Hochul Paused Carbon Pricing to Get More Feedback — But Hasn’t Asked for Any

Later that month, the then–head of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation told lawmakers that the agency would “continue the robust stakeholder engagement we have had over the past few months” on New York’s plan to ratchet down pollution while raising billions for the transition to clean energy.

Four months on, there’s little sign that Hochul’s administration has continued those efforts.

Climate advocates who had discussed details of cap and invest with state officials late last year — as Hochul prepared to launch the long-anticipated program — told New York Focus they haven’t heard anything from the administration since then about the core parts of the program.

Instead, DEC is focused on a narrower component of it: creating rules for how companies would be required to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The agency published a draft version in late March, and held hearings on those rules this week, as part of a mandatory public review process — marking the state’s first public forum on cap and invest since Hochul’s about-face in January. Climate groups and legislators rallied outside hearings in Syracuse and Albany on Tuesday and Wednesday, and are planning to do the same in New York City next week, demanding that Hochul’s administration release the full regulations to implement the carbon pricing program.

DEC spokesperson Lori Severino said the reporting regulation “lays the foundation for a future cap-and-invest program.”

But the centerpiece of the program — an auction system requiring companies to pay for the right to pollute — remains on hold. (Cap and invest, as proposed over the last two years, hinged on three pieces of regulation: the reporting rule, as well as one to determine which emissions polluters to charge and another to structure how the auctions should run.)

DEC did not provide any examples of recent “stakeholder engagement” on that front, except to note that web portals soliciting public comments on how cap and invest funds should be raised and spent remain open.

Nor has Hochul’s administration sought meetings behind the scenes, according to several groups.

“I haven’t heard anything recently,” said Conor Bambrick, senior climate adviser at the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. He was one of many climate advocates who met with the Hochul administration in December, when officials were seeking to build support for the expected announcement of cap and invest rules in January.

“Our coalition members continue to try and engage with the executive around the urgent need to move forward with cap and invest this year,” said Stephan Edel, executive director of the climate justice coalition NY Renews. “It’s frustrating how little we’ve heard from the governor on a program that would benefit residents statewide.”

One climate advocate, who requested anonymity due to ongoing dealings with the administration, said that some staff at the state energy authority NYSERDA who had been working on cap and invest outreach had been moved to other projects. (A NYSERDA spokesperson said staff routinely work on multiple projects at a time.)

Alongside its work on the technical regulations, NYSERDA led sessions last August and September seeking feedback — particularly from environmental justice groups — on how to spend the proceeds from cap and invest. Regulators laid out a framework for the investments and specific prompts for written comments, asking for replies by the end of last September. Officials said the feedback would help inform the state’s budget for this fiscal year.

But with cap and invest on pause, lawmakers instead agreed this spring on a one-time, $1 billion pot of climate funding from the state’s general budget — more than the state had ever committed before, but less than the $3 billion cap and invest was expected to raise in its first year. NYSERDA has not continued its outreach on a longer-term spending plan.

Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of the group Environmental Advocates NY said that her organization, like others, hasn’t gotten any recent updates from state officials on the overall cap and invest program. But she sees the emissions reporting rule as a step in the right direction.

“This reporting rule is progress — and we’re glad to see DEC taking steps to hold polluters accountable. But we have to be honest with ourselves: knowing who’s polluting doesn’t stop the pollution,” Fajans-Turner said in a statement Wednesday.

New York’s climate law required that the state issue regulations to meet its binding emissions targets by the beginning of 2024, and cap and invest was designed to help meet it. Many advocates were willing to give regulators longer to fine tune the program, as long as it was clear they were making progress.