Roger Caiazza
There finally has been a long overdue admission that the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) might not be affordable.
As part of local re-election outreach Governor Hochul turned up at a western New York restaurant to discuss affordability issues. Buffalo TV Station WRGZ 2 On You Side asked (suggested that a “slow down” on the Climate Act was needed and costs are an issue:
We asked: “On affordability, you mentioned utility bills. Heard you say it, governor. Isn’t it true that ratepayers are paying for that because of the climate change law. We do know the the Public Service Commission (in February 2023) actually allowed for increased rates to be able to pay for some of that, connecting various …”
The Governor responded, “This law goes back a number of years.”
At the end of her long response on utility rates and energy strategy, there was this summation from Hochul: “You’re absolutely right. Utility costs are a huge burden of families, and I’ll do whatever I can to alleviate that.”
It was inevitable that the impact of the Climate Act on energy affordability would become a political liability. The Governor’s suggestion that a “slow down” on implantation of the Climate Act was needed suggests that implementation has been on schedule. That is not true. Implementing regulations, proceedings, and legislation are all lagging behind schedule.
I used Perplexity (https://www.perplexity.ai/) to generate summaries and references related to the implementation status and impact on rates for this response. In one example, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) failed to meet the January 1, 2024 deadline for promulgating emissions reduction regulations. That prompted a lawsuit by environmental groups demanding action.
As a result of delays interim Climate Act targets are in danger. According to the Climate Act Dashboard , New York has achieved only a 9% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, representing just 23% progress toward the 2030 target of 40% reduction.
WGRZ-TV confronted Hochul about the implementation status and she said: “I had to take a closer look and realize we cannot reach those objectives there were, back before I became governor, in a time frame that’s going to not hurt ratepayers, so we’re slowing things down. I want to make sure people know that.” My cynical take is that this statement is pure political theater.
The reality is that there is a Public Service Commission mandate to provide an annual update of implementation status and ratepayer cost impacts. The first Informational Report was released in July 2023 but there hasn’t been an update since. I believe that the decision to delay the release was at the behest of the Governor’s office. There is no more direct and immediate impact of Climate Act implementation to New Yorkers than utility bills and that reality is becoming too large to hide.
The Perplexity reference analysis noted that the first and only Informational Report provided detailed breakdowns of climate-related costs passed through to customers. For residential electric customers, CLCPA-related costs represented 3.7% to 9.8% of total monthly bills, with some utilities showing higher percentages. For non-residential customers with 2,000 kW and 720,000 kWh usage, CLCPA costs represented 4.6% to 11.8% of total monthly bills. This evaluation was for 2022 when implementation efforts were just getting started. The most recent rate cases request double digit increases – National Grid’s Niagara Mohawk case is asking for 20% increase in electric delivery revenues.
It is no wonder that Governor Hochul has realized that she cannot simultaneously complain about the greedy utility rate increase requests and continue to support the inevitable costs associated with the net-zero transition.
There is another apparent realization by the Hochul Administration. They have figured out that wind and solar cannot be the backbone of the electric system and have come out in favor of developing new nuclear resources. The WGRZ-TV article noted:
“We need all of the above for energy,” she said. “We’re going to have to do more than just rely upon wind and solar and thermal. We have a large percentage of our state powered by hydro power. We’re blessed to have that, but I want to lean into nuclear power. Build it.”
Of course, the usual suspects are not happy.
Cornell Professor Robert W. Howarth, who is a biogeochemist and environmental scientist, told us: “The New York Climate Law is one of the most progressive pieces out there when we passed it in 2019. It was held up as a model to the rest of the world as to how we should move ahead. We’re behind in reaching those targets, and I’m disappointed that the governor doesn’t see the urgency in pushing ahead to meet those targets. We really should be doing that.”
Regarding nuclear power, Howarth said: “Nuclear power is extremely expensive technology, extremely slow to deploy. The resources are just much better put into renewable technology and the heat pump technologies.”
Professor Howarth also pointed out that the higher cost of electricity could also be tied to the higher cost of natural gas, which, again, is a significant part of the current power production mix for the state power grid.
I disagree with everything he said. Howarth has not had a stellar record for academic rigor. Nonetheless he has always had an outsized influence on the Climate Act and the Scoping Plan implementation process. Reality is catching up to him too.
Where does New York go from here? The Climate Act has always been about emotional arguments to cater to climate activist constituents and supporting crony capitalists feeding at the trough. I have spent the last couple of months trying to intervene in utility rate cases arguing that the State has not defined what they mean by affordability and reliability making continued investments risky. I believe that the Hochul Administration could use previously unacknowledged safety value provisions to argue that it is inappropriate to implement the Climate Act. The political approach could be to simply acknowledge that without Federal tax breaks and incentives that may all be gone with the recent passage of Trump’s Big, Beautiful, Bill that the net-zero transition is impossible. She already threw previous Governor Cuomo under the bus when she suggested that “we cannot reach those objectives” that were put in place before she became governor. The strategy where a Progressive Democrat blames others for the failure of her own misguided initiatives seems most likely to me.
I do not care how the madness ends if it stops.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
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