This weekend, the New York State legislature finished its session in Albany, greenlighting some climate bills while tabling others. Rich Schrader, New York policy director at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), joins to discuss which laws will make it to Governor Kathy Hochul's desk for a signature.
[music]
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now our climate story of the week. For this week we'll spotlight the climate-relevant portions of last night's Democratic debate in the primary for governor of New York between Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and Congressman Tom Suozzi. Our guest for this is Richard Schrader, New York legislative and policy director for the environmental group NRDC, which may or may not anymore stand for Natural Resources Defense Council. Richard, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC today.
Richard: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me, and it still does stand for that.
Brian Lehrer: Still does. A lot of things have dropped the things that the initials stand for and they just use the initials. Anyway, Natural Resources Defense Council still a thing. Let's start with congestion pricing. The fee that's in the works for driving a car into the Manhattan business district. We'll play a short clip of each candidate. They were asked if the congestion pricing fee should be delayed because only 38% of midtown office workers are back at their desks, according to the most recent survey, on any given day compared to before the pandemic. Tom Suozzi goes first.
Tom Suozzi: I support congestion pricing, but not now in the middle of this financial crisis we're facing. Why are people not coming back to New York? They're not coming back to New York to their offices because they're afraid. They're afraid to take the subways.
Kathy Hochul: This is the post-pandemic world. We're not going to see many people come back five days a week, is what I'm saying. What I did today was talk about office conversions to residential. Today I signed a bill that allows for hotel conversions to residential. I want more people who work here to be able to live in this city.
Jumaane Williams: The answer is we should do it now. It's something I've been supporting for a very long time, and it's important not only because of the climate but because of the revenue we need to deal with so many issues. The reason people are not going back to work primarily is because we keep trying to go back to a normal that harmed New Yorkers. Just like I led when it came to making the streets safe when we went from 2012 where gun violence was out of control to 2018 pre-pandemic, we're leading by example.
What we have to do is have a hybrid remote option so people can travel back and forth to work and keep that economy going, but also realizing that they can have a better work-life balance and also help the economy around where they live.
Brian Lehrer: Richard Schrader from NRDC, that was really interesting. Only Jumaane Williams supports going ahead with congestion pricing as scheduled. Could you remind people what that fee is supposed to be and when?
Richard: Right. The when could have been any time actually in the last two years or so. The fee is going to be about $11 round trip, and there are some exemptions to this. The bottom line is congestion pricing really is for the moment and should happen now, and it's partly because of the climate issues that Williams raised. Who wants to have the city continue to give these benefits, which is essentially a free pass over several of the bridges for cars in a highly congested area?
Look, we all know that there's a shift that's happened because of the pandemic, but none of us know what that's going to look like in the next even few months. Clearly, people are starting to go back to the hybrid design of commuting that Jumaane mentioned, so people will be driving in again and they'll be driving in in big numbers. Frankly, having been in the city, there's still a great deal of traffic in the central business district, which is the only place that will be affected.
In the view of the coalition of environmental labor community groups that supported congestion pricing in the first place and a long campaign, this is essential in terms of providing both a climate solution, or at least some remedy for high pollution and high traffic, but also developing some kind of stream of revenue that can go to mass transit. That's not just the subways. It also includes public buses.
Brian Lehrer: Those are some of the various ways that it's good directly and indirectly for the climate?
Richard: That's right. For the most part, when we start talking about climate we're talking about all these bills. We're looking at greenhouse gas emissions. What does that mean? Greenhouse gas is really two major emissions. One is carbon dioxide, the other is methane. Carbon dioxide is by far the most voluminous. This creates a warming, and we know that it's created a global warming and it has been for some time. We've seen some of the hottest summers, hottest years in the past decade, but we're also seeing the extreme weather results that come from this. Whether it's droughts or wildfires or extraordinarily destructive hurricanes and flooding and the like.
