Posted on August 26, 2020 by Gail Port
In September 2019, I wrote about the banner year it had been for the environment and environmental legislation in New York, particularly with the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) which was signed into law in July 2019. The CLCPA sets a bold, aggressive, statewide framework to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050—a very high bar for state-led action to address climate change.
To keep the state on track to achieve its goals, the CLCPA called for the creation of two significant decision-making bodies. The first, the Climate Action Council, is in charge of developing the scoping plan for New York’s economy to achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda. The second is the Climate Justice Working Group, which will guide the state in carrying out its ambitious climate targets by ensuring that the environmental justice provisions of the CLCPA—such as clean energy spending, green jobs, and affordable resources—are enforced and distributed equitably to low-income communities of color. Appointees to both of these bodies have been made and meetings have been held. The Advisory Panels called for in the CLCPA, which consist of representatives from public, private, academic, environmental and community groups covering six economic sectors areas—transportation, energy efficiency and housing, agriculture and forestry, land use and local government, energy intensive and trade-exposed industries, and power generation—were filled on August 24th. Members of the Just Transition Working Group, which is charged with helping to ensure NY’s workforce is prepared for and will benefit from the transition to renewable energy, were also appointed on that date.
Governor Cuomo has taken other steps to meet the CLCPA’s ambitious goals, including,
- the largest combined solicitations for renewable energy ever issued in the U.S. to combat climate change;
- a statewide framework to invest nearly $1 billion through 2025 to advance energy efficiency to the low-to-moderate income households;
- an additional $2 billion in energy efficiency and building electrification initiatives to combat climate change.
While guiding New York through the difficult and challenging process to flattening the enormous curve of COVID-19 cases, Governor Cuomo continued to work on advancing the CLCPA’s ambitious goals and in mid-July announced a nation-leading initiative to expand electric vehicle use to help combat climate change. Our Governor prudently recognizes that well after the Coronavirus is no longer a threat, the existential threat of climate change will still be with us.
The program to accelerate New York’s transition to cleaner mobility is expected to stimulate $1.5 billion in new investments and to provide more than $2.6 billion in consumer benefits and economic opportunities (translation: lots of green jobs). The package of initiatives to electrify New York’s transportation sector includes: (i) an “EV Make Ready” initiative to accelerate the deployment of more than 50,000 charging stations by 2025 and (ii) $206 million set aside to benefit low-income and disadvantaged communities, which includes $85 million to fund three innovative clean transportation prize competitions.
Back in January 2020, the New York Department of Public Service (“DPS”) released a white paper proposing a bold statewide electric vehicle charging program. That program, which was alluded to in the Governor’s State of the State, is intended to spur the installation of infrastructure to support widespread electric vehicle deployment throughout the state. It is estimated that New York needs about 850,000 electric vehicles on the road to cut pollution from transportation to meet the clean car Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) standards. The state will need over 100,000 public and workplace charging stations and over 4,000 Direct Current Fast Charging (DCFC) stations to support that number of electric vehicles.
EV Make Ready Program
The EV Make-Ready Program will be funded by investor-owned utilities in New York State and creates a cost-sharing program that incentivizes utilities and charging station developers to site electric vehicle charging infrastructure in places that will provide a maximal benefit to consumers. Specifically, this program will provide funding to create more than 50,000 level 2 charging plugs, which are capable of charging a vehicle at least twice as fast as a standard wall outlet. Providing drivers with assessable charging stations is the key to encouraging the wide-spread adoption of electric vehicles. Given that the transportation sector is responsible for the largest contribution to greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S., with those emissions increasing more than any other sector over the last 30 years, coupled with the fear of many New Yorkers of using crowded mass transit options during the Coronavirus pandemic, this is clearly a step in the right direction.
Competitions
Solving onerous problems requires innovative thinking and the creation of incentives to foster that creative thinking often can be a winning strategy. This program includes $85 million to fund three competitions to support clean transportation options to benefit lower socio-economic communities. The three competitions are:
- the Environmental Justice Community Clean Vehicles Transformation Prize, a $40 million program focused on reducing harmful air pollution in frontline communities and creating transportation “green zones” across New York State;
- the Clean Personal Mobility Prize, a $25 million program soliciting innovative and high impact approaches that enable access to clean transportation services for disadvantaged and underserved communities; and
- the Clean Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicle Innovation Prize, a $20 million program designed to achieve direct benefits; allow concrete investigation of opportunities, costs, and benefits; and prove out innovative and high-impact approaches to medium- and heavy-duty electrification that can be replicated at scale, including for “last-mile” solutions, one of the fastest growing emissions sources in this class of vehicles.
2019 was off to a good start in New York with much promise on how we planned to confront the threat of climate change. Then came 2020, the year we stayed home, changed the way we live (perhaps forever), lost over 172,000 US citizens to COVID-19, wore masks, and saw large-scale protests and long overdue calls for racial and social justice. I for one hope that 2020 will also be remembered as a defining time in the fight against climate change—at least in New York.
Tags: Regulation, New York State, Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, Net-zero emissions, State Climate Programs