Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Back on May 26, 2026, the New York State Legislature dramatically changed their 2019 climate law, which had originally been labeled “landmark” in the green press.
When it comes to the law’s draconian emission reductions, the landmark is gone. The law has been gutted.
New York City Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge with skyscrapers over Hudson River illuminated with lights and busy traffic at dusk after sunset.
Back on May 26, 2026, the New York State Legislature dramatically changed their 2019 climate law, which had originally been labeled “landmark” in the green press. These recent changes have been widely reported, but I have yet to see a summary of just how big these changes are, so here is my take.
When it comes to the law’s draconian emission reductions, the landmark is gone. The law has been gutted.
Ironically the Greens tend to call any softening of a reckless environmental law or regulation a gutting, but in this case, I have not seen that term used even though it is certainly called for. Perhaps it is because the Greens did it themselves. The New York governor and legislative leaders certainly qualify as Green leaders, and they did the gutting.
By way of background, back in February, CFACT published my report on the calamitous emission reduction provisions of the climate law that were about to kick in. It was sent to key members of the Legislature. It is here.
The full report title is:
“Severe Climate Act Impacts Threaten New York State
Massive price hikes and fuel shortages will hit unless the law is changed”
Here is a telling excerpt from the executive summary:
“The threat is stark. The Climate Act requires the administration to promulgate regulations that ‘ensure’ that the 2030 emissions reduction target is met. Governor Hochul has said her administration does not want to do so because the regulations are infeasible and ruinously expensive for New Yorkers. The court has ruled that either the law must be changed or the regulations must be issued.
“Clearly, the legislature must act on this threat. Our brief report outlines some of the most pressing issues lawmakers should consider. First and foremost is the fact that the regulatory mechanism includes rationing fuel use for transportation and heating. Such rationing is likely to create unacceptable shortages, including the possibility of homes running out of heat during winter months.
“The so-called ‘cap and invest’ regulations also include taxing the rations. In practice, this means raising the cost of fuel so high that its use is sharply curtailed. This severe cost impact is also unacceptable.”
So, in May, the legislature changed the target date from 2030 to 2040. In fact, they increased the target emission reductions, but they also gutted the target thus rendering the increase moot. The 2030 target was an absolute mandate, while the 2040 target is merely a carefully qualified aspiration.
The original statutory requirement for a 40% statewide GHG reduction by 2030 is replaced by a vague mandate to achieve a 60% reduction by 2040 “to the maximum extent feasible and cost effective,” using 1990 as the baseline.
Since a 60% reduction is neither feasible nor cost effective, the new target is completely undefined.
Likewise for the required regulations, now due in December 2028. The amended Climate Act directs the state regulators to consider several limiting parameters for an economy wide cap and invest program, including impacts on affordability, economic development and energy costs, and the feasibility for residents, businesses, and other entities.
These relatively specific considerations are even more constraining than the vague target language. If taken seriously, they could make the cap-and-invest program relatively harmless.
There are other big back-off-from-alarmism changes as well that I will not go into.
There is no way to tell whether the CFACT Report played a role here, but the surprisingly great magnitude of the legislative changes clearly allows for that. In any case, this is certainly a time for celebration.
At the state level, New York leads the league in gutting alarmism. Let other states follow their lead.
In New York State, the annual budget is due by April 1. Here we are on April 7, and no budget has yet emerged. Word is that the Governor and legislative leaders are hidden away behind closed doors hammering out the details. Word also is that somewhere in this “budget” process, the seemingly unrelated matter of the deadlines of the Climate Act (for starters, 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030) are about to get extended.
In New York State, the annual budget is due by April 1. Here we are on April 7, and no budget has yet emerged. Word is that the Governor and legislative leaders are hidden away behind closed doors hammering out the details. Word also is that somewhere in this “budget” process, the seemingly unrelated matter of the deadlines of the Climate Act (for starters, 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030) are about to get extended.
When the Climate Act (officially “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” or CLCPA) was enacted back in 2019, the deadlines, beginning in 2030, seemed so very far away. The legislation was almost entirely activist-driven, with a willing audience of gullible and innumerate “progressive” useful idiots controlling the Legislature. Normal people generally paid no attention and had little idea what was about to hit them. However, as the deadlines have gotten a little closer, and as the costs of renewable generation have begun show up in utility bills, finally some of those are starting to wake up.
Meanwhile, what is happening over on the activist side? Have any of those dimwits taken the time and effort to examine the realities to see if their great plans might be starting to collapse? The answer is, not as far as I can tell. And there are plenty of examples of activists doubling down and digging in to oppose any wavering.
But first, a few examples of those belatedly joining the realist coalition. On January 9 I had a post titled “New York Business Community Starting To Wake Up About The Coming Energy Train Wreck.” That post reported that a group calling itself the Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy — consisting of some 34 business and trade associations, one of them being the New York Business Council — had filed a Petition with the Public Service Commission, asking it to postpone the deadlines of the Climate Act with respect to the electricity system. This Coalition is a relatively small subset of New York’s large business community, but still a significant increase from the handful previously willing to speak up on this issue.
And in recent days, here are a couple of additional voices that have emerged:
On March 30, something called the New York Energy Alliance published a piece titled “The Climate Bill Already Came Due in New York.” NYEA doesn’t say much about itself on its website, but Google AI identifies it as a “grassroots organization advocating for reliable, affordable energy including . . . natural gas, nuclear and hydropower.” The gist of the March 30 piece is a review of documents in recent rate cases of a utility called Central Hudson (one of New York’s upstate utilities) to identify causes of recent extraordinary rate increases. Conclusion: “The documents tell a story of how New York’s climate transition was deliberately financed through the utility rate case process. Politicians and organizations that championed that law, and even applauded the first wave of climate-driven rate increases in 2020, are now pointing at the bill they helped create and calling it evidence of corporate greed.”