We're also starting to see some mass migration issues because of this. The unavailability of water in certain parts of the world, and we're starting to see some of that in our own country in the West Coast. Climate's real. 99% of scientists believe that there's a climate crisis. Those who don't are either in the pay of the fossil fuel industry or they believe the earth is flat. Every piece that we can move forward towards having some ability to impact positively on climate is a good one, and this is important. Clearly, New York has been for so long a problem in terms of traffic, a problem in terms of the emissions that come out of traffic. This is just a good result.
Now, I admit you're talking about political realities as well, but we've waited a long time here. I think we should move forward on congestion pricing. You don't have to lock these things in. You can have a certain flexibility in terms of the pricing on it as well. That was always part of the discussion.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we welcome your calls on our climate story of the week for this week on anything relevant to the climate that did or did not happen in the New York State Legislature this year. We will tick down some bills that we talked about on this show earlier in the year but that did not get through, as well as some that did, or climate policy differences between the Democratic candidates for governor. 212-433-WNYC. For Richard Schrader from NRDC, 212-433-9692, or tweet your comment or question @BrianLehrer.
Richard, before we move away from congestion pricing and the clips that we just heard of the three candidates and get into cryptocurrency mining, it's not exactly an environmental question maybe, but they disagreed in those clips about the longer-term future of the nature of work and midtown density overall. Suozzi seems to want to go back to pre-pandemic patterns, and the only impediment is crime, according to him. Williams fully embraces a new work-from-home normal to the extent that it makes sense for those jobs in those companies as more humane and even a boon for businesses and residential neighborhoods, even if the delis and stuff in the business district lose out.
Hochul was somewhere in between but did talk about converting currently underutilized office space and hotel space to residential, which of course is always badly needed with New York's housing shortage. I personally think ongoing COVID spikes and COVID risks in midtown and downtown offices and on mass transit is as big a reason as crime that more people aren't rushing back, and nobody cited that in the debate. Is there a climate or other environmental take on the future of office work generally?
Richard: I think it'd be hard to just pitch and haul it in terms of environment or climate generally, but I think the reality's going to be some type of-- at least in the short even maybe middle run. Because of continued COVID spikes, there'll be some kind of a hybrid, and people are going to go to work a couple of days a week and they'll work at home a couple of days a week. That will have both social and economic results and impacts. I think at the end of the day because New York City is New York City and Manhattan is Manhattan, you're going to be seeing the potential for still an enormous amount of auto traffic. That has to really be dealt with, and congestion pricing's one good way of doing it.
Another is of course you want to, on the environmental and climate side, start to make it easier for people to have electric vehicles. You want to have as many of the public buses electrified as possible as well as school buses. Those are all key elements. There's a public health component too, Brian, with all this. A lot of the school buses, but even the public buses on the MTA beat with diesel fumes, create public health problems. Those problems go through neighborhoods, especially disadvantaged neighborhoods where there's high percentage of kids with asthma, emphysema, and other childhood issues, but also adults with that.
That's another big component of what has to be weighed. How do we create not just a better public health possibility with electric buses, but also how to fund them and how to make the ability to charge your electric vehicles easier. I think that's all part of some of the discussion we've been having in Albany in the last couple of years. How to put an infrastructure together around the state, but New York City particularly, that has EV charging stations that are easy to get ahold of, easy to plug into. This is all part of what's going to be changing in New York City. I agree with you that COVID will continue to be a concern for folks.
Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio at 11 o'clock, and live streaming at wnyc.org as we're in our climate story of the week here on The Brian Lehrer Show with Richard Schrader from NRDC on the candidates for governor on the Democratic side after their debate last night on these issues and what the legislature did or didn't do in the session just ended.
Let's put those two things together because we're going to go onto a climate-related bill that the legislature did pass last week. That there was some disagreement on last night between the candidates, but also a lot of vague positioning from them that we'll try to explain. It would place a two-year moratorium on certain kinds of mining for cryptocurrency in New York. Now, before we play the clips, Richard, can you give us a very brief refresher on what cryptocurrency mining is? Since this is virtual mining on the internet, this is not digging into the ground like for Kohler oil, why is it a climate issue?
