New York, the first state to loosen a climate law it had passed, agreed to delay emissions deadlines, revise how pollution is counted, and slow a cap-and-trade plan. The changes were driven by Governor Kathy Hochul, who argued that meeting the original target
For the first time in the country, New York has stepped back from a climate goal it had made legally mandatory for itself.
Last week, the state became the first in the nation to weaken a climate law passed by its own legislature. The move came at the behest of Governor Kathy Hochul. a moderate Democrat who has often criticized climate action for raising consumer costs. After months of backroom negotiation. the legislature struck a deal that weakens the 2019 law in several ways — most notably by giving New York an additional decade to meet legally required emissions targets.
Under the original 2019 law, the Empire State was required to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent before 2030, using the state’s 1990 emissions as the baseline for comparison, per standards set by the United Nations.
The strict accounting embedded in the law forced a hard choice. To reach the 2030 target, New York effectively had to shift away from natural gas, which provides most of the state’s electricity and almost all its heating fuel.
By the time the 2020s had progressed, the state hadn’t managed to wean itself off gas. The reasons depend on who is telling the story. Some argue that President Donald Trump’s attacks on renewable energy slowed New York’s progress. Others say state politicians leaned on natural gas when they could have invested in cleaner energy. Either way. New York fell far behind schedule. and it was left with a grim reality: it would not meet its 2030 goal without dramatic action that would have taxed or banned fossil-fuel consumption.
Now the deal does exactly that — it changes the target and changes the path.
Beyond delaying the 2030 deadline by 10 years, the agreement also adjusts the law’s accounting to give less weight to natural gas. It slows the rollout of a cap-and-trade system designed to force polluters to bargain with each other to stay below a hard limit on total emissions.
Hochul has defended the changes as a way to protect New Yorkers from rising costs. She has blamed Trump for New York’s slow progress and argued that meeting the state law’s “ironclad emissions target” — something a court ordered her to do last year — would require huge pollution taxes that would inflate utility bills and gasoline prices. imposing thousands of dollars on the average household. The budget deal. she added. includes language requiring the state to consider the impact of its climate regulations on household budgets.
But legislators and climate activists who supported the original 2019 law say Hochul pushed the changes without giving lawmakers a chance to discuss a path forward for climate action.
“This really came out of nowhere, it was sprung on us, and it was difficult even to understand what was happening,” said Marcella Mitaynes, a progressive state assembly member who represents waterfront neighborhoods in Brooklyn with many working-class residents.
Mitaynes’s frustration is echoed by a different kind of warning from experts who study how quickly decarbonization can happen.
Some of the state’s legally binding emissions target, experts said, had become virtually impossible to hit once broader headwinds mounted against a national or global transition away from fossil fuels.
“It was going to be really difficult to meet. because the economy wasn’t cooperating. ” said Al McGartland. who served as the chief economist at the Environmental Protection Agency from 2005 to 2025. McGartland. an expert on carbon taxes. said the law’s change is “not all bad because I think it does buy time to think this thing through carefully. and do it right.”.
The most consequential change is the delay.
The budget deal sets a new target of cutting New York’s emissions by 60 percent by 2040 — a number the governor’s office says is more achievable than the 40 percent requirement originally imposed for 2030. It also delays the launch of a “cap-and-invest” system that was supposed to begin last year until 2028.
Under cap-and-invest. the state would assess new fees to polluters such as power plants and oil terminals and funnel that revenue into climate projects including electric-vehicle chargers and heat pumps. Many climate experts view systems like this as among the most efficient ways to steer an economy away from fossil fuels. Hochul. however. has grown concerned that cap-and-invest would raise gas prices and utility bills while many consumers are already struggling with fuel prices.
The deal also reshapes how New York counts its emissions — changes that can dramatically alter what looks “on track.”
Under the old system. New York had to count the climate pollution tied to extracting fossil fuels imported from other states. When. for instance. a natural gas field in Pennsylvania leaked methane before piping the gas to New York. the latter state had to count those leaks as its own pollution. on top of the emissions caused by burning the gas for energy. Most other states don’t do this. When New York switches to the new approach. it will reduce its apparent emissions by about 15 percent overnight because the state imports most of its natural gas.
On top of that, the old system gave extra weight to methane. Methane is the second most common greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. and it warms the Earth about 80 times faster than carbon dioxide. but it disappears from the atmosphere after around 20 years. Many countries evaluate greenhouse-gas emissions based on warming over 100 years. but New York’s old framework considered only 20 years of warming. making methane look far worse compared with carbon.
Changing the methane math also shifts who “wins” and who “loses.” Under the new system. the warming impact attributed to New York’s livestock industry and its landfills will fall by two-thirds. Unlike the imported-fuel accounting change. however. the move to a 100-year framework can be defended as more climate-conscious: the 100-year framework is the standard used by the United Nations climate secretariat that administers the Paris Agreement. and many climate scientists have criticized New York’s 20-year framework for distorting the true costs of warming.