In the world of mainstream media, the Syracuse Post Standard has broken ranks. On April 5 it published an editorial titled “New York’s Climate Ambitions Need a Reality Check.” Brief excerpt: “In 2026, just four years before the first statutory deadline [in New York’s CLCPA], those ambitions are colliding with reality. . . . There is prudence in acknowledging these realities: New York can’t make significant gains while the federal government is pulling in the opposite direction. Nor can it solve the climate crisis on its own.” On the negative side, the Post Standard substantially blames the collapse of New York’s “climate” ambitions on the withdrawal of subsidies by the Trump administration. How could that make sense if the so-called “renewables” were supposed to be cheaper than the existing fossil fuel infrastructure? But whatever the excuses offered, welcome to reality.
Meanwhile, the climate activists are not about to back down. On March 31, the same Post Standard published an op-ed by two of the State’s leading climate activists, Anshul Gupta of New Yorkers for Clean Power and Carole Resnick of Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE). The headline is “NY should implement its climate law, not dismantle it.” Excerpt:
The Hochul administration, facing legal challenges over its foot-dragging on implementing New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), is attempting to dismantle the law through the budget process. The administration’s stated rationale is untenable, its tactics are dubious, and if it succeeds even partially, the results will ultimately harm New York.
According to Gupta and Resnick, if New Yorkers’ energy costs are going up, the entities to blame are the evil fossil fuel companies. How do we know? From our “lived experience.”
New Yorkers’ own lived experience shows that fossil fuels like oil and gas are the problem, not a solution for affordability. . . . New York should learn from them. Extending the fossil-fuel status quo would only keep the state on its current path of ever escalating energy prices.
And finally, in the proceeding where the state Public Service Commission has asked for comments on the Petition by the Coalition of business associations to extend Climate Act deadlines, 18 progressive members of the State Assembly have weighed in with their thoughts. Politico reports on the legislators’ comment in its April 6 issue (behind paywall). The 18 include Deborah Glick (my own representative, and the Chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee), Chris Burdick (from some of the wealthiest parts of Westchester County) and, of course, all of the members who admit to being affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. The leader of the group is Emily Gallagher of Brooklyn, herself one of the Democratic Socialists. One of my daughters lives in her district! Here is a picture of Ms. Gallagher from her Wikipedia page:
In its key quote, the Comment argues that the Public Service Commission cannot alter course on the state’s mandate for a zero emissions grid by 2040 until there is “evidence of current impediments to safe and adequate service, such as blackouts and outages.”
Politico comments, “Show us the blackouts!”
The 18 signatories only constitute about 12% of the 150 members of the Assembly, so we can at least hope that some substantial group of Democrats declined to sign.
I say, keep fighting guys. The longer this goes on, the more ridiculous you will look when the final collapse comes.
Headlines last week (NY Times, NPR, CNN) screamed that President Donald Trump was handing nearly a billion dollars to a French energy giant to cancel building offshore wind farms. The coverage was classic gotcha journalism — misleading, incomplete, and designed to fit a tired narrative. The real story is far more straightforward and sensible.
Headlines last week (NY Times, NPR, CNN) screamed that President Donald Trump was handing nearly a billion dollars to a French energy giant to cancel building offshore wind farms. The coverage was classic gotcha journalism — misleading, incomplete, and designed to fit a tired narrative. The real story is far more straightforward and sensible.
On March 23, 2026, the Department of the Interior reached a settlement with TotalEnergies. The U.S. government is refunding $928 million — the exact amount the company paid to the Biden administration in 2022 when it won two offshore wind leases off New York/New Jersey and North Carolina.
In return, TotalEnergies will cancel both leases and formally agree not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States. The company will instead redirect that capital into American oil, natural gas, and LNG projects.
This is not corporate welfare. It is a refund of money already paid, exchanged for killing two expensive, unreliable projects before they could burden American ratepayers. And TotalEnergies agreed to keep the money in the U.S. and use it for oil and natural gas. The headline should have read,
“Win-Win — Trump gets French company TotalEnergies to invest a billion dollars on reliable, affordable American energy instead of offshore wind.”
Offshore wind electricity is significantly more costly than natural gas. Recent Levelized Cost of Energy analyses show new offshore wind projects coming in between $100 and $140 per megawatt-hour — 50% to 150% more expensive than electricity from new natural gas combined-cycle plants, which typically deliver power for $60–$80/MWh.
That gap widens dramatically once we account for the real world.
Wind is intermittent. When the wind doesn’t blow, electricity has to come from somewhere else. Atlantic offshore wind blows about half the time, depending on location. That means either building and maintaining expensive battery storage systems or keeping backup natural gas plants on standby. Paying double rarely gets included in the rosy headlines about offshore wind — once for on-demand natural gas and again for part-time offshore wind. That’s expensive.
Trump clearly understands this basic economic reality. Why force massive investments into high-cost, weather-dependent power when unsubsidized natural gas and oil projects deliver cheaper, dispatchable electricity and stronger returns? The only reason for this stupid economic decision is climate ideology. Conventional energy still offers far better profits without the endless stream of taxpayer subsidies required to prop up offshore wind. That’s why moving this near billion dollars to more profitable, unsubsidized American natural gas is a win for the company and the U.S.
