Climate & Energy: Cuomo's 'Green New Deal' is not comprehensive, NY Renews says

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Gov targets 100% clean energy by ’40; Some say it’s not enough

January 21, 2019  | The Villager

BY SYDNEY PEREIRA | Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced his version of a “Green New Deal” to tackle climate change and ramp up clean energy.

Under his plan, 100 percent of the state’s electricity would be generated by clean power by 2040. This would be achieved by using a mix of energy sources like solar, wind, nuclear and hydropower.

A new Climate Action Council would develop a plan for carbon neutrality across the entire economy — meaning reducing the carbon footprint across industries and sources of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.

“We know it’s coming,” Cuomo said in his State of the State address on Jan. 15. “Let the economy be here.”

Cuomo’s “Green New Deal” also includes green technology development, a $1.5 billion investment in offshore wind projects, and a $70 million property-tax compensation fund to help communities transition when old power plants close.

“We want those old plants closed. We want more efficient plants,” Cuomo said. But the state should fund the transition, so “those communities don’t shoulder the burden themselves,” he said.

Cuomo’s announcement comes after years of planning by a coalition of community groups, NY Renews, that have pushed for their own version of a climate action plan. Their plan forms the basis of the current Climate and Community Protection Act, sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman and Assemblymember Steve Englebright.

That bill would have mandated the state’s electricity be generated by 50 percent renewable energy by 2030, and that all industries eliminate 100 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The community-initiated bill passed three times in the Assembly but has languished in the Senate.

NY Renews welcomed Cuomo’s announcement, but criticized his failure to set a timeline for a transition to clean power economywide.

“For years, the Climate and Community Protection Act has represented a true climate-justice agenda for our state,” NY Renews said in a statement in response to Cuomo’s address. “It is heartening to see progress toward a fossil-fuel-free New York.”

However, the coalition added, a “truly comprehensive plan to tackle climate change needs more specific deadlines, planning processes and accountability for moving our whole economy off of fossil fuels than are currently included.”

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Cuomo must Act to turn Climate Promises into Enforceable Policies

State Capitol Protest March - Cuomo: Walk the Talk on Climate!

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Cuomo talks big about climate change. 

Now it’s time for New York to pass actual policies.

By Greta Moran | Grist | Dec 31, 2018

If you want to hear some fiery climate promises, just listen to a recent speech by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In the span of a couple minutes, he blasted the federal government’s inaction on climate change, vowed to “leave this planet better than we found it,” and promised to make New York’s electricity 100 percent carbon-neutral by 2040 — and eventually, completely eliminate the state’s carbon footprint.

Despite these strong words, some aren’t holding their breath until they see concrete steps from Cuomo (after all, this is the same governor who just in May headlined a gala funded by oil companies.) “It’s only a statement, and that’s not strong enough,” says Patrick Houston, an organizer with New York Communities for Change. “We urgently need bold climate goals to be written into the law.”

New York state has its best chance in years to pass progressive climate legislation in 2019, when Democrats will take control of the state Senate for the first time in a decade. (They already have a majority in the state House.) The midterm elections positioned many states to take bolder action, ushering climate champions to governorships and state legislatures in Colorado, Nevada, and Maine.

It’s good timing, because the federal government led by President Trump is dismantling environmental policies that are more critical than ever. And if we don’t act soon, climate change will bring a future of food shortages, mass extinctions, and natural disasters like we’ve never seen, as the United Nations’ IPCC report laid out in October.

“The IPCC report is harrowing,” says Kevin Smiley, a professor of environmental sociology at the University of Buffalo. “This is a time when a few states or cities have the opportunity to make a big stamp.”

Cuomo hasn’t released the details of his climate proposal yet, so we’ll have to wait and see if his promises carry weight. In the meantime, it’s worth asking: What would an ideal state climate plan look like, anyway? And how can states make sure their pledges are more than empty promises? I spoke with climate organizers and policy experts about what the states — New York as well as the other 49 — need to do to meet the very real, ever-knocking demands of climate change.

Think beyond electricity

Electricity accounts for only 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in New York, according to the state’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory, last updated in 2015. That’s a sizable chunk, but to take on that other 70 percent, Cuomo’s plan would need to consider every sector of the economy. That means all sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including buildings, transportation, and all forms of infrastructure, says Ann Carlson, a UCLA law professor who focuses on climate change and policy.

States can work together on their emissions targets, like the coalition of Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that agreed on regional transportation goals, and the other state-based coalition that has set shared caps on greenhouse gas emissions through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. “We have a lot of small states that collectively can make a big difference,“ Carlson says.

