From Watts Up With That?

Roger Caiazza

Francis Menton and I have been publishing articles about the futility of the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) for years and recently have been collaborating in several proceedings trying to make our case that the law needs to be reconsidered.  In the past few months there have been under-publicized findings by State agencies that support our case.

At the December 1, 2025, State Energy Planning (SEP) Board meeting there were presentations that gave overwhelming evidence that implementing the Climate Act as presently written will be unaffordable and the 2030 CLCPA 40% emission reduction target and 70% renewable energy in the electric system mandate will not be achieved.  I think that if this information gets widespread coverage there will be a public outcry that may force the Governor and the Legislature to consider changes to the law.  I prepared a press release that I distributed to various New York press outlets describing these results.   This is a summary of a long, detailed post on my blog that documents the points made in the press release. 

Recent Court Decision

On Oct. 24, 2025, there was an Albany County New York Supreme Court decision ordering the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to issue final Climate Act implementing regulations establishing economy-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) limits on or before Feb. 6, 2026 or go to the Legislature and get the Climate Act 2030 GHG reduction mandate schedule changed.   During the legal proceeding the State Attorney General submitted a letter that argued that it was inappropriate to implement regulations that would ensure compliance with the 2030 40% reduction in GHG emissions Climate Act mandate because meeting the target is “currently infeasible”.  The Judge acknowledged that this argument was relevant but ruled that DEC must promulgate regulations implementing a law even if they have persuasive arguments that it is inappropriate. The Hochul Administration and DEC appealed the decision on November 25, 2025 claiming that “it is impossible for the Department to simultaneously comply with both the Court’s order and its substantive statutory obligations.”  I think this just postponed the inevitable reckoning that the schedule in the law must be changed.

State Energy Plan

The New York State Energy Plan is a “comprehensive roadmap to build a clean, resilient, and affordable energy system for all New Yorkers”. I have provided background information and a list of relevant articles on my Energy Plan page. The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) released the Draft Energy Plan last summer.  Stakeholder comments were accepted until early October.  The Energy Planning Board has the responsibility to approve the document. The meeting on December 1 presented results from additional analyses that made the case for reconsideration stronger than the work Menton and I have been doing. 

Energy Affordability

An article on the Energy Affordability presentation at the meeting documents the future energy cost methodology.  The Pathways Analysis considered eleven different household profiles based on income level, primary household fuel, and location.  The Upstate (north of the immediate New York City suburbs) moderate income (incomes between 80% and 120% of the Area Median Income) household using natural gas profile was used as an example. 

I extracted information from two slides presented at the meeting that described projections for four future energy scenarios or “journeys”.  Those scenarios are:

• Fossil fueled heating and transportation with average existing equipment.
• Conventional Replacement: Fossil fueled heating and transportation with new, more efficient equipment
• Moderate Efficient Electrification: Some electrification of heating and transportation, with basic building envelope efficiency measures
• High Efficient Electrification: More electrification of heating and transportation, with basic or medium building envelope efficiency measures, and efficient electric appliances

In the following slide, three projected “household journeys” for 2031 reduce monthly energy expenditures relative to the current starting point.  However, buried at the bottom of the page is the notation that these values are “Average monthly expenditures. Does not include equipment costs”. 

It turns out that including equipment costs makes a difference as shown in the next slide.

The total energy costs for this household profile are currently $506 per month, assuming no capital costs.  If a household with average equipment efficiencies was upgraded to use more efficient equipment monthly costs go down to $361 because of efficiency savings.  The moderate efficient electrification scenario projects monthly costs would be reduced to $404 and if the household purchases equipment necessary to achieve the Climate Act targets the efficiency savings bring the cost down to $336 per month.  Results for two other household profiles were also presented at the meeting.  However, there is a huge caveat.  Those costs do not include the cost of capital for equipment costs.

The presentation and the supporting data annexes only provide the equipment costs for this profile.  For this household profile the monthly levelized capital costs for new equipment more than doubles the monthly energy costs for all three scenarios that replace all equipment.  Undoubtedly some of this increase is related to the assumption that there are no monthly payments for existing cars or household appliances.  Nonetheless, that point alone suggests that there is an impending energy crisis in New York.

Relative to Climate Act implementation, the cost to comply equals the expected monthly energy cost increase difference between the conventional replacement scenario and the highly efficient replacement scenario.  

The literal and figurative money quote is that the total replacement cost is estimated to be $593 a month in 2031, which is a 43% more than the cost for conventional equipment.