They could have taken this investment anywhere in the world, but it is staying here, adding to American energy dominance.
The biggest victory in this deal isn’t the refund itself — it’s the permanent removal of these two leases from the map. TotalEnergies has now committed not to build offshore wind anywhere in the U.S. That is a direct win for reliable, affordable electricity and a clear signal that the era of forcing expensive green mandates is ending.
Even some Democrats are starting to admit the same truth. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul (because she wants to get re-elected) recently proposed delaying key provisions of the state’s Climate Act. Pushing back greenhouse gas reduction rules and acknowledging that the original timelines had become “costly and unattainable.”
If even deep-blue New York is quietly hitting the brakes, the rest of the country should take note. For years, they have been telling us wind and solar power are cheap and will lower our electric rates. In reality, adding them increases our electric rates — like adding a part-time, unreliable car increases your car payments, maintenance, and insurance costs without replacing your full-time, reliable car.
The mainstream media’s refusal to report this accurately is revealing. Rather than acknowledge a pragmatic decision that protects consumers from higher bills and grid instability, many outlets chose to frame the story as Trump favoring fossil fuels over “green energy” by spending taxpayer dollars buying TotalEnergies out, rather than refunding the fee they paid to sell inflated subsidized, part-time electricity.
In reality, this was a straightforward business transaction: return the lease money, cancel the projects and let the capital flow to energy sources that work.
Reliable, affordable electricity is not a partisan luxury; it is an economic and national security necessity. By refunding the original lease payments and redirecting investment away from expensive offshore wind, the Trump administration delivered a clear win-win for American families, businesses, and energy security.
CFACT policy advisor Frank Lasee is an expert on energy and environmental issues. His articles have appeared in the Washington Examiner, Washington Post, Real Clear Energy, Town Hall. He has been a guest on TV and radio news. He is the president of Truth in Energy and Climate. Frank Lasee served as a Wisconsin State Senator and in Governor Scott Walker’s Administration.
After warning of the Climate Act’s unlivable costs, Governor Hochul has now proposed specific legislative actions to begin to back away from them. I consider this a potential victory, but it remains to be seen what the legislature actually does.
At least the big green wheel is in spin. That is progress in itself. The show is on in New York State.
After warning of the Climate Act’s unlivable costs, Governor Hochul has now proposed specific legislative actions to begin to back away from them. I consider this a potential victory, but it remains to be seen what the legislature actually does.
At least the big green wheel is in spin. That is progress in itself. The show is on in New York State.
Hochul’s proposals are carefully crafted to do the job with a minimum of political fuss. The basic law is unchanged, but the target dates are slipped well into the political future.
Moreover, the changes are made as a small part of the annual big budget bill, not as a separate legislative action. This minimizes the nasty public debate that would accompany a stand-alone amendment to the Climate Act.
There are two simple changes that must be made plus a not so simple one that would be very useful.
The first simple change is that the near-term targets are shifted from 2030 to 2040, which is well over the political horizon. The 2030 target is impossible, but 2040 is still open to fact-free speculation, which is all that politics requires.
The second simple change is the crucial one that the first change makes room for. The draconian regulatory requirement is slipped until 2030.
Unlike other states’ toothless climate laws, the New York law has a provision calling for regulations that “ensure” compliance with the Act’s impossible targets. It was these required regulations that caused the present turmoil.
The regs were required by around 2024 but were never put out because the cost was politically prohibitive. Several green groups sued and, last year, the judge ruled correctly that the law is the law, so the Hochul administration cannot decline to issue the nutty rules.
The judge gave New York a few months to change the Climate Act to eliminate the regulation requirement. This was appealed, giving the legislature more time, which is where we are today. The Act is clear, so the appeal is unlikely to succeed. The regulatory clock is ticking.
Pushing the regulations into the future solves the problem for now which is all that matters politically. This is the heart of Hochul’s proposal.
The third proposed change is actually hilarious, because almost no one will understand it, so it will be fun to watch them try. It is truly arcane climate science. The issue is how to calculate the global warming potential of methane. Only people who are deeply into alarmist science will understand this issue. I used to, but it has been years, so I no longer understand it in technical detail.
The gist is that the IPCC and most states that care about methane emissions use a 100-year timeframe while the Climate Act uses 25 years. This shorter time apparently pumps up the adverse impact of methane emissions. I have been told that it does so, to the point that if New York switched their methane accounting to 100 years, they would be close to meeting the 2030 target.
In her proposal, Hochul merely mentions an issue with 25 versus 100 years, without saying what those numbers refer to. I imagine readers scratching their heads over this, wondering if perhaps it is about target dates or something.
The methane science itself is well beyond most people’s comprehension, especially New York legislators. The confusion could be very entertaining.
Politics is the art of compromise, and this 3-part proposal fits that bill. Hochul has walked the fine line between alarmism and reality with grace and skill.
How this works out now remains to be seen. If the budget bill tactic works, it could happen pretty quickly. Hochul has taken the political high ground of “affordability,” and a lot of Democrat legislators are massing on that rhetorical hill as well. It just might work.
As New York approaches the Green Energy Cliff, developments are starting to come more quickly. When last I addressed the subject on March 6, there had just been “leaked” a three-page memo from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to the Governor’s office, revealing that implementation of what New York calls its “cap and invest” program — actually, an artificial scarcity program intentionally designed to drive prices up and impoverish the people — would cost every New York household thousands of dollars in increased energy costs. (I put the word “leaked” in quotes because most knowledgeable observers think that the Governor released the memo intentionally.).
