With great fanfare, last month Governor Hochul unveiled her budget plan. Legislative budget hearings are underway and there is a growing debate over how to finalize the plan. But the governor still has budget cards to play. Under New York’s Constitution, the governor has up to 30 days after her budget submission to make changes. Usually, those changes are technical – like errors in drafting or mistakes in analysis of the fiscal impacts of her plans.

Once her amendments are advanced and lawmakers finish hearings, the budget is supposed to be finalized by the end of March.

Last week, however, there were media reports that the governor is considering making significant policy changes in her budget in the next couple of weeks. Specifically, those reports have focused on concerns that the governor will use her 30-day amendments to weaken New York’s Climate Law.

First, some background. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (“Climate Law”) was approved in 2019 and was designed to set the state on a path toward “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this Century. The “net zero” goal is consistent with the standard set by the world’s climate scientists – who have warned that in order to avoid the worst consequences of global heating, all nations need to adhere to the net zero goal.

New York’s Climate Law set benchmark goals designed to guide policymakers as interim steps to meet the targets advised by the world’s climate experts. Those interim goals commit the state to generate 70 percent of its electricity from renewable power sources and achieve a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 – just four years from now.

New York’s law is based on the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels endangers the planet and that the world must wean itself off of these power sources by the middle of this Century. Indeed, failure to do so will cost the state more than complying with the Climate Law. The increasingly likely failure to meet the Law’s interim climate goals would be a failure of will, not the targets themselves.  New York’s goals are attainable. For example, Germany, with its cloudy days and cool climate expects to generate nearly 15% of its electricity by solar. While New York State generates a paltry 5%.

In addition, the European Union recently reported that it will have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50% by the year 2030. That goal was set as a midpoint measure to meet the science-based goal of virtually eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. If the EU can do it, we in the United States can, too.

Part of the rationale for scaling back the Climate Law’s goals is not wanting to add to the already high cost of electricity in the state. New York’s residential electricity rates are high relative to the nation’s. But that has been true for years. For example in 2018 – the year before the state climate law was signed – New York’s residential electricity rates were ranked the seventh-highest in the nation. Now they are ranked eighth highest. Still high to be sure, but the impact of the Climate Law’s passage didn’t make a meaningful difference.

Yet, the well funded propaganda campaign advanced by opponents of the Climate Law have had an impact: The Hochul Administration is in retreat on the state’s climate-fighting initiatives. In the past year, for example, the Hochul Administration has delayed implementation of the All Electric Buildings Act, stalled the carbon pricing “cap and invest” program, and failed to keep up with benchmarks of the Climate Law.

Yet, if energy costs are rising everywhere and New York’s relative energy cost ranking is unchanged, how can the problem be the state’s Climate Law? All across the nation energy costs have risen faster than inflation since 2022, with greater increases ahead. The causes include load growth from data centers, increasing electric transmission and distribution infrastructure and maintenance costs, extreme weather, and supply chain disruptions – not New York’s law.

New York needs to invest in clean, safe, predictable, renewable energy as stated in the Climate Law. It is cheaper and less ecologically destructive to build out solar production than gas facilities. New York’s failure to boost solar production is leading to higher energy prices.

Electrifying New York through solar production and battery storage will lead to lower energy prices and is a more appropriate response to the climate crisis, which we have seen is wreaking havoc in communities everywhere.

There is little we can do in the near term about the expenses resulting from upgrading our old electric grid and protecting it from extreme weather and rising heat that are the products of a worsening climate. Bailing out on the Climate Law will do nothing to significantly change New York’s energy costs, but it will make the state complicit in the ongoing climate catastrophe. Try explaining that to our grandkids.