Hochul seeks to tap breaks on state climate law
Supporters of swift action to transition New York to renewable energy sources were disappointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to delay, even as many acknowledge the challenging path to reaching the state’s ambitious emissions reduction targets.
For some Adirondack Park advocates, the push to revise the landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) signals a retrenchment of state leadership in tackling climate change, which threatens the park’s ecology and economy.
Adirondack organizations react
John Sheehan, communications director of the Adirondack Council, said the advocacy group did not support altering the climate law as part of budget negotiations. “We are disappointed it’s even a topic of discussion,” Sheehan said.
But he also acknowledged the unexpected hardships the state has faced since the CLCPA was adopted in 2019: a global pandemic and supply chain shock; persistent inflation; and a federal administration working to slow the growth of renewable energy.
Sheehan said it was unfortunate the governor offered the climate law changes as part of budget negotiations, which puts decision-making in the hands of leaders in closed-door talks rather than the hands of lawmakers in policy-specific committee hearings.
“It does make it harder to hold people accountable for what happens. We would have preferred to see it handled in a different way,” Sheehan said.
Claudia Braymer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, also expressed concern with the governor’s proposals, calling climate change and its impacts “an existential threat to the Adirondack Park.”
“We continue to want to see the state make progress on our climate goals, and it doesn’t make sense to have us walking away from those goals or changing the calculations to make it look like we are meeting our goals,” Braymer said.
Hochul, in a recent editorial, tied achieving the state’s goal of reducing emissions by 40% by 2030 to a substantial increase in gas and utility costs for residents. The state’s own roadmap to meeting the emissions targets had called for new regulations in 2024, but they have never been issued. The idea of the developing regulations was to charge major emitters in the state for pollution allowances and to use that money for programs to lower energy costs for residents and invest in renewable energy sources. Those regulations were never issued, and statewide environmental groups sued to force the state to do so; a judge recently ruled with the groups, a decision that the state is appealing.
Hochul proposed delaying those regulations until 2030 and altering how the state calculates its emissions, moving from its current way of scoring methane highly for its short-term global warming effects to one that focused more on the long-term impacts of carbon dioxide. The latter approach is widely used by other state and international organizations.
While many advocates working on the energy transition took issue with how Hochul has framed the cost tradeoffs, noting the price instability of fossil fuels playing out in real-time at gas pumps, they also highlighted the hurdles facing residents, businesses and local governments working to move toward renewable sources.
Jill Henck, climate and energy program director at the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA), said despite the governor’s proposals, the slow work supporting homeowners and businesses to decarbonize continued. Much of that work is funded by state programs and focuses on energy efficiency.
“We will still be doing the work we are doing to reduce emissions for households and municipalities,” Henck said. “It’s slow going because it’s one household at a time.”
Since the state failed to adopt the so-called cap-and-invest regulations earlier, Henck said, state leaders were left with few choices. Henck added that more should be done to communicate the ways that reliance on natural gas contributes to rising electricity prices and how costly the impacts of unmitigated climate change will be.
“I’m not surprised this is the route she is taking. Right now we are at a place where we are in crisis, we are in an affordability crisis,” Henck said. “She’s not changing the entire CLCPA, she’s changing targets.”
Henck called for an approach based on regional needs and improved education around new technologies and the benefits of shifting the state’s energy mix. North Country communities face renewable development pressure often without discussion in advance, causing tension and slowing the entire process. Attempting to push forward on a climate plan without gaining public support and trust can backfire, she said.
“We are at a point in politics and our power generation mix where there are proposed renewable developments in the North Country, but not a lot of education around the technologies to give confidence to residents,” Henck said.
The North Country’s newest lawmaker
Michael Cashman, the North Country’s new Democratic assemblymember, emphasized the importance of electricity and gas prices for his constituents, highlighting how his first pieces of legislation focused on the issue.
He said there should be public hearings on the current status of the CLCPA and expressed distaste with the idea of making significant policy changes within the budget.
Cashman also called for a more regionalized approach to the energy transition. He said he wants to see infrastructure and energy capacity evaluated on a regional basis across the state, using that as the foundation for transitioning to renewable energy.
“The state shouldn’t and couldn’t impose unrealistic goals and expectations on a region that doesn’t have capacity,” he said. “Before we talk about electric school buses, the electric grid is not where it needs to be to support electric buses.”
He also highlighted what he said is a top concern for constituents: energy costs and public utilities.
“People are facing an affordability crisis, and we know that we need more guardrails,” Cashman said. “We can’t let utility companies abdicate their responsibilities. We cannot lay this at the feet of the CLCPA by itself.”