The only proper response to Gov. Hochul’s piece is scorn and derision, and no matter how much of those you can muster, it’s not enough. The Governor and all of her staff and agencies have approached the subject of energy policy as morons, and they also treat the people as morons. They have never done any credible assessment of either feasibility or cost of the Climate Act mandates. Now that the mandates are approaching, it is obvious that they cannot be achieved at any remotely reasonable cost; but our leaders have no plan forward. Their only idea is to pretend that the Climate Act plan is real when it is not, and that it is moving forward when it is not, and then postpone the hard deadlines until after the current Governor is gone.
The spin in the Governor’s piece will leave you dizzy for weeks. I’ll give you a few choice quotes, with my translation into plain English:
All New Yorkers should be immensely proud that their home state is a national leader for clean energy and climate action. As Governor, I take that role very seriously, knowing it is our mission to leave our world better than we inherited it. . . . Since I have been Governor, more than $88.7 billion has been invested in clean energy through programs that have made us an example for the rest of the nation.
Translation: We have wasted $88.7 billion taxpayer dollars on wind and solar projects and related infrastructure that are completely useless. (She doesn’t give a breakdown of how much of the $88.7 billion is New York taxpayer money versus federal.). For a fraction of that money, we could have re-powered our natural gas power plants into much more efficient combined-cycle plants, but we didn’t do that because the enviro zealots were against it and we do whatever they say without ever considering whether it makes sense.
President Trump has denied the science, calling climate change a hoax. Just this week, he again vowed to block all new offshore wind projects and is actively attempting to dismantle those already under construction. At the same time, the federal government is also canceling grants and tax credits for solar and wind, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other pollution-reduction initiatives while rolling back key scientific findings and regulations that would have helped the nation move toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Without a federal partner, there is only so much states can do on their own. . . . The fact is, we will be dealing with a White House outright hostile toward renewable energy for at least another three years, making it impossible for us to meet our targets without imposing higher costs on homeowners, renters, and businesses.
Translation: We claimed to be the “climate leader,” but in fact we never had any intention of spending much if any of our own money on this, and we were planning to stick almost all of the exorbitant cost to the federal taxpayers. Now that President Trump has nixed that scam, we realize that this is completely unaffordable. So we will call President Trump a bunch of nasty names, even though we have to admit that he is completely right on this issue.
[A]dvocates . . . took the extreme step of suing the state to force it to issue regulations to meet the Climate Act’s 2030 emission reductions targets. A judge agreed and ruled that the state must swiftly issue regulations to achieve what now would be costly and unattainable targets, unless the law is changed. . . . We need more time, and so I am proposing we amend the law to require regulations to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions to be issued at the end of 2030.
Translation: I’m running for another term, which will likely be my last. The final day of that term is December 31, 2030. So let’s make that the mandated date for Climate Act compliance regulations to take effect. I will do nothing, and the next guy will take office on January 1, 2031 and find him or herself immediately in default and under court injunction to do something. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
And meanwhile, what is this business about “we need more time.” Time for what? Nothing significant about this is going to be any different four years from now. Electricity generation from wind and sun will still be intermittent and in need of full backup to be useable on the grid. Cost of energy storage may fall a little, but nothing near the factor of a hundred or more that would be needed for a wind/solar/storage grid to be an economically viable replacement for a grid powered by dispatchable generators. The magical “dispatchable emissions-free resources” talked about by New York energy bureaucrats will be no closer to existence than they are today.
We are moving into a world of make-believe. At this point, nothing about the supposed green energy transition is real, except for the ongoing costs getting stuck to the taxpayers and ratepayers. The people in charge in New York — Kathy Hochul and all of her bureaucratic underlings — have no idea what they are doing, so they are closing their eyes and hoping the whole thing goes away.
If the extension of Climate Act deadlines were a stand-alone piece of legislation, it would likely need to go through public hearings at the Capitol, and it would attract substantial attention. So watch for this to treated as part of the “budget” negotiations, and emerge as one piece in a massive omnibus budget bill with little or no further mention.
Meanwhile, tens of billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars continue to be wasted on useless wind turbines and solar panels and grid-scale batteries and additional transmission and delivery infrastructure. I guess we can be thankful that it’s only tens of billions, versus the hundreds of billions that would have been wasted if the federal taxpayers remained on the hook.
The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. Among its interim 2030 targets is a reduction target of 40% less GHG emissions and a 70% renewable energy electricity mandate.
I was recently asked to give a briefing about Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) issues before the start of the New York legislative annual session. There are Climate Act issues that Governor Hochul and the Legislature should address because the issues outlined in this article can no longer be ignored.
Climate Act Implementation Schedule
The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. Among its interim 2030 targets is a reduction target of 40% less GHG emissions and a 70% renewable energy electricity mandate.
It is no longer debatable that New York has fallen behind on its Climate Act transition plan 2030 mandates. The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) annual load and capacity data report universally known as the “Gold Book” data over the last six years is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: NYISO Gold Book Annual Total and Renewable Summer Capability and Generation
There is supposed to be a 40% reduction in economy‑wide GHG emissions by 2030. I reviewed the 2025 NYS GHG Emission Inventory Report in my article Implications of New York State 2025 GHG Emissions Inventory. I found that GHG emissions through 2023 are 14% less than the 1990 baseline and emissions have been basically unchanged since 2022. That makes meeting 2030 GHG emission reduction target of a 40% reduction impossible.
