Inside the 'Cap and Invest' Plan to Cut New York's Emissions

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Once again, hope you had a great New Year's weekend. Welcome back, if you're coming back from somewhere, and into what, into the new beginning of spring, New Year's Day. What do you do on New Year's weekend? I played tennis yesterday, I play tennis with my kids. I never played tennis on January 2nd before, but the public tennis courts in my local park were full.

It was fun and people were all smiles, but the reality check is in the back of our minds too. Maybe it shouldn't be this way. That brings us to a small announcement to start this hour and start the year on the show. We launched a climate story of the week, originally for a few-month period in 2022, and we've decided we will continue it for all of 2023. A climate story of the week, every week on the Brian Lehrer show this year.

One of the things we quickly learned was that there is no shortage of specific climate angles that are interesting, that are personal as well as about communities, and about things beyond pure atmospheric science. Like global economics and justice and equity issues, and technological innovation, and all kinds of things. Our climate story of the week officially renewed now for 2023. We'll do our first one right now. In Governor Kathy Hochul's inaugural address on Sunday, she was sworn in for her first full term, she made one climate reference, it was this.

Kathy Hochul: As we protect our future generations and their rights, we're going to continue to lead the nation and our ambitious plan to combat climate change and protect our environment. Because no place on earth has more God-given natural treasures than New York.

Brian: Governor Hochul on Sunday, and as it happens, there is pretty big New York State climate news. It is actually good news probably, and it may have flown under your radar, so here we go. The New York State Climate Action Council approved a cap and invest style plan to tackle emissions. This just happened on December 19th. You've heard of cap and trade probably as an approach to capping climate change emissions. This is cap and invest will explain.

The plan lays out the strategy needed to implement this ambitious climate law which was passed originally in 2019. The law, this is how to implement the law, to cut emissions 85% below 1990 levels by 2050. With us now our two guests to help us understand what's in the newly approved plan, and what might yet block its implementation. Marc Weiss, co-founder of the advocacy group, NY Renews and creator of the PBS series as some of you may know POV, and Peter Iwanowicz who is a member of the New York State Climate Action Council that approved the plan. Welcome both of you to WNYC today, Happy New Year.

Peter Iwanowicz: Yes, happy New Year, Brian, good to be here. Thanks for the opportunity to help unpack for your listeners what's in this very broad Climate Action Plan.

Brian: Since I can't see you, that was Marc, right?

Peter: That was Peter, sorry.

Brian: Oh, that was Peter. Marc, we have you too. All right, we'll see if we get Marc's line connected. Peter, why don't you start us off by giving us an overview of what the plan that your Climate Action Council approved is, and explain to our listener's cap and invest?

Peter: Yes, certainly. As I mentioned a minute ago the plan is pretty broad-ranging. The cap and invest piece is just one aspect of a plan. Essentially, for the last three years the climate council that I was a member of deliberated, put out for public comment, received more than 35,000 comments from the public and from affected industries, and from average New Yorkers input on how we move away from where we are now. Which is an energy system and an economy that is largely powered by fossil fuels, to an economy and an energy system that is powered by clean renewables no later than 2050.

We have big goals such as 100% of all new vehicles will have to be electric vehicles, no later than 2035. All new construction and buildings will very rapidly move away from any fossil fuels being used in new buildings. Eventually, we're going to achieve all of our electricity, supporting our transportation sector, our buildings, our schools, our industries. All of those electrons coming into the system will have to be free of pollution as well, no later than 2040. It's pretty broad.

It's pretty sweeping and it's really going to require people to buckle down in 2023 to make sure that we have success in implementing this law. By people, I mean average New Yorkers, I mean the governor and her administration, and the state legislature and local legislators. A lot of local decisions are going to really impact how successful we are with implementing the plan and the law.

Brian Lehrer: There's some uncertainty here, and we'll come back to cap and invest and you can explain how that works. There is some uncertainty here. The law for this drastic climate reduction plan was passed in 2019. The group that you're in the Climate Action Council passed this how-to blueprint how to get there just the other week, December 19th. It sounds like you're saying even with all of that it's not necessarily [inaudible 00:06:20].

Peter: Yes, the audio just broke up there. I hope you can hear me okay? I think the plan lays out, though the how-to for the legislature, and the governor, and for the public, and sets out the timetables for things that have to happen. Like I mentioned, all-electric buildings, we need to move towards all-electric buildings with new construction as fast as possible in New York City that's taking effect in 2024. New York State, it'll be statewide a year later. Even though the how-to is being laid out there, I'm happy to see that the state isn't waiting to act.

