The price of natural gas is skyrocketing, something that New Yorkers getting their home heating and electric bills after this winter’s cold snap know all too well. Unaffordable rate hikes have been hitting New Yorkers for years, right alongside our electric grid becoming more dependent on natural gas.

Yet right now Gov. Hochul is laying the groundwork to roll back one of New York’s best tools for lowering energy costs — our nation-leading climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA — joining President Trump’s war on renewable energy that continues to drive up energy costs for everyone.

The reality is that renewable energy is the only path forward. It is well-established that new renewable power is consistently cheaper than new natural gas generation. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, renewable power will account for more than 99% of new electric generation in the U.S. in 2026. From Texas to Florida, renewables are winning on economics, not environmentalism.

The governor claims that implementing the CLCPA costs too much for New Yorkers. But here’s the truth: this administration has largely failed to implement the climate law for as long as she’s been in office. New Yorkers’ bills aren’t rising because of a law that hasn’t been implemented — they’re rising because the oil and natural gas status quo is too expensive. 

Rising electricity prices are being driven principally by rising prices for fossil fuels, especially natural gas. That’s a fact recognized by administration officials themselves and the nonprofit corporation responsible for operating the bulk electricity grid, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO).

If the administration actually wants to lower New Yorkers’ energy bills, we must not back down from our climate law.

The CLCPA passed in 2019 setting targets based on the best available science, and put in place a process, called the Climate Action Council, that brought together dozens of experts to chart a path for meeting those targets affordably. Unfortunately, those recommendations, issued in 2022, have largely been ignored. 

Now, after years of failing to act at the scale demanded by the crisis, the Hochul administration is claiming that the goalposts must be moved. To back up their claims, they point to a series of memos and talking points they have produced themselves, focused on the cost of implementing a proposed Cap & Invest program.

But they conflate CLCPA and Cap & Invest as if they are the same thing, which they are not. The CLCPA doesn’t actually require a Cap & Invest program — that was merely what the governor’s own agencies recommended through the Climate Action Council process, and subsequently adopted (then failed to implement).

The idea that CLCPA is driving up energy prices is fossil fuel industry nonsense from the Trump playbook, and no Democrat should engage in it. 

A conversation about anything other than deploying renewable power faster is a diversion from the challenging but essential work of driving down New Yorkers’ bills.

Reliability, generation capacity, and energy affordability are indeed critical issues that must be addressed. But the answer in all three cases is the same: not the unaffordable fossil fuel status quo that got us into this crisis in the first place, but low-cost, rapidly deployable renewable generation and storage, coupled with energy efficiency and weatherization that helps New Yorkers save money and reduces energy demand.

There is no doubt that we are behind on our climate targets — but when you’re behind, real leaders don’t quit, they work harder. 

Krueger, Parker, and Harkcham chair the state Senate committees on Finance, Energy, and Environmental Conservation.

© NY Daily News