A green reality check
The state has acknowledged we’re not on track to meet our energy goals. Let’s set an achievable plan — and commit to it.
In the five years since the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act was signed into law, the ambitious plan has seen its share of setbacks. Some we probably couldn’t have seen coming: the pandemic, followed by supply shortages and inflation. But others have been all too predictable — including glacial bureaucracy, muddled goals and not enough action from the state to propel the plan forward.
So it’s not surprising that two of the state’s key energy agencies are warning we’re not going to hit our 2030 renewables target. Indeed, the alert feels like merely acknowledging the elephant in the room. And the question now is what to do about it.
The CLCPA mandates that by 2040, all electricity generated in New York must come from renewable sources. One of the interim targets is for 70 percent of the state’s electrical grid to run on renewables by 2030 — and that’s the deadline the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency and the Department of Public Service say we’re not on track to meet.
This isn’t the first we’re hearing of problems with the CLCPA’S timeline. The New York Independent System Operator, which runs the power grid, noted in 2023 that to hit the 2030 benchmark, the state would need to add about 20 gigawatts of green power over the next seven years. That, despite the fact that since 1999, the state has added only 12.9 gigawatts to the grid in
total, from both fossil and renewable sources.
NYISO has also warned repeatedly that we’re taking fossil fuel sources offline faster than we’re replacing them. In other words: Never mind expanding clean-energy production; we’re struggling even to replace our current capacity with greener sources. And this comes as the state is encouraging tech industries to build factories here — welcome projects, to be sure, but they’ll use massive amounts of power we don’t yet have.
What’s more, the state has shown an inconsistent commitment to its own climate goals. We should be passing laws and creating programs that incentivize change and disable the regulatory biases that tilt the energy playing field toward oil and gas. Instead, Gov. Kathy Hochul walked away from a New York City congestion pricing plan, lawmakers left the NY HEAT Act on the table, and the state doesn’t even think it can convert its own government offices in Albany to renewables any time soon. And those are just recent examples.
So we should welcome this report as a reality check. Not because green energy is a pipe dream but because we need it to work, and we can’t get there with symbolic gestures and half-hearted efforts. This is an opportunity to get a handle on where we are, set a realistic timeline and then double down on meeting it. Because telling us things are fine when they clearly aren’t isn’t getting us any closer to our goals.
With the CLCPA, New York pledged to go all in on green energy, rejecting the polluting fuels that are endangering life on Earth. We need to keep that pledge. This is not about re-debating the CLCPA. It’s about finding the path that will get us there.