ALBANY, N.Y. — Almost four years after the New York State Legislature passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), most New York residents don’t know much about the environmental law, according to a recent Siena College poll and an analysis by a thinktank fellow. Empire Center for Public Policy, Inc. fellow James Hanley […]
ALBANY, N.Y. — Almost four years after the New York State Legislature passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), most New York residents don’t know much about the environmental law, according to a recent Siena College poll and an analysis by a thinktank fellow.
Empire Center for Public Policy, Inc. fellow James Hanley writes that despite supporting “aggressive” action to reduce the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions, New Yorkers’ willingness to pay the associated costs is low. He adds that respondents were “conflicted about the transition from natural gas to electrification mandated by the CLCPA.”
Hanley, whose work at the Empire Center focuses on energy and environmental policy, says that public awareness of both the CLCPA and the Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan — the 433-page roadmap for CLCPA implementation — is low. The poll found 37 percent of respondents claimed to be very or somewhat familiar with either of them, while 62 percent expressed low familiarity — with 33 percent claiming no familiarity at all.
“This indicates that state policy leaders still have not adequately educated the public about the vast scope of the CLCPA. Its goals include more than doubling renewable energy production from 30 percent of the state’s electricity to 70 percent by 2030, closing all natural gas and oil-fired power plants by 2040 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent while achieving a net zero-emissions economy by 2050,” Hanley writes. “No state or country has yet achieved such ambitious targets, and it remains to be seen if they are achievable. As the Scoping Plan makes clear, this is a whole-of-economy approach, requiring the transformation of transportation, buildings, electricity production, industry, agriculture and forestry.”
Hanley says the CLCPA will cost $280 billion to $340 billion over the next 28 years, with the annual cost per person in New York, running between $500 and $600 a year. With about 7.5 million households, that’s an annual cost of about $1,300-$1,600 per household.
“If the CLCPA’s cost doubles, or more than doubles, as is common for megaprojects and has already happened with one of the first CLCPA projects, the cost could top $3,000 per household per year,” Hanley writes.
The Empire Center says it is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank based in Albany, whose mission is to make New York a better place to live and work by promoting public-policy reforms grounded in free-market principles, personal responsibility, and the ideals of effective and accountable government.
You can read Hanley’s full analysis on the CLCPA at https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/new-yorkers-conflicted-about-clcpa-poll/