Governor Kathy Hochul should publicly disclose internal state assessments showing extremely high costs for fully implementing New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), enacted in 2019.

The CLCPA mandates aggressive greenhouse gas reductions: 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050 from 1990 levels, with a goal of net-zero emissions.

It emphasizes electrification of buildings, transportation, and industry, alongside renewable energy expansion.

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From CFACT

By David Wojick

New York Governor Hochul has been saying for months that the regulations required by law to meet the Climate Act will be ruinously costly to New Yorkers. The draft regs were reportedly finished a year ago. The Governor must be citing their official cost assessment.

So where are the numbers? Why has Hochul not released the cost numbers so New Yorkers can see who gets hammered and how much? Keeping these ruinous cost numbers, secret is outrageous. It should be an election issue.

To begin with the legislature, the Assembly, needs to see these big numbers immediately. Clearly the Climate Act must be changed, and the Assembly is just gearing up their 2026 session. Hochul should submit a detailed assessment of the ruinous costs to the Energy Committee. Time is of the essence.

If this cost assessment is not forthcoming the Energy Committee should hold hearings and demand to see the numbers. I am not familiar with New York law but under federal law the Committee could subpoena these findings.

The Assembly cannot fix the Climate Act until they know how it is broken.

More deeply the citizens of New York State have a right to see the specifics of this looming ruinous cost threat. Who gets hurt the most and how much? For example, are we looking at $10 a gallon gas or $30? Doubling household electric bills or quintupling them?

One certainty is that deliberately driving up the cost of energy will hurt the poor the most. Energy is a far larger fraction of their meager budget than it is for the well off. Moreover, raising the cost of energy raises the cost of many other essentials including food.

The regulatory program that deliberately drives up cost is called Cap and Invest. It is actually Cap, Tax and Spend because all forms of fossil energy are heavily taxed.

The tax has to be enormous because it must force fossil fuel use down by an incredible 30% or more by 2030. Here in official jargon is how the Cap and Invest website puts it:

“Under the program, large-scale greenhouse gas emissions sources and distributors of heating and transportation fuels will be required to purchase or obtain allowances for the emissions associated with their activities. By applying a price to the amount of pollution, a cap-and-invest program incentivizes consumers, businesses, and other entities to transition to lower-carbon alternatives.”

In this case “incentivizes” means making it so expensive that use goes down so far that it meets the Climate Act target.

Note that there is no time left to “transition to lower-carbon alternatives.” For example, most of the millions of buildings in New York State are heated with natural gas. It is physically and economically impossible to convert more than a tiny fraction of these to electric heat in just four years.

Building electrification is probably the kind of ruinous cost that Hochul is referring to. Another case might be forcing people into electric vehicles. There are only so many ways to cut fuel use by 30% or more.

We do not know where all these ruinous costs hit because all this cost data is being held secret by Hochul. Keeping this extremely threatening information from the people of New York State is outrageous.

Perhaps Governor Hochul is hoping to keep this ruinous threat secret until after the November election where she is running for re-election. In reality this destructive secrecy is a good reason to vote her out of office.

If the Climate Act requires severe economic damage to New Yorkers over the next few years, that incredible fact should be a major election issue. That it is being kept secret is disgraceful.