avoided,” but the plan’s recommendations do not include actually avoiding these avoidable costs. Instead, it hints at the possibility of raising electricity rates to pay gas utility shareholders for the avoidable investments.

Gas lobbyists themselves couldn’t have done a better job of writing certain parts of the State Energy Plan that is riddled with affordability-busting landmines timed to detonate under future administrations’ watches. So, when the architects of this plan cite affordability concerns for their desire to dismantle the scientific underpinning of the state’s climate law, no one should believe them.

Fossil fuels are a problem in New York, not an affordabilty solution

New Yorkers’ own lived experience is telling that fossil fuels like oil and gas are the problem, not a solution for affordability. The recent cold spell saw sharp spikes in gas and electricity bills, the types of which the state’s electricity system operator has squarely blamed on fluctuating natural gas prices. And the Ukraine and Iran conflicts show that every time an actual or aspiring petrostate dictator launches a war, the citizens feel the pain at the pump while the oil and gas companies laugh all the way to the bank. 

The state’s slow transition to reliable and affordable clean energy sources with steady, predictable prices is costing New Yorker’s dearly. The Hochul administration has a long list of excuses for Albany’s clean energy paralysis, from federal policy to COVID-19 impacts. But many other states are able to forge ahead under exactly the same circumstances.

Texas is literally lapping New York in building cheaper renewable energy. When the federal government cut short clean energy incentives, several state leaders rushed to fast track solar and wind installations before the expiration of tax credits. However, New York is facing project cancellations and a loss of more than $2 billion in federal credits that would eventually benefit utility customers. Nearly a half dozen states have adopted automated solar permitting to relax some of the mindless bureaucracy that makes rooftop solar three times costlier in the U.S. than in Australia. A similar bill in New York has been languishing for more than two years. 

These are just a handful of examples of Albany inaction, which, along with our dependence on fossil fuels, an aging energy infrastructure in need of modernization and wasteful investments in new gas pipes, is driving energy costs higher.

So, instead of bad-faith scapegoating of the climate law, the Hochul administration should get serious about rapidly implementing it for fast, cost-effective and lasting relief from high energy prices. And the Legislature must prevent a weakening of the law in the state budget.

Anshul Gupta is research scientist and the policy and research director at New Yorkers for Clean Power.

© Daily Messenger (MPNnow)