NY Renews is leading the fight to implement New York’s landmark climate justice law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. After passing the Climate Act in 2019 and the state Climate Action Fund (CAF) in 2023, we’re organizing the Fund Climate Campaign to ensure the law is fully funded and that its investment serves our communities—not corporate interests.
In 2025, New York State should begin collecting dedicated climate funding from a “cap-and-invest” program to make corporate polluters pay for their toxic emissions. Our Fund Climate Campaign would ensure that the funds raised by cap-and-invest go to the communities that need it most, lowering energy bills, cutting pollution, improving public health, and protecting our families and future.
But right now, Governor Hochul is stalling the cap-and-invest program’s rollout. NY Renews members are calling on the governor to release the regulations so that we can start funding community-led climate and clean energy projects ASAP. Learn more about where we stand in our advocacy as of April 2025.
Our Fund Climate Campaign centers on two transformative programs:
1.Affordable Climate Ready Homes Program: As the climate crisis intensifies, New Yorkers pay more for home heating and cooling due to rising utility bills and worsening heat waves and storms. Not only is this expensive—it’s also unsafe, polluting our homes and neighborhoods with toxic fossil fuel fumes and greenhouse gases, destroying our health and our planet. By making home energy and weather safety improvements free to working- and middle-class New Yorkers in our houses, apartments, and small businesses, the Affordable, Climate-Ready Homes Act will make the places we live and work safer, cleaner, and more affordable, protecting our families and our future. Learn more about the Affordable Climate-Ready Homes Program here.
2.The Community-Directed Grant Program: This program would provide democratized grants to community-based organizations in disadvantaged communities to design and implement community-led pollution reduction projects. Right now, the State has no structured support for communities to develop community-led plans or projects. Projects that this grant program could fund include projects like: The Resiliency Hub Proposal (We Stay/Nos Quedamos); the Expansion of the GRID Working Waterfront development in Brooklyn (UPROSE); the Sustainability Workforce Training Center (PUSH Buffalo); the CBO-based NYSERDA Clean Energy Hubs Program.
NY Renews is advocating that all projects and programs funded through the Climate Action Fund meet our Fund Climate spending criteria to create good jobs with gold-star labor standards, cut emissions, improve public health, and direct at least 35% of investments to disadvantaged communities.
Additionally, our Indigenous Solidarity Priorities for the NYS FY25-26 Budget & 2025 Legislative Session include $5 Million for the Shinnecock Elder Caregiver Program; $20 Million for Native Schools; Increased Funding for Native Health Clinics; the Montaukett Reinstatement Bill (A5295 / S3308); Rethinking the Western New York STAMP Mega-Industrial Development. We maintain that there can be no climate justice without upholding Indigenous sovereignty.
Together, we can organize to ensure New York funds climate justice!