Richard: That's the best way to frame this issue altogether. Crypto mining is enormously intensive amounts of computer use to solve complicated coding issues. The bottom line in terms of the public issue here, and particularly the climate environmental issues, is it's enormously, wastefully energy intensive. There's an awful lot of electricity that gets used. Also on the other side of it, there's a lot of computers get burned out quickly so there's a lot of electronic waste that's difficult to dispose of.
In this instance, we have some hard numbers on it. In the last five years, we've seen a tenfold increase in the amount of electricity that crypto mining uses. What does this bill do and what doesn't it do? It's a limited moratorium. Very moderate bill. What it does is it exempts crypto operations that already have secured or are the process of applying for new or renewed air permits from the state Environmental Conservation Agency, DEC. It also will exempt operators who are using the electric grid in terms of their overall power supply. That way, at least they can be metered and you know how much electricity they're using.
Who is going to be faced with having to have the two-year moratorium? It's going to be those crypto operators who have what's called behind-the-meter. In other words, they have their own power plant that provides power for their own buildings and they don't hook up with the electric grid, and they use oil, gas, or coal. As I said earlier, those are the greenhouse gas-producing fuels. There's also another part of the bill that the Department of Environmental Conservation will be required to have a report done in the next year or so, which looks at the overall environmental impact of the industry as well as the potential climate impact.
One thing I want to say, Brian, to put in some context here though, New York State in 2019 had passed a landmark climate law with many, many components that I won't go into all the details, but part of its landmark and really historic value is it has specific required goals. One of them is by 2030 a full 40% reduction of these greenhouse gas emissions; carbon dioxide-methane emissions. You cannot possibly hit that goal with even this one industry having this level of wasteful electricity; intense electricity. Now, this bill just passed at the 11th hour. A lot of support from environment climate labor organizations, and yes, we're going to be having the conversation with the governor to have her sign the bill.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, because the news is that Governor Hochul has not committed to signing the bill. She speaks first in the series of three clips from the candidates after being asked if she will commit, then we'll hear Tom Suozzi and Jumaane Williams.
Governor Hochul: It passed a few days ago, I have 800-some bills to review, and this is actually going to get my full attention. On that very question, we have to be very cautious about allowing more facilities to come and go into formally closed fossil fuel generating plants. We have a different situation where some may be generating hydroelectric power, for example. I need to be able to examine the differences, but I'm not interested in doing anything to harm the environment because I have the nation leading most ambitious Environmental Protection Plan, climate resistance plan in America, including a $4.2 billion bond act that I need the voters.
I need all of you at home to get out and make sure you vote for this November because our children's and grandchildren's lives depend upon it.
Tom Suozzi: When Governor Hochul was a member of Congress, she had a 50% rating from the League of Conservation Voters in her first year, 68% for her overall term. The lowest any Democrat in Congress has to date.
Moderator: What does it have to do with cryptocurrency?
Tom Suozzi: She's talked about who she takes money from. She took money from the NRA. When she was asked, "Why did you take money from the NRA? Why did you vote with the NRA? Why did you get endorsed by the NRA?" she said, "I did it because I needed it for the votes in my district." Now, where's the principle in that? I don't understand that. As far as cryptocurrency goes and the effect on the environment, I want to point out that I was in New York League of Conservation Voters for all of New York State.
Moderator: Do you support the cryptocurrency bill?
Tom Suozzi: I support the idea of a moratorium, but I think it should have been shorter than two years.
Jumaane Williams: Climate change was an abysmal failure in this legislature. There is no money for the Climate Protection Act that was passed several years ago. We have been leading the charge to say we have to have a moratorium as you mentioned. Why would you not say "Yes, I will do this in the next few days," even if you don't have time to do it now? You cannot ignore the connection between money going to a candidate and them not doing what's right for something that's being banned in other countries. By the way, there are other ways to mine for crypto, so this is not a moratorium on crypto. It's a moratorium on the worst way to mine.