Affordability and Rate Impacts
New York currently has an energy affordability crisis because as of December 2024, over 1.3 million households are behind on their energy bills by sixty-days-or-more, collectively owing more than $1.8 billion. Kris Martin published a recent post that included a table ratepayer impacts. Table 2 summarizes recent electric rate cases (Con Edison, National Grid, Central Hudson, O&R, NYSEG, and RG&E with an estimate of the Climate Act proportion.
Table 2: Typical 2024 Residential Electric Costs from What it costs
Department of Public Service (DPS) staff provides estimates of the impact of the Climate Act on electric rates. The Second Informational Report “includes the estimated costs and outcomes from 2023 through 2029 to provide the most up to date information.” According to the Summary of Ratepayer Impact for Electric Utilities table, residential impacts of the Climate Act range from 4.6% to 10.3% of 2023 total monthly electric bills.
In my opinion, those estimates are conservative because there is immense pressure on agency staff to minimize the costs of the Climate Act. In addition, the costs necessary to implement the Climate Act were ramping up in 2023. I expect that these costs will continue to climb. Kris Martin also noted that the DPS estimates for future costs don’t include all the Renewable Energy Credits (REC) and OREC (offshore wind REC) costs that would be required to reach Climate Act targets—or even what they might realistically expect to complete.
All these analyses have focused on utility rate case costs. The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSEDA) has not been forthcoming about total household costs but did offer a glimpse of those costs in the State Energy Plan as described in my post Energy Affordability Fact Sheet. NYERDA claimed that the use of “new, efficient equipment and electrification can cut energy spending by $100 to $300 every month for many New York households” in the Fact Sheet. However, these projections do not cover the costs of the equipment to make the reductions. Table 3 is derived from the NYSERDA supporting documentation and shows the monthly energy costs when equipment costs are included.
Table 3: Total Monthly Energy Costs Including Levelized Equipment Costs for an Upstate New York moderate income household that uses natural gas for heat projected monthly costs and hardware costs
When the costs of equipment are added, the story changes. Rows 1-5 in Table 3 list monthly energy costs. Rows 6-8 list the levelized cost for the equipment needed to produce the savings. Row totals all the costs. The cost of Climate Act compliance is the difference between replacement of conventional equipment and the highly efficient electrification equipment in Row 10. There is a $594 (43%) increase in costs necessary for Climate Act compliance.
NYSERDA’s messaging for these results is that costs are going to go up anyway and that the increase in costs due to the Climate Act are small in comparison. I think that additional costs will add more households to the already unacceptable number living in energy poverty.
Cap‑and‑Invest and GHG Regulatory Architecture
There are two aspects of the Climate Act mandate to implement an economy-wide cap-and-invest program by January 1, 2024 that must be addressed by the Legislature and Governor Hochul. I have described the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) New York Cap-and-Invest (NYCI) regulations in many articles. Currently DEC has only finalized the Mandatory GHG Emissions Reporting Rule. There have been no suggestions when the two other necessary regulations will be proposed. The Cap-and-Invest Rule will define affected sources, binding caps, and allowance allocations. DEC also needs an auction rule that implements the auction that will be used to distribute allowances.
This is problematic. On 3/31/25 a group of environmental advocates filed a petition pursuant to CPLR Article 78 alleging that DEC had failed to comply with the timeframe for NYCI because DEC missed the January 1, 2024 date. I explained that the decision on the petition stated: DEC must “promulgate rules and regulations to ensure compliance with the statewide missed statutory deadlines and ordered DEC to issue final regulations establishing economy-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) limits on or before Feb. 6, 2026 or go to the Legislature and get the Climate Act 2030 GHG reduction mandate schedule changed. On 11/24/25 DEC appealed the decision. The State has appealed to the Appellate Division. This means that the deadline of Feb 6 is suspended until the Appellate Division rules. Therefore, the State has no risk of being held in contempt and can safely ignore the deadline — which appears to be what is happening. However, kicking the can down the road ignores the responsibility to reconsider what is obviously a failed prescription for energy policy.
The other NYCI issue is the DEC regulations. The Mandatory GHG Emissions Reporting Rule was finalized December 1, 2025, but is so poorly written that I would not be surprised if it gets litigated. The auction rule regulation should not be an issue. However, the Cap-and-Invest Rule includes non-trivial problems that have political consequences. The rule will set the price trajectory for the costs of an allowance is certain to be controversial. The biggest DEC NYCI issue is the timing. When will DEC propose these rules?
PSL 66-P Safety Valve
There is another important issue that must be resolved. Climate Act proponents constantly state that the mandates are required by law no matter what, but then ignore the other associated law that includes safety valve provisions. New York Public Service Law § 66-p “renewable energy systems” mandates define which generating sources are “renewable”. Section 66-p (4) “Establishment of a renewable energy program” states: “The commission may temporarily suspend or modify the obligations under such program provided that the commission, after conducting a hearing as provided in section twenty of this chapter, makes a finding that the program impedes the provision of safe and adequate electric service; the program is likely to impair existing obligations and agreements; and/or that there is a significant increase in arrears or service disconnections that the commission determines is related to the program”.
