Quietly, and apparently unsuccessfully, the Hochul administration realizes what many have been saying for years — the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is going to cost a bundle.

Gov. Kathy Hochul began trying to lessen those costs quietly during deliberations over the week-late 2023-24 state budget, but according to a report by Politico this week those efforts have been dropped. Hochul had been trying to change the way New York accounts for its emissions from a 20-year basis to a 100-year basis. New York and Maryland are the only two states to use a 20-year basis to account for emissions.

Why does that matter?

“Under the 20-year time frame, each ton of methane emitted is calculated as equivalent to around 80 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), while on a 100-year basis, each ton of methane is equivalent to only about 25 tons of CO2. Understood this way, it’s easy to see that eliminating the equivalent of 80 tons of CO2 is more costly than eliminating only 20 tons worth. And barring some other creative policymaking, these costs are likely to be passed onto consumers,” James Hanley of the Empire Center for New York State Policy wrote this week. “This belated recognition of the Climate Act’s consumer costs reflects the state’s failure from the beginning to seriously address how the law might affect New Yorkers’ wallets.”

Those costs, according to a news release by Sen. Tom O’Mara, R-Elmira, were detailed by Basil Seggos, state DEC commissioner, in a Capital Tonight interview with Susan Arbetter earlier this week and could include an 80% increase in home heating costs and a 62-cent agallon increase in gasoline prices.

Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, has been a co-sponsor of legislation the past two legislative sessions that would require a full cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy systems because they are concerned implementing the CLCPA could cost state residents billions of dollars a year in increased taxes, utility rates and costs to retrofit and convert their homes from natural gas to electricity heating and cooking. The legislation hasn’t moved out of committee since its August 2021 introduction, but the Hochul administration is concerned about costs.

Seggos and Doreen Harris, president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, co chair the New York State Climate Action Council, wrote a guest essay published earlier this week by the USA Today Network explaining the change in the administration’s thinking, saying the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act accounts for emissions differently than most other states and countries and included no no cost analysis when it was passed in 2019.

Hochul, who was lieutenant governor when the CLCPA was passed in 2019, decided now was the time to look at consumer cost impacts.

“As it stands today, the climate act’s emissions accounting method is certain to be a major driver of future costs for New York families,” Seggos and Harris wrote in their guest essay. “As the governor and Legislature continue to negotiate the state budget, proposals put forth to limit potentially significant consumer costs deserve consideration. Fighting climate change won’t work if people and businesses can’t afford it. Burdensome costs will impede essential climate progress. For our climate action plans to be successful, our state’s climate leadership must be affordable for everyone.”

Legislation (A.6039/S.6030) has been introduced to change the accounting method from 20 years to 100 years by Assemblywoman Didi Barrett, D-Hudson, and Sen. Kevin Parker, D-Brooklyn. Barrett and Parker say in their legislative justifications one reason to realign the emissions accounting is clean energy investors and developers have expressed reluctance to pursue initiatives in New York that would qualify for the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal incentive programs because the state’s greenhouse gas accounting systems creates compliance hurdles that do not exist in the other states where these investors and developers will likely gravitate. They say the state is costing itself access to $10 billion in incentives and tax credits.

“The CLCPA’s accounting metric makes New York state an outlier around the world. It will have massive consequences, on so many levels, for our consumers, ratepayers, and local economies. Senate and Assembly Republicans have been saying all along that this plan has never been accompanied by the proper cost-benefit analysis, that we’re moving too fast to implement the CLCPA and it won’t be feasible, affordable, or reliable. It appears that Governor Hochul and some Albany Democrats finally agree, however the pushback is already underway and so let’s hope it’s not too late for common sense to regain a foothold in this government,” O’Mara said.