Reporter's Notebook New York State Climate and Environment Social Services Affordability

Climate Advocates ‘Haunt’ State Meeting, Demanding Energy Efficiency Funds

Governor Kathy Hochul has yet to indicate whether, or how, New York might plug a funding hole for Empower+, a key energy affordability program.

Colin Kinniburgh · October 23, 2025

Assemblymember Dana Levenberg wore a unicorn horn and a cardboard cutout of a heat pump “because we do not want heat pumps to become unicorns with the cuts to the Empower+ program,” she said. | Colin Kinniburgh

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Climate advocates and home energy contractors rallied outside the Albany offices of the state energy authority NYSERDA on Wednesday, pressing Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration to shore up funding for a key energy affordability program.

The Empower+ program, which helps low- and moderate-income households pay for energy efficiency upgrades they otherwise could not afford, is set to lose more than half its funding by 2027, as first reported by New York Focus in July. The program has already begun scaling back, after supporting more than 40,000 home upgrades over the last couple of years.

Advocates gathered outside NYSERDA’s board meeting in a sleepy office park on the outskirts of Albany, wearing Halloween costumes and carrying buckets of candy to hand out to attendees. (The room turned out to be mostly empty, though; board members were attending the meeting from NYSERDA’s New York City office.)

New York to Scale Back Key Energy Affordability Program

Colin Kinniburgh

Assemblymember Dana Levenberg wore a unicorn horn and a cardboard cutout of a heat pump — one of the energy-efficient appliances the program has helped households afford — “because we do not want heat pumps to become unicorns with the cuts to the Empower+ program,” she said.

Hochul and state lawmakers put $200 million into the program in 2023, to be spent over two years. This year, they allocated just $50 million — a 50 percent drop in annual funding.

In a September op-ed, NYSERDA President Doreen Harris denied that Empower+ was being cut.

“The program remains a central piece of Governor Hochul’s affordability agenda,” she wrote. “The state is not backing away—it’s doubling down.” The expiration of that “one-time infusion” from 2023 should not be seen as a cut, she argued.

Harris acknowledged that Empower+ has had “to adjust its operations based on available resources,” including by suspending local contractors’ ability to apply for incentives on customers’ behalf.

The program has relied heavily on those local contractors, and they are feeling the impact of the cuts. At the rally, they noted that they had built up their workforces over the last couple of years as NYSERDA pushed to scale up the program. There was no indication that the buildup would be temporary, said Jay Best, CEO of Green Team Long Island.

“New York State has very aggressive climate goals. It really gave every impression that the point was to increase the number of houses that were being electrified,” he said. “We built our industry with that in mind.” He said he expects he will have to lay off employees at the end of the year unless the state comes up with more funding.

Climate advocates say New York has the money to keep Empower+ whole. They point to the $1 billion climate fund Hochul created this year, $100 million of which remain unallocated. (The $50 million already allocated to Empower+ this year comes from the fund, and Hochul suggested in September that that number could go up.) As of March, NYSERDA also had some $850 million in cash on hand from the regional cap and trade program RGGI.

Levenberg said she hoped to see Hochul find a way to close the funding gap when she proposes her next state budget in January, if not sooner.

“We know that the governor can tap from other funds to make sure this program continues,” she said. “It needs the money to be sustained at the level it was and not to be going backwards.”