Clean Energy Is Affordable Energy. So Why Is New York Breaking Its Climate Promises?
· Time
This week, New York might do something no climate-leading state has done, even in the Trump era: weaken its landmark climate law.
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In 2019, New York adopted among the country’s most ambitious targets: greenhouse gas regulations by 2024, a 40% emissions cut by 2030, and an 85% cut by 2050. The state has already missed its 2024 goal, and announced it will also miss its goal in 2030. Now, as a Democratic governor and a Democratic supermajority finalize a state budget in Albany, the reported deal would dramatically roll this law back.
This is a stunning reversal for Governor Kathy Hochul, who was named to the TIME100 Climate list in 2025, co-chaired the U.S. Climate Alliance, and now sits on its executive committee. Those credentials rest on a premise she is about to abandon: states must lead when the federal government retreats.
As always, the devil is in the details. The proposed changes would extend the deadline for greenhouse gas regulations from 2024 to 2028. It would also replace the binding 2030 emissions target with a softer 2040 commitment and adopt a methane accounting method that makes fossil-fuel emissions look smaller without actually reducing them. The 2050 target remains, but the deal weakens the pressure to act now, allowing dangerous greenhouse gas pollution to amass in the intervening quarter-century.New York is one of 10 states with binding, economy-wide climate targets, alongside California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. All face similar affordability pressures, strained grids, and federal headwinds. None has walked back its targets. If lawmakers, who are deliberating now, agree to water down the law with the imminent budget vote, New York would be first.
The governor frames the rollback as affordability relief. Meanwhile, by her own acknowledgment, the changes will not lower utility bills. New York's bills are high in large part because the state still depends on natural gas for roughly half its electricity. In fact, the grid operator reports wholesale power prices nearly doubled in 2025 because of tight gas supply and rising liquified natural gas exports. Families are feeling the global gas market on their monthly statements. That is a fossil-fuel problem, not a climate-policy one.
The administration's message inverts cause and effect. It blames the climate law for the cost of the clean energy transition while saying nothing about the costs already locked in by fossil-fuel dependence: price volatility, asthma, storm damage, utility debt, and aging infrastructure. The climate law is the state's primary engine for building the infrastructure that gets New Yorkers off the gas price roller coaster: cleaner generation, a modern grid, weatherized homes, and the investments that displace gas over time. Weakening the law does not loosen gas's grip on New Yorkers' wallets. It tightens it.
The newest polling conducted by Siena Research Institute at Siena University released May 5 sharpens the politics. Yes, 67% of New Yorkers say the state is headed in the wrong direction on cost of living. But on the $260 billion budget, only 22% say Albany spends too much on programs like health care, education, and infrastructure. Meanwhile, 36% say it does not spend enough. The message is that New Yorkers want their government to invest more on improving the systems that impact us. That is what the climate law was designed to do.
And yet, New York has missed every major deadline set under the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act so far. The state never released the greenhouse gas regulations due in 2024, going so far as to appeal a State Supreme Court order. Without enforceable deadlines, every clean-energy policy gets relitigated against industries with bottomless budgets for lobbying. Weakening the law does not just delay carbon cuts. It transfers power from the communities the law was built to protect back to the officials and interests that have stalled it from day one.
Though the governor has announced a final deal, there is a better path, and there is still time before the deal gets a vote.
First, restore nearer-term accountability to ensure timely and cost-effective progress. It is reasonable to acknowledge that New York is not on track for 2030, but the answer cannot be to push out the next checkpoint by more than a decade. New York still needs an enforceable milestone before 2040.
Second, make polluters pay. The budget deal includes a path forward to establishing a cap-and-invest program, a policy Governor Hochul announced in 2023 as the way to fund “a sustainable and affordable future.” The rules are already written, and the governor has the opportunity to issue and implement them well ahead of their 2028 deadline.
Third, annually fund the Sustainable Future Program, a state climate fund, until the climate law’s cap-and-invest regulations begin generating revenue as a stopgap to keep clean energy, grid, and resilience investments moving. Labor unions and climate advocates have called for $3 billion to fund this program, the minimum amount the climate law was projected to generate every year.
Fourth, send the affordability bills New York already has on its desk to the governor. The state Senate has passed the ASAP Act, which would raise the state's distributed solar goal to 20 gigawatts by 2035 and unjam the interconnection backlog, with $1 billion in projected annual savings by 2035. The Senate has also passed the SUNNY Act unanimously, which would legalize plug-in balcony solar and bring cheap clean power within reach of millions of renters locked out of rooftop solar. The Assembly should send both bills across the finish line this session.
And, fifth, finish the gas reform New York started. Last December, Hochul signed the repeal of the 100-ft. rule, ending a $600-million-a-year ratepayer subsidy for new gas hookups. Now she should pass the remaining pieces of the NY HEAT Act, so utilities can plan for an affordable transition off gas and protect low-income households from unaffordable bills.
These are not radical demands. They are the agenda the governor herself has, in different moments, championed. But assuming this weakened deal goes through, the opportunity now is to make implementation as swift as possible. And to make it visible: lower bills, cleaner air, modern infrastructure, and improvements people can see.
What happens next matters nationally. At least 24 governors are still in the U.S. Climate Alliance, holding the line against federal rollbacks. If the state whose governor sits on its executive committee is the one that blinks, every other state would have cover to do the same. A truly dangerous precedent.
The coalition pushing back in Albany this week—labor, environmental justice, climate, faith, public-health, and ratepayer advocates—is not going home when the budget prints. It is the same coalition that will define the 2026 elections, the 2027 session, and the politics of the next governor's race. New Yorkers are not asking Albany for less. They are asking for it to deliver on its promises. And they will remember who delivered and who failed them. New York wrote this climate policy playbook. And New York can still get it right.