Earthjustice Responds to Hochul Budget Director On Rolling Back CLCPA

ALBANY, NY (02/25/2026) (readMedia)-- This morning at an event hosted by the Citizens Budget Commission, Governor Hochul's budget director Blake Washington added fodder to Governor Hochul's hints that she's considering rolling back New York's Climate Law.

According to City & State, Washington "described the cost burdens of the green energy requirements on average New Yorkers as 'own goals...' but said circumstances had changed since former Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the law in 2019. 'Sometimes you can change governmental rules to just fit the times and actually adapt to the realities, the realities before us, not how we wish them to be,' Washington said."

Liz Moran, New York Policy Advocate at Earthjustice, issued the following statement in response: "New Yorkers are currently facing record high energy bills and 1 in 4 families can't afford to pay them. The main driver of those increases is the cost of gas and gas pipes – not our climate law. Failing to address gas as the problem is the actual 'own goal.' With the federal government decimating science-based climate protections every day, now is not the time for New York to do the same to our nation-leading climate law."

Rolling back the climate law will do nothing to help with affordability and reliability, and in fact moving forward with funding and policies to meet our climate law will instead help with both.The high cost of fossil fuels is why so many New Yorkers are struggling to pay their bills, because the cost of gas is rising and the gas system is expensive to maintain. Meanwhile, even during extreme weather, fossil fuels are unreliable. In December 2022, Winter Storm Elliott resulted in power outages due to failing infrastructure. Gas supply was plentiful, but wells and pipes froze, and cold temperatures affected equipment at fossil fuel power plants. Similarly, the system struggles during heatwaves. Even NYISO admits that during the June 2025 heatwave, solar and wind outperformed fossil fuels.

Even so, New York leaders have repeatedly failed to follow through on building new clean energy infrastructure. The 175-mile Clean Path NY transmission line, which would bring 1,300 MW into New York City, was indefinitely delayed by New York's Public Service Commission earlier this year. In addition to delaying Clean Path, in July, the New York State Public Service Commission also abandoned efforts on a transmission project to connect multiple offshore wind farms to provide clean energy and meet growing demand. That project could have lowered costs to produce electricity by $40 to $70 billion from 2033 to 2052. That's on top of the approximately 50,000 MW of mostly clean energy projects stuck in the NYISO generator interconnection queue.