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Why Is New York Running Away From Renewables?

Kathy Hochul is proposing to retreat from the state’s nation-leading climate and energy strategy. That would be a disaster.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Monday, March 23, 2026.

The war in Iran, and its entirely predictable impact on global energy markets, has once again put into stark relief the cost of the world’s continued dependence on fossil fuels. As if waking from a nap, countries whose commitment to climate action had been waning have been jolted back into action to transition their economies away from an energy system that is rapidly destabilizing the globe and toward one that promises significantly more predictability, stability, affordability, and energy independence.

The UK’s Climate Change Committee recently determined that the cost of achieving net-zero by 2050 will be less than that of a single fossil fuel price shock. The country will be requiring heat pumps and solar panels in all new homes, as well as subsidizing plug-in solar for low-income households. France is doubling its investments in electrification and banning gas heating in new buildings. In Pakistan, a massive, grassroots-led transition to solar power after the Russian invasion of Ukraine is insulating people from the impacts of the Hormuz double blockade. And China, which has invested heavily in becoming the solar, wind, and EV workshop of the world, is being widely labeled as the “winner” of the Iran War.

During the first Trump administration, the federal government turned back progress on climate and clean energy, and individual states picked up the mantle of leadership. Many of those states formed the United States Climate Alliance in response to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement; in subsequent years, Climate Alliance members followed up with real action to move the needle on the energy transition.

In New York, in 2019, we passed what was at the time nation-leading climate legislation, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA. The CLCPA has a level of ambition that matches the reality of the climate crisis. It charts a path for a more livable future for New Yorkers, with cleaner air, better health outcomes, and lower-cost, locally produced modern energy for our homes and businesses, all of which will create thousands of good, union jobs across our state. And it includes binding emissions reduction targets. By 2023, nine other states had legislated similar binding targets, with the eventual goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions or similar by 2050.

Seven years later, Trump is back, and things are worse than ever on the climate front. The second Trump administration has been even more aggressive than the first, openly declaring war on cheap, American-made renewable energy and climate progress of any kind, even going so far as to scrub any reference to climate from the federal government. The administration has stopped the development of offshore wind in its tracks, attempted to prevent new onshore wind and solar from being built, and repealed and clawed back tax credits and grants created by President........

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