Put the people most affected by climate change first

“Across the state, we can see that there are communities that have existing inequalities that are exacerbated by climate change,” says Adrien Salazar, a lead organizer with New York Renews, a coalition of more than 100 climate and labor groups. “When think about putting our economy on a path to 100 percent renewable energy, we want to make sure that those communities are invested in.”

New York state’s current energy plan doesn’t include explicit protections for these communities. New York Renews has been working to change this and pass the Climate and Community Protection Act, which would put the state on the path to running solely on renewable energy. It requires 40 percent of clean energy projects to be in communities impacted by climate change. The act would also give those communities ownership over these projects and ensure fair labor standards are in place.

Make it a law, not a suggestion

A New Year’s Message About Climate Change - Act Quickly

Bill McKibben Has A New Year’s Message About Climate Change — Act Quickly

January 1st, 2019 by Steve Hanley | Clean Technica

Bill McKibben has been writing about climate change for 30 years. Along the way, he has been arrested multiple times, spat on, had his life threatened, and been spied on by minions working for fossil fuel companies. Oh, he also founded 350.org, whose stated mission is to keep the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 350 parts per million. The world blew by that benchmark some time ago and is racing toward the 450 ppm level.

He has written almost 30 books on the subject, including The End Of Nature in 1989 and Oil & Honey in 2013. If you want to be fully informed on the topic of climate change, the writings of Bill McKibben are the definitive source.

In a piece for Rolling Stone dated December 1, 2017, McKibben penned these words, “The technology exists to combat climate change — what will it take to get our leaders to act?” As 2018 draws to a close, it is appropriate to examine his thesis and see what, if anything changed this year. McKibben started his Rolling Stone piece with these words:

“If we don’t win very quickly on climate change, then we will never win. That’s the core truth about global warming. It’s what makes it different from every other problem our political systems have faced.

“I wrote the first book for a general audience about climate change in 1989 – back when one had to search for examples to help people understand what the ‘greenhouse effect’ would feel like. We knew it was coming, but not how fast or how hard. And because no one wanted to overestimate – because scientists by their nature are conservative – each of the changes we’ve observed has taken us somewhat by surprise. The surreal keeps becoming the commonplace.”

Watching The Arctic Melt

“[W]ith global warming, the fundamental equation is precisely what’s shifting. And the remarkable changes we’ve seen so far — the thawed Arctic that makes the Earth look profoundly different from outer space; the planet’s seawater turning 30 percent more acidic — are just the beginning. ‘We’re inching ever closer to committing to the melting of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which will guarantee 20 feet of sea-level rise,’ says Penn State’s Michael Mann, one of the planet’s foremost climatologists. ‘We don’t know where the ice-sheet collapse tipping point is, but we are dangerously close.'”

As if to underscore Mann’s and McKibben’s warnings, on December 5, NASA posted a video on YouTube showing how the Arctic ice sheet has melted from September, 1984 through September, 2016. It’s pretty scary stuff. [To view the video, click here.]

“Another way of saying this,” writes McKibben, “By 2075 the world will be powered by solar panels and windmills — free energy is a hard business proposition to beat. But on current trajectories, they’ll light up a busted planet. The decisions we make in 2075 won’t matter; indeed, the decisions we make in 2025 will matter much less than the ones we make in the next few years. The leverage is now.”

RENEWABLE ENERGY: Powering the World with Wind, Water and Sunlight

Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, has published 18 peer-reviewed scientific papers (with 96 collaborators) dealing with electric power derived from three renewable energy sources: wind, water and sunlight.

His publications demonstrate that renewable energy will not only benefit the environment in terms of avoiding pollution and global climate change, but also will provide far more jobs than will be lost in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. In addition to environmental and economic benefits, the transition to clean energy will provide significant health benefits to society.

In the video below, Jacobson delivers a short lecture to California high school students titled "Powering the World with Wind Water and Sunlight (WWS)."

Want to see how the Jacobson 100% WWS plan would apply to New York State?  

- Powerpoint Presentation (34 Mb) by Mark Jacobson titled "Powering New York State with Wind, Water and Sunlight"- Click here.

- Publication (2013) by Mark Jacobson and colleagues titled "Examining the feasibility of converting New York State’s all-purpose energy infrastructure to one using wind, water, and sunlight" -- Click Here to download the PDF. 

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The Jacobson 100% WWS plan applies to 53 Towns and Cities:
- Summary paper: Sustainable Cities and Society, 2018 - Click Here

The Jacobson 100% WWS plan applies to the 50 United States:

- Publication (2015) by Mark Jacobson and colleagues titled "100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States" - Click Here.

The Jacobson 100% WWS plan applies to the World:

- October 24, 2016: "100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight (WWS) All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World" - Click Here.