Unfortunately, the PSC has not yet considered conducting a hearing. Two petitions have been filed calling for such a hearing. The Coalition for Safe and Reliable Energy filing on 1/6/26 made a persuasive argument that there are sufficient observed threats to reliability that a hearing is necessary to ensure safe and adequate service. On 8/12/25 the Independent Intervenors filing argued that there were affordability and reliability issues and that there was an explicit requirement for the hearing because the customers in arrears threshold has been exceeded
There is another issue in the local news. In early February the Governor said that she is specifically interested in reconsidering the methodology by which the state tallies its emissions, explaining that New York’s unique 20-year metric puts the state at a disadvantage over other states that use a 100-year methodology to count their emissions. At the time the Climate Act was written it incorporated unique emissions accounting requirements that inflate the emission totals by increasing the effect of methane pollution. In my opinion, this irrational obsession with methane is misguided because in the atmosphere, methane has less of an effect than CO2 on global warming. In the 2023 Budget Season this change to the accounting methodology was proposed because it would reduce total GHG emissions and that would lower costs when NYCI starts. It did not go forward because of intense blowback from climate activists.
Conclusion
I have previously noted that decisions about the future of the Climate Act must be addressed. The ideologues who fervently supported the promulgation of the Climate Act also zealously reject the possibility that changes are needed. However, reality can no longer be ignored. For example, David Wojick recently described his report “Severe Climate Act impacts threaten New York State” that provides additional support explaining why action is needed.
There are significant Climate Act issues that must be addressed. Most targets are behind schedule, and the increased costs of the Climate Act will exacerbate the existing energy affordability crisis. DEC needs to respond to the New York Cap-and-Invest (NYCI) economy wide emission reduction initiative requirements and will have to eventually respond to the litigation. PSC must address safety valve provisions of PSL 66-P.
Unfortunately, to be resolved all these Climate Act issues require political accountability. The Climate Act has always been about political pandering to specific constituencies under the guise of saving the planet. Therefore, I expect that all the inconvenient issues described will be ignored until after the election in hopes that the electorate will not catch on that the reliability of the state’s energy system is at risk and the energy system cost crisis will be aggravated by the Climate Act for political gain.
New York GHG emissions are less than one half of one percent of global emissions and global emissions have been increasing on average by more than one half of one percent per year since 1990. Implementing the Climate Act will have no effect on global warming and the purported co-benefits are illusory.
I doubt that the Legislature or Governor will act on these issues this year as they try to balance the preferences of those who deny reality by demanding no changes to the Climate Act and the rest of society who cannot afford more energy costs. It is time for the rest of us to demand that the PSC conduct a hearing to consider suspending or modifying the obligations of the Climate Act by submitting comments on the Coalition petition.
References
This article is based on a post on my blog. I have provided links to the Slide Deck for my briefing and a link to the documentation if you want more details,
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.
In the case of New York State, the statute in question is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA or Climate Act). Among the many requirements of that statute, the most immediate are a mandate for 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030 (known as “70×30”), and another mandate for 100% of electricity from “zero emissions” sources by 2040 (“100×40”). I should also mention that the CLCPA in addition contains a deadline of January 1, 2024, for the State Department of Environmental Conservation to issue regulations informing us peasants how these various impossible mandates of the CLCPA were/are going to be achieved. That latter deadline, you will note, has long passed.
Every time I write about this subject it has gotten yet a little more ridiculous. The background is that back in 2019 New York, both State and City, set themselves targets for “emissions” reductions and energy transformation that are quite literally impossible as a matter of physics, thermodynamics, and cost. And then, just to show who is the boss here, they made the impossible targets mandatory by statute.
In the case of New York State, the statute in question is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA or Climate Act). Among the many requirements of that statute, the most immediate are a mandate for 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030 (known as “70×30”), and another mandate for 100% of electricity from “zero emissions” sources by 2040 (“100×40”). I should also mention that the CLCPA in addition contains a deadline of January 1, 2024, for the State Department of Environmental Conservation to issue regulations informing us peasants how these various impossible mandates of the CLCPA were/are going to be achieved. That latter deadline, you will note, has long passed.
So here we are, seven years into the CLCPA morass. The 2024 deadline for regulations got completely blown off without any attempt at compliance. With four years to go toward the “70×30” mandate, it would be a gross exaggeration to describe progress toward that target as “negligible.” The wind and solar facilities that were supposed to be generating our electricity by now have mostly not been built, and the few that have been built generate very little and at inconvenient times. The natural gas plants that are the backbone of the current system and were thought to be obsolete and ready for closure have gotten seven years older without any useful upgrades or replacements under construction. And our lightweight Governor, running for re-election, can’t afford to offend the climate activists who are a key part of her base.
So, what is the strategy? As far as I can tell, Hochul’s strategy is to pretend that there is no Climate Act, and hope nobody will call her on it. To use an analogy that I have used before, she is like Wile E. Coyote, having run off the edge of the cliff, and just beginning to notice that he is about to fall to the bottom of the canyon.
There was Governor Hochul on January 13, just a couple of days ago, delivering her annual “State of the State” address. Here is the full text. Somehow, all mention of the Climate Act and its mandates has magically disappeared. You’ll need to scroll about 80% of the way through the blather of this speech to find any mention of energy policy at all. And when you get there, it’s about nuclear:
And speaking of preparing for the future, we must plan for the energy that industries require. Last summer, I took the bold step of greenlighting the first nuclear power project in a generation, a vital part of our all-of-the-above approach to energy. At the time we set a goal of building one gigawatt of nuclear power. But if there’s one thing I believe, it’s this: Go big or go home. So, I’ve decided to raise the bar to five gigawatts. That’s more nuclear energy than has been built anywhere in the United States in the last 30 years!