Brian Lehrer: All right. There are the three candidates. We're going to get into the larger critique there from Jumaane Williams that it was an abysmal failure of the legislature, this session that just ended on climate in general, and go down a couple of bills that failed. I want to ask you one follow-up question, Richard, from the accusations that both Williams and Suozzi made in that set about campaign donations to Hochul maybe being a factor in her reluctance to sign the cryptocurrency mining moratorium. Williams and Suozzi were both implying corruption. What can you tell us?
Richard: I don't buy into that at all. Look, this is all part of the deliberative process that all of us who labor in Albany or any state capital or DC have to go through. We ran a campaign, this coalition of environmental groups and community groups, labor groups. They got it passed against enormous opposition from the crypto industry, spent a lot of money lobbying, and did a lot of misinformation on the bill saying it was an outright ban, which of course it isn't as I described. Secondly, there's always the next stage of the process, which is to convince the governor to sign the bill.
I have no problem, by the way, that she's not signing the bill right away. By law she has till December. I've found that this particular second floor, which is what we call the staff in the governor's office, has been particularly strong. This has been a good year for climate. It hasn't been a huge disappointment, but we haven't gotten everything. I can point out some things that I do want at NRDC, support I'd like to see move forward. Jumaane's point's a good one though. This is about the worst type of crypto mining in terms of moratoriums called proof of work. There are other alternatives.
At least on the environmental side, on NRDC side and my side, we're not saying there shouldn't be any Bitcoin or any crypto mining in New York State as an industry. It should be looked at like any industry, but this particular type of crypto mining is extraordinarily wasteful as far as electricity. They're using fossil fuel mostly, and the bottom line is if you come into New York and do business here you got to abide by its laws. That means these environmental laws too, and that means this climate law that I described.
Brian Lehrer: All right. Let me touch on bills that failed in this session of the legislature. One, perhaps the most high-profile climate bill that they considered, was called the Build Public Renewables Act. I see, funny enough, that renewable energy companies in the state largely opposed it. Another failed bill was one that New York City Council did pass a version of for the city last year. This would've been for the rest of the state to require all new buildings to have electric cooking and heating, not gas or oil in new construction. Tell me why those two went down and your NRDC take.
Richard: Let me start with the Build Renewables Public Power bill, which I think we're going to be seeing a lot more dialogue around because the Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has called for hearings on this bill. I think that there's a real important dialogue to be had about the New York State Power Authority, NYPA, and their engagement with how to put both resources as well as how to competently get us towards a much stronger investment in New York for renewables.
Interestingly, and this is the last piece that I'll mention on it, I think there's another law that we ought to look at that was passed in 2019 - this is the same year as the climate law - which expanded the Power Authority's ability to do a lot of things, including develop and construct, install and give out loans for things like electric vehicle charging stations or offshore wind, or electric vehicles generally or energy efficiency investments or solar investments. They, by that law, empowered the Power Authority to lend or in some cases grant money outright to any public entity. Any city, town, SUNY, CUNY, any publicly owned building, to green itself up to do energy efficiency on it. To put a solar collector on this roof. All of those pieces, by the way, are moving towards what I believe this bill is looking to find and accomplish. I'd like to see more discussion about the law that's already in existence and how we can make [crosstalk]
Brian Lehrer: Right. That's interesting. I guess the renewable energy companies in the state oppose this bill because it looked to them like the state itself would be going into the power business and competing with them?
Richard: That's correct. The conversations I've had with those representatives, and also some of the public materials that they've sent out, that would suggest that right.
Brian Lehrer: One other bill that I don't know if it passed or not, we covered it on a climate story of the week earlier in the year on the show, and I haven't seen the result of it. It was a producer-pays-bills for plastic and other packaging waste. There had been a debate about whether a fee was good enough, or if it needed to be an actual limit on packaging. Did any version of that get through? Do you know?