In case you are wondering how NYSERDA spun these costs it was a classic case of misdirection.  The presentation admitted that the key driver of change over the next five years is “change in energy price”.  Not shown in the first slide is the starting point in 2026 which was $488 per month.  The modeling shows that household energy spending 3% to 8% on average to $506 per month but could go up to as much as 14% to 19% even if they do nothing.  That would increase costs up to $587 a month

I prepared an annotated transcript for the energy affordability presentation that includes internal links to headings for questions. Under the link to Chair Harris was this exchange:

NYSERDA Chair Doreen Harris: “And then, James, maybe to kind of take those percentages in context, was it in that higher price sensitivity, a household that did nothing could see as much as one hundred dollars a month increased costs. Is that about right?

James Wilcox, NYSERDA staff: “Yeah. That’s correct.”

NYSERDA Chair Doreen Harris: “So there’s a substantial increase with these energy prices for folks who don’t take any action. Thank you. That is what I was trying to elicit: What does doing nothing get you?

To summarize the misdirection, the Chair of the Energy Planning Board was trying to elicit a specific point from her staff that there will be a “substantial increase” in energy prices even if people don’t take any action.  Left unsaid was that her “substantial increase” is at most 17% but the equipment costs to comply with the Climate Act are an increase of 2.9 times relative to doing nothing whereas replacement equipment increases cost 1.7 times.  You cannot make this stuff up.

Implementation Timing

I summarized my initial thoughts about the Pathways Analysis presentation at the December SEP Planning Board meeting.  The presentation found that neither the CLCPA 40% GHG emission reduction target nor the electric system 70% renewable energy mandate would be achieved on time.  The “Key Takeaways (3/3)” Slide (#31) in the meeting presentation states that “the state is currently not on track to meet the 2030 emission limit – Current Policies is estimated to hit 40% reduction in 2038 while Additional Action is estimated to hit 40% reduction in 2037.” 

The Electric Sector Results: Additional Action slide (#21) states that “Pace of additions leads to delayed achievement of 70% renewable to 2036-2040”.

Discussion

The Court Decision and the Energy Plan findings are not the only reasons given by state agencies that it would be appropriate to reconsider the Climate Act.  I described three other similar findings in an article last month. The New York State Comptroller Office audit of the NYSERDA and PSC  implementation efforts for the Climate Act was an early acknowledgement that the implementation plan needs to be revised.  The Public Service Commission (PSC) compared the renewable energy deployment progress relative to the Climate Act goal to obtain 70% of New York’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The final Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review Report document found that 2030 goal will likely not be achieved until 2033.  Finally, The Second Informational Report prepared by Department of Public Service (DPS) staff described four feasibility concerns: the 2030 renewable energy target is “likely unattainable”, offshore wind faces major obstacles, transmission remains a “critical bottleneck”, and grid reliability challenges are mounting

There have been other recent articles arguing that New York has impossible targets.  David Wojick recently published an article explaining implementation issues that I backed up with observed data.  Tom Shepstone describes a New York Post editorial that cites a Progressive Policy Institute article that calls the Climate Act an “undeniable” failure.  Finally note that I have been compiling other reasons to pause and reconsider the Climate Act for most of this year.

In a rational world, these findings should inspire the Hochul Administration to amend the Climate Act.  It is troubling that the State Energy Planning Board meeting presentation did not mention these ramifications.  Surely, this is an important factor for the “comprehensive roadmap” of the energy future. Furthermore, there has been no sign that the Hochul Administration or the majority leadership in the Legislature are amenable to considering amendments to the Climate Act.

Conclusion

New York State entities have found that the Climate Act transition will be unaffordable and meeting the schedule is impossible.  The only appropriate course of action is to reconsider the Climate Act but no in the majority dates broach the subject.

I was motivated to publish this and distribute it to the media because these findings have significant implications for the future New York energy system.  In the near term, something must be done to reconcile the reality that the CLCPA schedule is too ambitious to have any hope of compliance.  More importantly, the findings described should become the basis for a discussion for more New Yorkers.  As it stands now New York energy policy is being guided by a small but extremely vocal and motivated constituency that does not understand the physics of the energy system.  Thomas Sowell has been quoted as saying: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong”.  In this instance, there is nothing more stupid or dangerous than ignoring the people who will lose their jobs if there are problems with the energy system.

I would appreciate any reader with ties to New York to let them know that if the Climate Act is left unmodified  NYSERDA expects that their energy bills will increase by $593 per month.

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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.