Last week, in the middle of the holiday period week on December 28th, New York state adopted in an emergency rulemaking, a requirement on the automakers, that is going to lead to 100% of all their new vehicles being sold the lease in New York being electric vehicles by 2035. There is a step-forward function to get there to 100%. Starting in two years, a third of all new vehicles sold or leased in New York will be electric by this new emergency regulation that was adopted on December 28th to go through a rulemaking in the beginning of 2023 now to adopt this formally.

This is the boldness of how New York state needs to act, and what the Climate Action Council said how fast we need to act. The law requires us to cut our emissions in half by 2030. It requires that 70% of the electricity generated in New York consumed by New Yorkers will have to be renewable electricity sources. There's a lot that's going to happen in the next seven years. I'm happy to see that the Hochul administration is not wasting a minute. The ink was barely dry on the climate plan when they adopted that emergency regulation on the 28th. We're likely to see a lot more happening in the next couple of weeks and throughout the entire legislative session.

Brian: Also with us now, as we did manage to connect his line, sorry for the delay is Marc Weiss, co-founder of the advocacy group, NY Renews, which is also very involved in this topic. Marc, can you explain-- I want to basically ask you two things. I keep saying we're going to get to explain the cap and invest system that the Action Council that Peter is on voted for, and how that differs from cap and trade, which a lot of our listeners might know of as a climate protection means that Congress considered and defeated a number of years ago.

Cap the total number of admissions and then let companies trade among themselves buy and sell pollution rights, basically. I want you to explain cap and invest. I want you as an activist on this in New York to say how serious you think Governor Hochul is about doing any of these big things that Peter was just laying out about what buildings have to do, about what cars can be able to be sold. She only had that one passing reference in her inaugural address to climate on Sunday.

Marc Weiss: Thanks, Brian. It's good to be here. Sorry for the technical problem that delayed my joining. I'd like to do tag team with Peter on this because I think he's much more in conversant with the proposed cap and invest. I could certainly talk about what we think the prospects are, what the coalition NY Renews thinks the prospects are for Hochul embracing the recommendations of the Climate Action Council. If we want to start with the cap and invest, probably Peter's better able to take that.

Brian: Want to come back to that, Peter?

Peter: I'm happy to just walk through very briefly cap and invest. The council moved into this space under the recognition that New York State needs to fund implementation of the law. The one way to do it would be to put an institute like an emissions limit or a cap on overall pollution that could be belched out by industrial sources by power plants, motor vehicles, home fuel combustion. Put an overall cap in that pollution and then charge the energy companies and the fossil fuel industry for every ton of the emissions that they're responsible for, so the polluters will pay under this cap system.

We will also be lowering the amount of pollution that can be emitted in any given year. As I mentioned just a minute ago the law requires us to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and to reduce it by 85% by 2050, which is basically is an elimination of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The cap is set by law and we will step it down, which each year the cap will decline in between now and 2030. In between 2030 and 2050 to eventually zero it out. Where New York State's system is going to differ is that as it gets adopted regulatorily or when conjunction with the legislature, the council advised, and this is in our plan, that trading be extremely limited.

New York State law, the reason why it's nation-leading is that we have a deeper appreciation for the shortcomings of past environmental policy, and the need to address environmental racism with our climate policy. In order to ensure equity and justice for environmental justice communities, New York is going to have to design a program that is very short on trading. It's mostly going to be about reducing emissions at the source and charging polluters, and then having a broad conversation with what do we do with all the money that New York collects when we charge the polluters for every ton that they're belching out. That's going to be-

Brian: On that charge for the polluters. Marc, maybe you can take this, for every ton they're belching out as Peter just put it. Do we have now basically a carbon tax in New York state? If so, it has really flown below the radar of the news media, including me. This is what Al Gore a long time ago, and a lot of climate activists forever have been saying, is really needed to limit climate changing emissions. That's a carbon tax and that's going to provide the only real incentive or really disincentive for companies to pollute more. Do we now have a carbon tax in New York State?

Marc: No, we don't. Not yet, because that's at this point just a recommendation from the Climate Action Council. In order to put that into effect, there would either have to be regulatory measures taken which some people are saying it could be done by the Department of Environmental Conservation. Others are saying it might need some legislation. Either way it's going to take a fair amount of planning and preparation. It would probably be months if not years before something like that would be fully implemented.

No, it does not currently exist. It's one of the many recommendations that the CAC made. I think I want to address the larger concept of a carbon tax. What NY Renews and I don't know since I came on after you began, I don't know how much you talked about NY Renews, the coalition that was really the major mover behind the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019.

NY Renews always had a vision of moving New York State off of fossil fuels between now and 2050. One piece of that might have been putting a price on carbon, but it's not the complete vision. What's really needed is a massive amount of investment in the solutions. A massive amount of investment in switching everything in the economy over to-- it's called electrify everything sort of a concept of heating, transportation. Everything that's run now on fossil fuels needs to be electrified, and all the electricity generated needs to come from renewable energy. That's going to require billions upon billions of dollars of investment over the next 27 years.