Richard: Right. No version got through. I think that part of it has to do with some strong competing definitions of what the overall legislation is trying to accomplish. There's going to be a lot more dialogue off-session on this. I think there's a real chance it'll get passed next year. I also think that there's a discussion among environmentalists about how we want to have a bill framed and definitions on it, but it didn't pass this year.
Brian Lehrer: Let me just take one phone call for you before we run out of time on congestion.
Richard: Sure. Do you want to do all electric too? You want to do all-electric buildings?
Brian Lehrer: All electric buildings, I guess they just didn't have the votes for it yet for statewide even though it's going to happen in the city?
Richard: Well, what's happening in the city, A, that's a big push wide. Should have happened statewide. B, there's great data out there now that shows that actually new electric buildings. Not changing the ones that are there now, but the new electric buildings are actually cheaper than oil or gas buildings, by about $7,500 or so per building. That was completely, by the way, the victim of disinformation by a fossil fuel front group that put millions of dollars up in TV ads. The American Petroleum Institute, which has a long history of deception, climate denial, et cetera. They were the lead on attacking this bill.
The other part of the bill is that we know from other utilities, Con Ed, Long Island Power Authority, that there's not going to be any problem in energy and electric supplies for the next 15, 20 years. We can be electrifying the way we need to, which is aggressive because that's the place where we have the cleaner kind of electricity, and we don't produce greenhouse gas emissions.
Brian Lehrer: We do have a call that we're not going to have time to take, from somebody who said that going all-electric might stress the power grid too much if all the buildings everywhere are all-electric, and then we're going to be more prone to blackouts. Think that's a risk?
Richard: Let me respond this way. The bill itself would only be about new construction. We know from Con Ed that they estimate that the electric system, their peak in the service territory won't be exceeding the summer peak or have any problems as far as electricity volume until 2040 or so given the numbers and data we're looking at now. The line on Power Authority has pretty similar numbers, I think 2038. We're in a place where there won't be as overly stressed electric system, even with very high new investments and new customers coming in line for electricity for probably 15 to 20 years.
Of course, we can be moving to develop a stronger infrastructure over that period of time. That's the whole point of the climate law, by the way.
Brian Lehrer: Just to circle back to our first topic was the candidates' disagreement on whether the congestion pricing fee for driving into midtown should be delayed. We got a flood of callers, who we're not going to have time for almost any of them on, with all kinds of reactions to that. One person says, "There should be residential parking permits for people who live in the district that's not in the congestion pricing bill as it stands." Somebody else - let's see. Where did this one go? - says, "Electric vehicles should be exempted and they aren't." We're going to take Troy in Brooklyn. Troy, we've got exactly 20 seconds for like a sound bite call from you today. Sorry for keeping you short.
Troy: No problem. Appreciate it, Brian. I just don't believe that it's going to be an effective tool. We've always seen bridges and everything that they promised that the funds are going to go for and the citizens just keep being taxed. The congestion in Manhattan is caused by deliveries. Mainly delivery trucks who don't pay their fair share of some of this. The citizens are just continually being bombarded with fees and taxes, and it's going to be abusive. People are not going to stay. You don't even--
Brian Lehrer: Troy, I have to leave it there. Keep calling the show. What about on his specific point that congestion is not caused by individuals driving their cars, it's caused by trucks making deliveries? We have 20 seconds left.
Richard: It's caused by both, Brian, and he's made a good point as far as trucks making deliveries, and a good point in terms of having to a have a stronger enforcement apparatus in terms of the New York City Police Department, New York City generally, but it does reduce delays. We've seen this in London and Stockholm. It reduces stress, of course. It reduces diesel emissions, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. One thing to do, of course, here is to have stronger enforcement, which was part of the discussion. You can't put everything into one bill, into one policy, but it is part of the ongoing discussion.
Brian Lehrer: Richard Schrader, New York State legislative policy director for NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council. That's our climate story of the week. Richard, thanks a lot.
Richard: Thanks, Brian.
Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.