Activists dispute Hochul’s claims about cost of complying with climate law

Environmental activists are pushing back against claims from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration that fully implementing the state’s landmark climate law would cost New Yorkers thousands of dollars. A new report from New Yorkers for Clean Air and Spring Street Climate Fund aims to balance out conversations on the potential impacts of hitting climate goals by illustrating the benefits, rather than the costs, of implementation.

The report, shared exclusively with City & State, found that millions of New York households could see nearly $270 each in annual energy rebates under one version of a cap-and-invest program that the state could implement. It also provided estimates for other benefits of the program beyond money going directly into the pockets of ratepayers, such as $3 billion to modernize New York’s aging grid system and upgrades such as weatherization, improved insulation, heat pumps and access to solar energy for hundreds of thousands of homes. 

John Raskin, president of Spring Street Climate Fund, said the report has been in the works for months in order to lay out concrete benefits that a cap-and-invest program can have for New Yorkers. “We're having a public discussion about cap-and-invest,” he said. “And in order to have a fully informed discussion, we should have a clear vision for what the benefits of the cap-and-invest program could be.” 

The report comes out just days after the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority sent a memo to the governor’s office that concluded that an aggressive cap-and-invest program could cost ratepayers thousands more in energy bills by 2031. Though the Spring Street report was not conducted as a direct rebuttal of NYSERDA’s new memo, Raskin said the timing of the release is important. “(The memo) is one side of the conversation, but to have a complete conversation, we need to have a vision for what, for the benefits that cap-and-invest could bring, because I think those benefits could be quite popular,” he said. 

The Hochul administration had initially proposed a cap-and-invest program in 2023 as a key part of the state’s plan to hit legally required emissions reduction benchmarks and other goals laid out in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. But the governor has repeatedly delayed the release of regulations to set that program up, leaving unanswered important questions as to how the state would implement the program. The NYSERDA memo based its numbers on one potential implementation, but Raskin said it’s hardly the only path for the state to take – nor is his report. “What we're proposing is not the only version of what a cap-and-invest program could bring,” he said. “We have a democratically accountable process in place that involves the governor and members of the Legislature.”

Hochul and her administration have already conceded that they will not be able to hit upcoming benchmarks in the CLCPA, such as the goal to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. She is now more explicitly suggesting that she will propose changes to the law under the guise of affordability, using the NYSERDA memo as evidence that implementing a cap-and-invest program right now would prove too costly for New Yorkers. “I really want to do everything I can to address people's real concerns, yes, about the climate, but also about the fact that people's energy costs… (are) staggering,” Hochul said at an unrelated press conference last week.

Environmental advocates take issue with the governor’s reasoning. “The reason why everybody's energy bills are high right now is because natural gas – its price is spiking,” said Julie Tighe, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “We know this. This is not – nothing else has changed.” 

Tighe also pointed out the version of cap-and-invest that NYSERDA used for its analysis represented the most zealous version of the program and didn’t take into consideration other factors outside of direct costs. “I do think that what's out there is really an inaccurate and unfortunate way for them to approach this,” she said of the memo. Tighe also said that she felt heartened by rhetoric she has heard so far from legislative leaders in support of keeping the climate law as is. “We're going to be doing an all out effort to make sure that we're just saying no,” she said. “We’re invoking Nancy Reagan this week.”