Outdated laws promoting fossil fuels threaten NYS climate action, activists say

ALBANY — Legislators and advocates say some outdated state laws continue to promote use of fossil fuels and now threaten the state’s ability to meet its climate change goals under a 2019 statute.

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act adopted five years ago sets percentages to reduce fossil fuel emissions in part by replacing oil and natural gas power to heat and operate buildings. The fossil fuels are to be replaced by electric power that can be generated by renewable resources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power.

Yet some provisions in state public service law dating to 1981 require most new homes and businesses to be automatically connected to natural gas lines and routinely require costly repairs to old, leaky gas lines — rather than conversion to electricity.

“The first rule for getting out of a hole is to stop digging,” said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at Columbia Law School. “Current law is slanted toward natural gas … if we continue to connect new buildings to natural gas, that makes it all the harder to move away from gas.”

A measure proposed this year called the New York Home Energy Affordable Transition Act, or HEAT Act, would have ended that windfall for fossil fuel producers. But the bill failed this month in the closing hours of the legislative session amid strong lobbying by energy companies.

The conflict pitted environmental advocates against a coalition of energy companies and unions representing their workers, which argued the HEAT Act would cost jobs and that swapping gas service for the electric grid would be too expensive and unreliable for New Yorkers.

The friction this year dates back decades, to when the state promoted greater use of natural gas as alternative to oil.

Current law requires gas lines be connected to homes

Under one 43-year-old provision of public service law, the ”100-foot rule” requires utilities to provide natural gas connections in most cases to new homes at no cost to the homeowner, but at a cost of more than $200 million a year to all ratepayers. A similar provision of law requires hookups to most new commercial buildings.

Another provision of state public service law mandates an “obligation to serve” on utilities. That requires utilities in most cases to replace leaky gas pipes with new gas pipes. That cost that would be passed on to ratepayers is estimated at $150 million over the next few years, according to state estimates.

“The autopilot of gas hookups must stop,” said Assemb. Patricia Fahy (D-Albany), who led support of the HEAT Act she co-sponsored in the Assembly.

Researchers who study climate change said the science is clear.

“Natural gas is by far the largest source of fossil fuels in buildings, and its use must be phased out quickly if we are to meet the law's climate goals,” said Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University. He was appointed to the state’s Climate Action Council that advised Hochul and the State Legislature.

“It makes no sense to continue to invest in old gas infrastructure,” Howarth said. “The HEAT Act would have strongly benefited almost all New York consumers, and would have been a huge step toward meeting the goals of our climate law. The only real losers would have been the natural gas industry.”

Environmental advocates said other more recent state actions and policies also hinder meeting the climate change goals.

Last year, for example, the state enacted a two-year moratorium that bans more cryptocurrency mining to develop Bitcoin and other alternative currency. But the measure allows existing companies to continue to use two old, fossil-fuel burning power plants to generate the massive power needed for the operations.

Supporters say HEAT Act would save ratepayers millions

The HEAT Act would end the decades-old legal requirements, which supporters say would save utilities and ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The measure also would align utilities with state climate change goals and reduce emissions. The measure allows exceptions for proven cases in which the powering of a building or neighborhood with electricity would be impractical.

The bill is expected to be the subject of a potential special session in coming months or as a high priority in the legislative session beginning Jan. 1.

Supporters say the measure will save ratepayers from spiking costs of fossil fuels as demand drops nationwide, and help utilities transition to a zero-emissions economy required by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) said failure to enact the HEAT Act she co-sponsored is a reason the state is falling behind in meeting the 2019 climate change law goals. The law calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% in 2030, and by 85% in 2050.

“We are all behind the targets,” Krueger said. “Nobody is where they need to be — internationally, nationally and in New York,” Krueger said.

Krueger was one of 49 senators and Assembly members who warned Gov. Kathy Hochul in a letter in December that the state faces “a crisis in our energy transition … we are falling drastically short of our target.”

“For everything environmental, the clock is ticking faster and faster,” Krueger said.

Critics argue plan unfairly favors wind, solar

Critics such as Ken Girardin, research director at the Empire Center, an Albany-based, fiscally conservative think tank, said the climate law unfairly favors politically popular wind and solar power, which would require extensive and costly batteries. He said the bill should include expansion of nuclear and hydropower.

Girardin also said the HEAT Act’s provision to end automatic connection and repair of gas service — the cost of which is now born by utilities and ratepayers — would be more costly for individual customers to connect to electric power. He also said eliminating the provisions would mean some buildings now using higher polluting oil fuel wouldn’t automatically be converted to cleaner natural gas.

“The 2019 climate act discriminates between different zero-emission technologies,” Girardin said. “The HEAT Act folks want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

He said it’s time to rethink not just the HEAT Act, but the 2019 climate change law, heralded as the most aggressive in the nation.

“The rush to be first,” Girardin said, “has set the state up for costly and economically destructive mistakes … This would not mean abandoning the state’s climate goals. To the contrary, open discourse, informed by the policy lessons and scientific advances of the past five years, can and will result in better climate policy for New York.”

The HEAT Act was opposed by petroleum producers and the politically influential AFL-CIO labor organization, which has union members who work on the gas system.

“Despite activists’ rhetoric, the facts make it clear the state aims to replace our electric generation mix with one that’s much more expensive and unquestionably less reliable, and back it up with speculative technologies that don’t exist today,” said Karen Merkel, spokeswoman for National Fuel Gas Co. of Buffalo that alone spent more than $184,000 lobbying. “We believe an ‘all-of-the-above’ emissions reduction strategy makes more sense.”

“There are many other New York laws, policies and practices that need to be updated if New York hopes to achieve the building climate emission reductions and other goals mandated by the climate act,” said Nicole Abene, senior legislative & regulatory manager at the Building Decarbonization Coalition of advocates in New York, which supports the HEAT Act.

“Together,” Abene said, “these updates would make it much easier for New York to implement a managed, phased and equitable transition to clean heat and cooling.”

By Michael Gormley

michael.gormley@newsday.com@GormleyAlbany

Michael Gormley has worked for Newsday since 2013, covering state government, politics and issues. He has covered Albany since 2001.