Outdated laws promoting fossil fuels threaten NYS climate action, activists say

ALBANY — Legislators and advocates say some outdated state laws continue to promote use of fossil fuels and now threaten the state’s ability to meet its climate change goals under a 2019 statute.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

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 in coming 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 Legislature.

“It makes no sense to continue to invest in old gas infrastructure,” Howarth said. “The HEAT Act would have strongly benefited almost all NY 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.

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…