“Bold!” Readers may remember that back last June Hochul shocked the world by announcing that she had commissioned a State agency, the New York Power Authority, to go out a build one new 1 GW nuclear plant. At the time, this was no more than a raw concept. There was not so much as a selected site, let alone a proposed design or a vendor. Here seven months later, there still is not a selected site. The State is out inquiring among upstate communities as to which ones might be interested. The last nuclear plants to be built in the U.S. (the Vogtle plants in Georgia) were 14 years from shovels in the ground to commercial operation. Here we are easily three years, and probably five, before shovels in the ground. This is not happening in any relevant time frame.
And I like that line about “our all-of-the-above approach to energy.” You have to wonder if Governor Hochul has even read the CLCPA. Its approach to energy is the opposite of “all-of-the-above.” Some might call the statute’s approach “ban everything that works.”
Over at the Gothamist today, they seek out some environmentalists who are not fooled by Hochul’s pretending not to know about the CLCPA. The headline is “Climate activists find little comfort in Gov. Hochul’s State of the State message.” For example, there is this from a co-founder of the Seneca Lake Guardian:
“Governor Hochul has betrayed New Yorkers. She’s not following the law, plain and simple, and all of us are deeply disappointed in her failure to lead and represent the people when it comes to public health and affordability in this state,” said Yvonne Taylor, co-founder of Seneca Lake Guardian.
And what’s up with that January 2024 deadline for regulations that Hochul just completely blew off? Readers may remember that back in October a State Supreme Court Justice ordered the State to publish the missing regulations by February. He gave the State the several months from October to February so that the administration could go to the Legislature to seek a modification of the statute if they thought the mandates were infeasible. Now we are in mid-January.
So what has the State done? It has appealed the Supreme Court’s ruling. If you are the State of New York in state court, filing an appeal gives you an automatic stay of the court’s order. (Private litigants get no such consideration.). Given the pace at which the appeals court (known as the Appellate Division) moves, that will likely put any decision on whether the State must publish the CLCPA regulations well past November’s election.
Thus, as far as we can tell, Kathy Hochul, along with the citizens of New York State, will live like Wile E. Coyote, suspended in mid-air over the energy canyon, at least through the Fall.
Governor Kathy Hochul should publicly disclose internal state assessments showing extremely high costs for fully implementing New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), enacted in 2019.
Governor Kathy Hochul should publicly disclose internal state assessments showing extremely high costs for fully implementing New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), enacted in 2019.
The CLCPA mandates aggressive greenhouse gas reductions: 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050 from 1990 levels, with a goal of net-zero emissions.
It emphasizes electrification of buildings, transportation, and industry, alongside renewable energy expansion.
New York Governor Hochul has been saying for months that the regulations required by law to meet the Climate Act will be ruinously costly to New Yorkers. The draft regs were reportedly finished a year ago. The Governor must be citing their official cost assessment.
So where are the numbers? Why has Hochul not released the cost numbers so New Yorkers can see who gets hammered and how much? Keeping these ruinous cost numbers, secret is outrageous. It should be an election issue.
To begin with the legislature, the Assembly, needs to see these big numbers immediately. Clearly the Climate Act must be changed, and the Assembly is just gearing up their 2026 session. Hochul should submit a detailed assessment of the ruinous costs to the Energy Committee. Time is of the essence.
If this cost assessment is not forthcoming the Energy Committee should hold hearings and demand to see the numbers. I am not familiar with New York law but under federal law the Committee could subpoena these findings.
The Assembly cannot fix the Climate Act until they know how it is broken.
More deeply the citizens of New York State have a right to see the specifics of this looming ruinous cost threat. Who gets hurt the most and how much? For example, are we looking at $10 a gallon gas or $30? Doubling household electric bills or quintupling them?
One certainty is that deliberately driving up the cost of energy will hurt the poor the most. Energy is a far larger fraction of their meager budget than it is for the well off. Moreover, raising the cost of energy raises the cost of many other essentials including food.
The regulatory program that deliberately drives up cost is called Cap and Invest. It is actually Cap, Tax and Spend because all forms of fossil energy are heavily taxed.
The tax has to be enormous because it must force fossil fuel use down by an incredible 30% or more by 2030. Here in official jargon is how the Cap and Invest website puts it:
“Under the program, large-scale greenhouse gas emissions sources and distributors of heating and transportation fuels will be required to purchase or obtain allowances for the emissions associated with their activities. By applying a price to the amount of pollution, a cap-and-invest program incentivizes consumers, businesses, and other entities to transition to lower-carbon alternatives.”
In this case “incentivizes” means making it so expensive that use goes down so far that it meets the Climate Act target.
Note that there is no time left to “transition to lower-carbon alternatives.” For example, most of the millions of buildings in New York State are heated with natural gas. It is physically and economically impossible to convert more than a tiny fraction of these to electric heat in just four years.
Building electrification is probably the kind of ruinous cost that Hochul is referring to. Another case might be forcing people into electric vehicles. There are only so many ways to cut fuel use by 30% or more.
We do not know where all these ruinous costs hit because all this cost data is being held secret by Hochul. Keeping this extremely threatening information from the people of New York State is outrageous.
Perhaps Governor Hochul is hoping to keep this ruinous threat secret until after the November election where she is running for re-election. In reality this destructive secrecy is a good reason to vote her out of office.
If the Climate Act requires severe economic damage to New Yorkers over the next few years, that incredible fact should be a major election issue. That it is being kept secret is disgraceful.
Rationing gasoline and diesel under the Climate Act is a predictable prescription for chaos. It is the mobility these motor fuels provide that guarantees rationing to meet the 2030 emissions target will not work.
manhattan skyline, brooklyn bridge and the statue of liberty at night lights, new york city
Rationing gasoline and diesel under the Climate Act is a predictable prescription for chaos. It is the mobility these motor fuels provide that guarantees rationing to meet the 2030 emissions target will not work.
