Last week, New York became the first state in the country to weaken a mandatory climate law passed by its own legislature. The change comes at the behest of Governor Kathy Hochul, a moderate Democrat who has often criticized climate action for increasing consumer costs. After months of backroom negotiation, the legislature reached a deal that weakens the 2019 law in several different ways — most notably by giving the state an additional decade to meet legally-required emissions targets. The original law, one of the most ambitious in the U.S., required the Empire State to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent before 2030. (The state used its 1990 emissions as the baseline for comparison, per standards set by the United Nations.) Thanks to the law’s uniquely strict accounting rules, the only way for the state to meet this target was to shift away from natural gas, which provides most of the state’s electricity and almost all its heating fuel. But as the 2020s progressed, New York failed to wean itself off of gas. The reason for that depends on who you ask. Some argue that President Donald Trump’s attacks on renewable energy have slowed the state’s progress, and others believe that state politicians have backed natural gas when they could have invested in more clean energy. Either way, the state fell way behind schedule, and it stood no chance of meeting its 2030 goal without dramatic action that would have taxed or banned consumption of fossil fuels. Besides delaying the 2030 deadline by 10 years, the deal will also change the law’s accounting to give less weight to natural gas, and it will slow the rollout of a cap-and-trade system, which would force polluters to bargain with each other to stay below a hard limit on total emissions. Hochul has defended these changes as an attempt to protect New Yorkers from rising costs, blaming Trump for the state’s slow progress. She has warned 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 end up inflating utility bills and gasoline prices, imposing thousands of dollars on the average household. (The budget deal also includes language that would require the state to consider the impact of its climate regulations on household budgets.) Legislators and climate activists who support the original climate law said Hochul pushed the changes without giving lawmakers a chance to discuss a path forward for climate action in the state. ‘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 a swath of waterfront neighborhoods in Brooklyn with many working-class residents. Some experts who study decarbonization in New York said that the state’s legally binding emissions target had become virtually impossible to hit given broader headwinds 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 that the change to the law is ‘not all bad because I think it does buy time to think this thing through carefully, and do it right.’ The biggest change is delay. The budget deal sets a new target of reducing the state’s emissions 60 percent by 2040, a number that the governor’s office says is far more achievable than the 40 percent originally required by 2030. It also delays the launch of a ‘cap-and-invest’ system, which was supposed to launch last year, until 2028. This system would assess new fees to polluters such as power plants and oil terminals and would funnel that revenue toward climate projects such as electric-vehicle chargers and heat pumps. Many climate experts believe such systems are the most efficient way to nudge an economy away from fossil fuels, but Hochul had grown concerned that the system would raise gas prices and utility bills at a time when many consumers are already struggling with fuel prices. The deal also makes two important changes to the way the state counts its emissions. Under the old system, New York had to account for the climate pollution associated with extracting the fossil fuels that it imports from other states. For instance, when a natural gas field in Pennsylvania leaked planet-warming methane before piping the gas to New York, the latter state had to count those leaks as its own pollution, in addition to that caused by burning the fuel for energy. Most other states don’t do this. Once New York makes this change, it will reduce its apparent emissions by about 15 percent overnight — a result of the fact that the state imports most of its natural gas. This dynamic was compounded by the fact that the state’s old accounting system also gave extra weight to methane, which is the second most common greenhouse gas after carbon. Methane warms the Earth about 80 times faster than carbon dioxide, but it disappears from the atmosphere after around 20 years. Most countries evaluate their greenhouse gas emissions by considering the warming that will take place over 100 years, but New York only considered 20 years of warming, which makes methane look much worse compared to carbon. The 20-year outlook benefited certain polluting sectors and disadvantaged others. Under the new system, for instance, the warming impact attributed to the state’s livestock industry and its landfills will fall by two-thirds. Unlike the accounting change for imported fuels, however, the change to a 100-year framework can be defended as ultimately 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 the state’s 20-year framework for distorting the true costs of warming. (The reason, in short: If you have a system that prioritizes methane over carbon, you may limit some warming in the short-term while baking in much more in the long run.) But even with these changes, the state still won’t be on track to meet its original 2030 goal. That’s because it 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, and it is the heating fuel for almost all the big apartment buildings in New York City and its suburbs. In order to fully ditch fossil fuels, the state will have to convert all those buildings to electrical systems like heat pumps. And then it will still have to replace all its natural gas-fired power plants with emissions-free sources like wind and solar. These are both very difficult tasks. For one thing, electrifying a place like 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 been struggling to find that money without bankrupting their tenants. The New York City Council has passed its own law, Local Law 97, that 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 cost of making the switch. The law’s 2030 target provides an powerful spur to decarbonization even if some buildings will struggle to meet the deadline, said John Foley, an executive vice president at First Service Project Management. ‘The goals may be difficult to reach, but they’re important to have,’ said Foley, whose firm handles construction projects for a large portfolio of multifamily buildings. He said that while new heat pump technology has made decarbonization easier for some buildings, meeting the Local Law 97 target will depend 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. 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 power plants. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images Finding clean sources of electricity to replace gas-fired power plants has also been an uphill battle. A new transmission line carrying clean power from hydropower dams in Canada down to New York City will come online this month, but it was delayed for years by litigation and environmental permitting. Two major offshore wind farms, Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind, will also come online this year, despite the Trump administration’s attempts to block them. But they will only displace a fraction of the state’s gas supply, and won’t provide much power in the summer when demand is highest. (Coastal winds tend to be calmest in the summer when the oceans are hot and there are fewer storms.) Plus, developers have shown little interest in building more offshore wind farms due to Trump’s opposition. Some of the challenges, however, are of the state’s own making. The state made its own electricity grid much more polluting when it closed the Indian Point nuclear power plant in 2011 due to environmental concerns. After the plant closed, the state had to import more gas to make up the loss. The borough of Brooklyn, where residents who live near seasonal power plants complain of asthma and respiratory conditions, shows just how difficult this transition is. The state has been trying for almost a decade to close the particularly dirty ‘peaker’ gas plants that turn on to provide power during the hot summer months when electricity demand is highest and not enough power is available from other sources. But even once 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 come 2031. ‘To me, the heart of the climate law was really to invest in our communities and reverse this legacy of pollution,’ said Mitaynes, the Brooklyn assembly member who represents residents who live near such peaker plants, like the Gowanus Generation Station. She said that the delayed cap-and-trade system would have funneled 35 percent of its revenue toward disadvantaged communities. That money could help address poor air quality and support 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,’ she said. 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,’ he told Grist. The state is still making investments in decarbonization: One state agency is investing heavily in large batteries that could store clean energy and thereby replace some natural gas capacity, and another 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 also ups the proportion of future cap-and-trade revenues that will go to disadvantaged areas. But other than that, Hochul has shown little interest in a plan for the state’s transition off of gas. Indeed, she appears to have decided that the state will need gas for the long run. Last year she approved water permits for a new Trump-backed pipeline project that will 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, but Trump’s Interior Department attempted to stop Empire Wind a few months later anyway. 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 herself did not attend. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New York backtracked on its climate goals. Here’s why. on Jun 3, 2026.