Brian: You're hoping the money comes from a pollution tax of some kind?

Marc: Some of it would come from that but that's-- we don't-- as it's currently proposed, as this cap and invest is proposed, it probably would not generate everything that's needed. NY Renews has other proposals for other sources of revenue that would feed into that implementation process.

Brian: Such as?

Marc: For example, currently New York State has the federal government provides some subsidies to fossil fuel industr. There's a bill that was introduced by Senator Liz Krueger, the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee that would dramatically reduce those subsidies to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. There is another bill that was introduced by Senator Krueger that is patterned after the Superfund Act that was passed by Congress many years ago that requires polluters to pay for the mess they've made.

Senator Krueger's bill, which we've endorsed in which we are going to actively campaign for in this new legislative session, would put a fee on past pollution. On pollution that has already been generated by the major polluters.

Brian: That's interesting. We'll ask members of the state legislature about that as they come on this year. You talked about your concept, electrify everything. I think Tim in Brooklyn has an electrify everything question. Tim, you're on WNYC, hi.

Tim: Hi. Good morning, Brian, Happy New Year. Yes, the all-electric-- that current legislation and does that apply to the older housing stock in New York City?

Brian: Because you told our screener you would have a problem with that, right?

Tim: Oh my God, I've done work on electrical wiring in old New York buildings, and the things you see are mind-blowing, and going to electric heat requires a huge amount of electricity. The wiring that exists in New York City tenements just could not support that. It would require billions of dollars of upgrades, and otherwise, there's a huge risk of electrical fire flow overloads. Who's going to pay for that and make sure that that doesn't become a huge problem and take people's lives?

Brian: Marc.

Marc: That's a really good question. Initially what we're contemplating and what the Climate Action Council is contemplating is new construction, which is the low-hanging fruit. For example, to ban gas installation in new buildings, and to make sure that there's electric heating and electric cooking and so forth. Over the next 30 years, we need to find ways and we need to find the money as the caller has pointed out. It is going to require billions of dollars, but it has to be done.

It just is going to take a long time and a significant investment of money. Obviously, there are some places where it's not going to be practical at all, so we're going to have to find other kinds of solutions. The idea is to, for example, to subsidize as homeowners who are using gas or oil heating now as they get to the end of the useful life of those furnaces, to subsidize their purchase of new electrical heating and cooling systems, so they don't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

That's part of the investment that's needed. The Climate Action Council did an analysis saying that something to the tune of $10 billion a year for the next 27 years would be required to make this transition properly. We're talking about $270 billion. It is a massive project and we're talking about the 12th largest economy in the world in New York state.

Brian: People are getting from this segment, as we're almost out of time how massive a project it is, that is now in New York State law as of 2019, and with recommendations passed by the Climate Action Council last month, on how to start implementing it. I want to take one more call in our last minute. Unfortunately, we're going to have to keep this to a short question and a short answer, even though it raises another huge can of worms. It's Chris in Verplanck in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris, right to the point.

Chris: Good morning. I just don't understand why they're dismantling the infrastructure from the Indian Point nuclear power plant that's been decommissioned, and they're taking down the whole electrical infrastructure.

Brian: You live near there, right?

Chris: I'll take my answer off there. Yes, I live right next to it.

Brian: Thank you very much. Peter, I'll give you the last answer here. Any reconsideration of nuclear power because it is climate emissions-free, and the proponents of nuclear power say, "Hey, except for those very few high-profile accidents. Primarily, the one in Russia, or the Soviet Union, nuclear power is proven to be very safe, as well as carbon-free." Is the New York State Climate Action Council giving a new look to nuclear power? We have 30 seconds.

Peter: Yes, I'll just say that the underlying law that was passed in 2019 does allow for nuclear power to exist under the definition of emissions-free under 2040. The council recognize that that standard and definition exists. We have four nuclear plants in upstate New York that may continue to exist up until that point, or may not get relicensed. We have huge opportunities to get to renewable electricity and the need to do it under law in the next seven years. That's where the heavy investment needs to be made in the near term. If other technologies can prove themselves out financially over time, then they may qualify under the zero-emission standard the New York State has as law, but we'll see.

Brian: All right. With a vision of how daunting the challenge is for New York to fulfill its own new requirements and promises under the law from 2019, and with the Climate Action Council recommendations for how to do it just passed recently, and not really getting much attention anywhere else. I'm proud to say that's our first climate story of the week for 2023 as we leave it there with Marc Weiss, co-founder of the advocacy group, NY Renews, and Peter Iwanowicz, former member of the NY Renews steering committee and of the Climate Action Council. Peter, thanks so much for coming on the show. Marc, thanks for coming back.

Marc: Great to be on.

Peter: Thanks again.

 

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