First a little background. When the Climate Act was passed back in 2019, the utopian assumption was that a massive switch to EVs would quickly occur. So, they set a very aggressive 2030 emission reduction target of 40%. Getting rid of internal combustion exhaust was thought to be beneficial, so the law actually specifies that poor communities should be targeted for the biggest cuts.
Of course, the EV switch never happened. Emission reductions overall have only gone down 10%, mostly from switching from coal to gas in power generation. So, under the Climate Act, the State faces an incredible mandatory 30% emission reduction to be achieved in just four years.
The proposed draconian mechanism for achieving this reduction is by rationing the sale of fossil fuel, including gasoline and diesel. This is to be done under the “Cap and Invest Program,” which I explain here.
Reducing emissions by rationing motor fuel simply does not work, for several reasons, all due to mobility.
First and foremost, the people living or working relatively close to the state line can just drive over to fill up where their fuel is not rationed. In New York State, this is a large fraction of the folks. In New York City, you can walk to New Jersey. In this case, the amount of driving actually goes way up, which increases emissions. This has to be factored into modeling how to meet the ridiculous Climate Act 2030 target.
Second, note that if the New York gas stations near the borders lose enough business to other states they might then have a lot more fuel to sell to those further interior. This too could increase driving and hence emissions.
Third, there are the huge numbers of people that drive into New York and back out again, using less than a tank of fuel in the process. Some are visitors, others just passing through. These drivers simply have to buy their fuel in another state. Their driving does not increase, but their emissions do not go down.
These three cases taken together strongly suggest that emissions cannot be significantly reduced by rationing the sale of motor fuel. They certainly cannot be reduced by 30%. But the fuel distribution system could take a big hit financially.
Some other adverse behavioral changes are also likely to occur. The first is people carrying a trunk full of jerry cans full of fuel, especially if they have to drive a long way to get it. This practice can increase the number of people who can go out of state to tank up.
The second is one we saw in the 1970’s gas shortage scare. This is likely in the deep interior where the rationing actually works. Fearing a shortage, people keep their tanks full by topping off after using just a few gallons. This creates long lines at the pumps with a lot of anger.
And, of course, where there is rationing, there is bootlegging. An additional feature of the Cap and Invest scheme is that the price of fuel is to be driven way up as an “inducement” to using less. This hits the poor especially hard. If the price is a lot higher than in neighboring states it will pay people to put big tanks in their pickups and run fuel like it was moonshine. They might even buy tank trucks.
In summary, the idea that New York State can significantly reduce emissions by rationing gas and diesel is ridiculous. The Climate Act assumed massive sales of EV’s which did not happen. The answer is not rationing; it is to change the law.
New York Governor Hochul says the emission reduction regulations required by the Climate Act are infeasible and ruinously expensive. She has yet to explain this, so here is my simple assessment.
New York Governor Hochul says the emission reduction regulations required by the Climate Act are infeasible and ruinously expensive. She has yet to explain this, so here is my simple assessment.
The regulatory program has two very different mechanisms. First, they ration your fossil fuels. Then, they tax you heavily on the ration you get. The rationing is infeasible; the tax is ruinous.
The program is called “cap and invest,” which sounds good. Note the missing word: “tax.” You need the tax to get the money to “invest.” An honest name is “cap, tax, and spend.”
The cap is the amount of each type of fossil fuel that can be sold to consumers during a given period. Permissions to sell this amount are called allowances and they cost money.
Here is how the Cap and Invest website explains it. (There is almost no other information.)
“The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) are designing a program that sets an annual cap on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that is permitted to be emitted in New York. Under the program, large-scale greenhouse gas emissions sources and distributors of heating and transportation fuels will be required to purchase or obtain allowances for the emissions associated with their activities.”
The cap is the ration, and the allowances are the ration tickets that have to be bought. Note that for heating and transportation fuels the distributor, not the consumer, buys the allowances. Of course, these costs will be passed on to the consumers. We are mostly talking about gasoline and diesel for transportation, fuel oil for heating, and gas for heating and cooking.
Let’s just look at the cap. These fuels are all essential for living, which make rationing a very bad plan. The rationing cap has to quickly come down and a lot under the Climate Act. Statewide emissions have to come down by a whopping 30% by 2030, just four years away.
Fuel use may have to come down even more because other emissions cannot be reduced that much. New York has provided no information about this looming threat, and there is no time to implement new technologies.
Rationing by definition creates shortages, because it means people get less than they would otherwise use. Let’s take home heating fuel oil as a simple case. About 20% of New York homes heat with fuel oil.
Say you live in one of these homes. Your fuel oil supplier has bought allowances for the coming year, and you get a share of that oil. But thanks to the cap, it is less than you burned keeping warm last year. How low will you have to turn your thermostat in order to get through the year on that much oil?
There is no way to know, because it depends on how cold it gets. If it is cold, you might run out of your allowed share in mid-December. Then what? The program is silent on this life-threatening question.
Moreover, if it is a cold year, then most people might run out of heating oil in winter. Heck of a Christmas that would be.
The same is true for gas heat but at a much larger scale, since most New York buildings are heated with natural gas. You cannot just suddenly use a lot less gas with a fixed amount allowed. It is a prescription for running out of heat in winter. This fiasco also applies in more complex ways to cars, trucks, and electricity.
Clearly capping fuel use is infeasible. Energy is fundamental to our way of life.
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