Kathy Hochul Has Been a Climate Disaster

Hochul and the legislature are also ending budget season
without passing the
HEAT Act, which would have required the state’s public service commission
to decrease reliance on gas, ended the state’s legal obligation to supply gas
to any ratepayer who wants it, and protected low-income consumers from paying
more than 6 percent of their income in utility bills. HEAT passed the Senate,
but while the governor talked big on its key points early this year, she
ultimately did not pressure the Assembly to pass it, and her congestion pricing
debacle is widely
blamed for derailing
talks on HEAT that could have brought all parties to an agreement.

Hochul is also moving too slowly on implementing BPRA. Three
big offshore wind projects fell
apart in April, threatening the state’s ability to meet its renewable
energy goals. Wind and solar are not
expanding in New York at scale. The New York Power Authority is minimizing
the problem publicly and seems slow to use its legislatively given
capacities to build renewables, advocates agree. At a rally in front of the
governor’s midtown Manhattan office this week by the Public Power Coalition,
speakers emphasized that Hochul must use BPRA’s powers to scale up the energy
transition, rather than, as Assemblyman Zohran Kwame Mamdani said from the
podium, treating “our climate mandates as suggestions.”

Finally, while both Houses passed a climate “superfund”
bill, similar to Vermont’s,
which would hold fossil fuel companies responsible for paying to mitigate
damage from climate change and funding related infrastructure improvements,
Hochul has not signed it yet. The
superfund bill is expected to raise $3 billion a year.