BCW Among Groups Urging Gov. Hochul to Review Climate Act

The BCW was among a coalition of more than 50 business, energy and labor organizations calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration to conduct a comprehensive assessment of New York’s impending mandates under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which are not on track to be met and could result in significant energy supply shortfalls and adverse impacts across numerous industries.

The coalition, led by the Business Council of New York State, sent a letter to Hochul’s office on Tuesday urging the state to evaluate the reality of the law’s mandates, including reducing New York’s greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. If that’s not achievable, they wrote, the state should amend the law’s rules and conduct a deep review of the 2019 legislation and its impacts.

The BCW has been at the forefront of issues concerning the regional energy supply for the last 20 years. The BCW recently formed the BCW Clean Energy Action Coalition to provide a unifying voice for more than 40 businesses and organizations in the energy field. The priority of the BCW’s Clean Energy Action Coalition is to help build the new renewable energy infrastructure.

The heightened concerns about the fallout of the Climate Act’s mandates and goals come as multiple agencies have acknowledged there will be failures to meet some of the key deadlines etched into the law.

Earlier this month, the state comptroller’s office issued an audit that found New York’s Public Service Commission relied on outdated data and made miscalculations about the state’s ability to reach the Climate Act’s energy mandates, including failing to develop a backup plan for not meeting those goals.

The audit of the Public Service Commission and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority focused on their roles in implementing the provisions of the legislation that includes having 70% renewable electricity sources by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2040 — goals that many business leaders and experts familiar with power production have long cautioned are unattainable.

In another audit released Tuesday, the comptroller’s office reported the Clean Energy Fund, which was established as a 10-year initiative in 2016 to help New York achieve clean energy goals and develop private markets for renewable energy and efficiency — and to lower the financial burden of those efforts on utility customers — has disbursed less than half of the allocated funds. Electric and gas efficiency savings have lagged behind the program’s goals, according to the comptroller’s office.

The coalition’s five-page letter itemized several key areas that the group implored Hochul’s administration to address, including:

• Develop an accessible and understandable ‘dashboard’ of the state’s climate change efforts, including a comprehensive accounting of direct state spending and state ‘directed’ spending, the source of funds and their use, and the impact of these expenditures on achieving (greenhouse gas) emission reduction and renewable energy production goals.
•  Evaluate the impact of the Climate Act’s compliance standards and goals on electricity wholesale prices, delivery rates and total bills that New York businesses and residents will pay, including indirect energy costs, and the impact of additional compliance measures.
• Calculate the impact of existing and potential future policies for meeting (Climate Act) mandates on the reliability of the state’s natural gas system, its ability to support manufacturing processes for which today there are not any known replacement fuels, its role in avoiding the substantial and unnecessary build-out of the electric grid to meet peak winter demands, its potential to economically supply clean alternative fuels such as renewable natural gas and hydrogen, and the impact on natural gas market prices, delivery rates and total bills that (New York) businesses and residents will pay.
•  Assess power quality, system reliability, and public safety considerations on a seasonal basis, including extreme weather sensitivities to ensure businesses can operate smoothly, and New York residents can live safely throughout the year, and during more extreme events.
• Examine the use of renewable liquid fuels, such as biodiesel, renewable diesel, and sustainable aviation fuel, which are also low to no-carbon alternatives to petroleum diesel, as well as clean nuclear energy, as existing alternative fuels, and new technology development to lower carbon emission