Even with these changes, the state still won’t be on track to meet its original 2030 goal. The reason is stubborn and familiar: New York has made little progress on the biggest sources of carbon — cars, power plants, and residential buildings.
Natural gas provides around 50 percent of the state’s electricity. It is also the heating fuel for almost all major apartment buildings in New York City and its suburbs. Fully ditching fossil fuels would require converting those buildings to electrical heating systems like heat pumps. It would then also require replacing natural gas-fired power plants with emissions-free sources such as wind and solar.
Both tasks are difficult.
Electrifying New York is expensive. The cost of replacing gas boilers with electric heaters in a century-old apartment building can run into the tens of millions of dollars. and landlords have struggled to find that money without bankrupting tenants. New York City’s Local Law 97 requires large buildings to make the switch by 2030 or face steep fines. but some building owners have said the fines might still be cheaper than the replacement cost.
John Foley, an executive vice president at First Service Project Management, said the 2030 target is still a powerful spur even if the goal is difficult.
“The goals may be difficult to reach, but they’re important to have,” Foley said. His firm handles construction projects for a large portfolio of multifamily buildings. He said newer heat pump technology can make decarbonization easier for some buildings. but meeting the Local Law 97 target depends on the state’s grid.
“The solution seems to be going towards electrification a lot more, and in order for electrification to be the answer, then you have to produce energy in a cleaner way,” he said.
That cleaner energy, though, has been slow to arrive.
Steam rises from the smokestacks of the Ravenswood Generating Station, the largest power plant in New York City. The state has struggled to build out enough clean power to replace its natural gas plants.
A new transmission line carrying clean power from hydropower dams in Canada down to New York City is scheduled to come online this month. It was delayed for years by litigation and environmental permitting. Two major offshore wind farms — Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind — are also scheduled to come online this year despite attempts by the Trump administration to block them.
Yet those additions will only displace a fraction of the state’s gas supply. They won’t provide much power in summer when demand is highest. since coastal winds tend to be calmest in summer when oceans are hot and storms are less frequent. Developers have also shown little interest in building additional offshore wind farms due to Trump’s opposition.
Some barriers have also been made inside New York.
The state made its electricity grid more polluting when it shut the Indian Point nuclear power plant in 2011 due to environmental concerns. After the plant closed, New York had to import more gas to replace the lost power.
In Brooklyn, the stakes feel immediate. Residents living near seasonal power plants have complained of asthma and other respiratory conditions.
For nearly a decade. the state has tried to close particularly dirty “peaker” gas plants that turn on during the hottest months when electricity demand is highest and other sources can’t cover the gap. Even after the new Hudson transmission line and Empire Wind come online. the state’s independent grid operator says New York City could still need those peaker plants to avoid blackouts as late as 2031.
Mitaynes described her opposition to the weakened law in terms of those communities and the air they breathe.
“To me. the heart of the climate law was really to invest in our communities and reverse this legacy of pollution. ” she said. She said the delayed cap-and-trade system would have funneled 35 percent of its revenue toward disadvantaged communities. That money could have addressed poor air quality and supported the buildout of an offshore wind manufacturing facility on the waterfront.
“This law really set us up as leaders, and [Hochul] has taken this opportunity to dismantle it,” Mitaynes said.
Hochul’s office disputes the framing. A Hochul spokesperson, Ken Lovett, said the changes are “commonsense reforms” and that the governor “remains committed” to climate action.
“Governor Hochul has made clear her top priority is keeping the lights on and costs down for all New Yorkers,” Lovett said.
The state is still moving ahead on some decarbonization investments. One state agency is investing heavily in large batteries that could store clean energy and replace some natural gas capacity. Another agency will purchase $100 million in new renewable power this year. The state budget also increased a tax credit for New York City landlords that electrify their buildings. The budget deal ups the proportion of future cap-and-trade revenues that will go to disadvantaged areas.
But outside those measures, the question hanging over New York’s new direction is whether gas is becoming permanent.
The governor appears to be preparing for that long-term reliance. Last year. she approved water permits for a new Trump-backed pipeline project that would carry natural gas from Pennsylvania to Queens. The pipeline endorsement was part of a deal to protect the Empire Wind project from Trump’s interference. Even so, Trump’s Interior Department attempted to stop Empire Wind a few months later.
The new gas pipeline broke ground in April at a ceremony in Brooklyn attended by Trump administration Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin. Hochul did not attend.
What New York has done, in effect, is push the deadline farther away and reshape the numbers that measure progress. Whether that creates space to solve the hardest problems — or simply postpones them — is now the fight over the state’s climate future.
New York climate law Kathy Hochul cap-and-trade cap-and-invest emissions targets methane accounting natural gas offshore wind electrification Local Law 97 Indian Point shutdown