Advocates pressure legislators to adopt NY HEAT Act
With just days to go before the end of the legislative session, a broad coalition of environmental organisations and legislators in New York are working overtime to ensure passage of a landmark bill, the NY HEAT Act, that would help shift the state’s buildings sector away from gas and towards electrification.
In 2019, New York passed a major climate law, requiring a 40 percent cut in statewide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and an 85 percent reduction by 2050, from 1990 levels.
But in a state where more than half of the greenhouse gas emissions come from its buildings, there is no way to achieve those targets without fundamentally reforming how buildings are heated.
The so-called New York Home Energy Affordable Transition, or NY HEAT Act — the top priority of statewide and local climate groups in New York this year — would make changes to utility law that currently favours and incentivises the burning of gas in buildings for heat.
“There are a lot of steps that will have to be taken if we are going to gradually downscale and replace the fossil fuel energy system,” Stephan Edel, executive director of NY Renews, a statewide coalition of labour unions, community groups, environmental organisations, and faith communities, told Gas Outlook.
“New York HEAT comes in as one of the key pieces of legislation to actually allow the rules to shift.”
The bill consists of three main pillars. First, it would eliminate what is known as the “100-foot rule,” which allows any building, existing or newly built, to connect to the gas system for free if it is located within 100 feet of the gas pipeline system. The customer gets the free connection, the costs of which are covered by the utility and then passed on to all the other existing customers in their monthly bills. In essence, critics describe it as a subsidy for growth of the gas system, paid for by ordinary people.