New York State Climate and Environment

New York’s Climate Law, Traffic Congestion, and a Second Trump Term: 2024 in Review

New York Focus climate reporter Colin Kinniburgh reflects on his environmental coverage over the past year and what’s coming on the beat in 2025.

Colin Kinniburgh · December 27, 2024

New York Focus climate reporter Colin Kinniburgh reflects on his environmental coverage over the past year | New York Focus + Steve Nelson/Flickr

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In many ways, 2024 is ending as it began in the world of New York climate politics.

The state still does not have a dedicated source of climate funding. The potentially sweeping, economy-wide carbon pricing system known as “cap and invest” has yet to see the light of day, as regulators continue to hash out the program’s details behind the scenes.

The law governing the state’s utilities is still at odds with the climate law, after a major bill known as the NY HEAT Act failed to pass the legislature for the second time, despite Governor Kathy Hochul endorsing its core tenets.

And the state’s share of renewable energy — central to meeting its wider climate mandates — has barely budged, as the industry continues to recover from the inflation and supply chain shocks that led to dozens of project cancellations last year.

That isn’t to say I didn’t have a lot to write about over the past year.

In the spring, I covered the ups and downs of the HEAT Act as it made its way through the sausage factory of Albany’s budget process. One player in the bill’s defeat was National Fuel, the western New York-based gas utility whose lobbying efforts I covered last year. That reporting spurred an investigation by regulators, who found in February that the company had used customer funds to lobby — although they chalked it up to a small accounting error. National Fuel continued its lobbying undeterred, and many cited it as a key factor in the Assembly’s decision to kill the bill.

Assembly Spikes Biggest Climate Proposal in New York Budget

Julia Rock and Colin Kinniburgh

Both National Fuel and climate advocates are gearing up for another showdown in 2025, which I’ll be sure to keep watching closely.

The big story of New York climate politics is that the state is falling severely behind in implementing its climate law — so much so that achieving its flagship target of 70 percent renewable electricity by 2030 is out of reach, according to regulators. As the law turned five this summer, I wrote about the slew of missed deadlines, large and small, that increasingly define its implementation.

The climate law’s anniversary also coincided roughly with Hochul’s abrupt decision to suspend congestion pricing for New York City, which pushed me to look more closely at the state’s green transportation goals. As of July, most of the transit-related policy prescriptions in the climate plan had seen little to no progress — particularly those aimed at getting people out of their cars.

Sure enough, we learned in September from a national survey that New Yorkers are driving considerably more than before the pandemic, and paying the price not only in pollution and gasoline costs, but also in hours lost to traffic.

The image depicts a traffic jam in New York City, with a cluster of yellow taxi cabs at the front.

New Yorkers Are Driving More, Even as Climate Plan Hinges on Driving Less

Colin Kinniburgh

I also returned this year to an underrated aspect of New York’s all-too-often broken policy promises: staffing shortages. I looked behind the curtains at the agency that regulates energy and utilities in the state (as best I could given staffers’ reticence to talk to the press) and found that its workload has grown even as its workforce has shrunk. I hope to delve more into this issue in the new year.

As usual, there was far more happening on my beat this year than I could keep up with, and things aren’t about to calm down. As a second Trump administration settles in, state and local climate action will only grow more important — even as it faces potential headwinds from Washington. That could set the tone for major policy debates in New York.

I’m going to keep doing my part to bring as much clarity to those debates as I can, separating fact from myth and exposing the interests shaping the state’s energy transition. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, but I’m excited to have New York Focus’s dedicated readers along for it.

Are you seeing New York’s climate policies play out in your backyard or in your energy bill? What else should I be covering in 2025? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Drop me a line at colin@nysfocus.com.