Climate Groups Sue Hochul Administration Over Climate Law Backtracking
Environmentalists have long charged that New York is falling short of its climate mandates. Now, they’re taking the state to court.
It’s official: New York is being sued over delays in implementing its climate law.
Four environmental and climate justice groups filed a lawsuit Monday in a state court, claiming that New York is “stonewalling necessary climate action in outright violation” of its legal obligations. By not releasing economy-wide emissions rules, the suit alleges, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, is “defying the Legislature’s clear directive” and “prolonging New Yorkers’ exposure to air pollution … especially in disadvantaged communities.”
It’s the first lawsuit to charge the state with failing to enforce the core mandate of its 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA: eliminating nearly all of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The law tasks DEC with crafting rules to get there and to reach an interim target of 40 percent emissions cuts by 2030.
The state’s deadline to release those rules was Jan. 1, 2024 — a date the agency blew past. More than a year later, New York has yet to issue even draft rules, and it’s becoming less and less clear that it intends to do so, even though, throughout last year, Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration promised that it was working on them as quickly as possible.
The lawsuit centers on rules for cap and invest, an economy-wide carbon pricing program that Hochul has been promising since 2023. DEC and the state’s energy research and development arm, NYSERDA, spent much of the last two years developing the program. In December, agency staff told environmental groups that the draft rules were all but ready to go and would be released in January, allowing the state to start charging polluters before the end of 2025.
Then came the about-face.
At her State of the State speech in mid-January, Hochul made no mention of cap and invest. Her briefing book said DEC and NYSERDA needed more time to work out the details, promising only that DEC would publish rules requiring polluters to report their emissions. Her administration maintains that it is still moving ahead with cap and invest, but has declined to commit to any timeline for doing so. (Asked last week whether Hochul stands by this position, the governor’s office referred New York Focus to DEC and NYSERDA. A spokesperson said the agencies “are continuing to develop a cap-and-invest program” and pointed to the newly released emissions reporting rule as evidence.)
Hochul’s backtracking is at the heart of the lawsuit filed Monday by Earthjustice and two other environmental law groups on behalf of Citizen Action of New York, PUSH Buffalo, Sierra Club, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice, all members of the NY Renews coalition that led the charge to pass the CLCPA.
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