|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Rochester is again leading the country, but not in ways we want. Our city has one of the highest child poverty rates in the country (over 40 percent in 2024), a median household income of just $46,000, and one of the worst asthma rates in the U.S. Last year, Rochester ranked as the second worst “Asthma Capital” in the country. Also, Rochester has now the third-highest in energy burden in the nation. At the same time, we are experiencing climate crises firsthand—wildfires, flash freezes, and polar vortices that destabilize our health and local economy.
In light of these challenges, New York has a unique opportunity to act this year to address the intertwined affordability, housing, public health, and job equity crises jointly through climate funding. As one of the largest states and biggest economies in the United States, New York can lead the nation in building a renewable economy that improves housing quality, health, and jobs for everyone while holding corporate polluters accountable for funding it. Two key policies, the “cap-and-invest” program and the NY HEAT Act, could bring billions of dollars to the state to invest in clean energy, housing upgrades, and workforce development, all while holding corporate polluters accountable.
Cap-and-invest is a set of policies that limits, or caps, overall emissions in the state and requires corporate polluters to purchase allowances equal to their approved amount of greenhouse gas emissions. If done right, it would include guardrails to ensure corporate polluters pay their fair share for polluting our climate and communities, require the steady phase out of toxic pollution and fossil fuels across our state, and generate ongoing investments in communities across the state. To ensure New York’s cap-and-invest program is done right, we need the Legislature to pass the “Guardrails” bill (A.3975/S.4651) in 2025. Without strong guardrails in place, corporate polluters could find loopholes and increase pollution in overburdened communities, and the revenue meant for climate justice could be misallocated. The Guardrails bill ensures that doesn’t happen.
New York began the process of creating this system in 2023, when Gov. Kathy Hochul announced it would be rolled out. The state recently released the first of three sets of cap-and-invest regulations, with public comment slated to begin this spring. We applaud the governor’s release of this first set, but we need all three released to the public for comment so that the process for creating cap-and-invest can be completed.
If New York secures climate funding in this budget, with legislative oversight about how money is spent, it could be transformational for New York. Had a properly regulated cap-and-invest program already been in effect, a DEC and NYSERDA analysis estimated revenue to be between $3 billion and $5.1 billion in 2025.
Recent research conducted by New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and Resources for the Future shows a cap-and-invest program would save most homes an average of $400 a year, but some scenarios showing families could save up to $2,000 a year, making housing and energy more affordable for everyone, especially those making under $200,000 a year.
Even more exciting is what climate funding would enable us to do. Alongside the statewide climate justice coalition NY Renews, we believe these billions of dollars should go to an Affordable Climate-Ready Homes Program, which builds on existing state programs to provide free home and small business energy upgrades to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. That means things like heat pumps, free insulation, renewable energy installations, and the repairs that often get in the way of upgrades, like mold, lead, or asbestos remediation, or roofing. Together with pre-electrification bills like the GAP Fund, the goal is to shift the burden from New Yorkers who struggle to access support and programs to the trusted local partners and state-backed institutions that can transform service delivery.
What’s more: We need more skilled workers to do all of these upgrades, and many in our community have been shut out of good work. That’s why the other big part of climate funding should go to community-directed grants to community-based organizations, unions and municipalities, to lead on the solutions we need. We believe a core need in our area is at least one Sustainability Workforce Training Center similar to the one already started by PUSH Buffalo, or the partnership between Cornell’s Climate Jobs Institute and the IBEW Apprenticeship Training Center in Rochester. This sort of center would prioritize training for local low-income residents and residents of color, and match them with jobs, while paying them during apprenticeship. Another idea is to use this or existing funding to also invest in clean transportation, which has the potential to create thousands of clean energy jobs.
Climate funding offers a key opportunity for local groups, labor unions, and governments to all address problems our communities have been facing for too long.
Rochesterians also need the NY HEAT Act. This bill would stop everyday New Yorkers from subsidizing fossil gas, improve housing affordability, and create good jobs for New Yorkers. The bill would end the mandated expansion of our fracked gas heating system and set a statewide limit on utility bills at 6 percent of household income. A recent report showed this would mean an average monthly savings of $125 for the 22 percent of households in Monroe County who have a high energy burden. In ending our state’s fracked gas mandates, NY HEAT will play a key role in facilitating New York’s transition off of fossil fuels and address the affordability crisis in the process.
Rochester needs climate funding now. This budget season, New York can take transformational action to create affordable energy, healthy homes, and good jobs for all. Let’s make sure our leaders don’t miss this moment.
The authors are Dan Maloney, president UAW Local 1097; Christina Christman, president, Federation of Social Workers; Dr. Michi Cole Wenderlich, campaign and policy coordinator, Metro Justice; Graham Hughes, director of policy and advocacy, Climate Solutions Accelerator; and Harry B. Bronson, member, state Assembly, District 138.
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
Wow, from 10,000 ft there seems to be a lot of things to question here. I might believe that Roc has a high asthma rate, but I would attribute it to the naturally high pollen counts of various origins at multiple times of the year (that have plagued my breathing for decades since I was a little kid, long before “climate change” was a thing). I could also believe high child poverty rates (via a gross calculation) , but given NYS is one of the Country’s GIANT welfare states (have a look at your nearest Social Services center, they are cutting a lot of checks) I’m surprised with all of this aid that there would be significant Child poverty on a net basis. (Perhaps time for a audit?) This piece also makes the common error of conflating climate with weather. Its almost comical, if its hot and dry, that’s “Climate Change”, a robust winter and snowfall, “Climate Change”. Any weather characteristic is automatically blamed on Climate Change. What’s next , acne? dandruff?
The State has driven a majority of its industry out-of-state. So I don’t know who these “corporate polluters” are? As usual when a perceived problem doesn’t get solved, the answer is “more funding”. Cap and Invest reads more like Cap and LEAVE (making the business environment even more inhospitable thus more joining the Exodus from the state)
No mention how the trend away from Coal and Oil in lieu of Natural Gas for power generation has cleaned up the air significantly over the last several decades. The worst blow to cleaner air IMO is the deconstruction of nuclear power in NYS.
I’m not aware of any “fossil gas” subsidies in NYS, in fact the state has made it systemically more difficult to harvest its rich natural gas resources.
Interesting there has been little/no environmental scrutiny of the Chips Act (albeit that’s more of a Syracuse centric project) , but Semiconductors are a DIRTY industry (similar manufacturing processes to Solar panels) which seems to be ok in a lot of environmental precincts (I guess if its Federally funded, its automatically good for the environment and not a “Corporate polluting” industry)
Interesting to observe some of the most vocal advocates the Climate Change issue resort to vandalizing EVs and torching Tesla facilities lately.
I cannot agree on much here Mr. Mars. Global Warming is a proven fact. We have actually recorded the temperatures of the air and sea, the height of the seas, and the loss of Glacier ice for over a century and a half. We have planes, jets, and technology that can measure the particulates below and above the atmosphere that are trapping the heat and poisoning the air and water. The only exception in global temperature rise was from about 1930 until the late 1930s as a global Great Depression shut down the world’ factories, shipping, and the purchase of autos and other machinery. The global increase in manufacturing in the late 1930s for WW II put global warming back on tract. Such a position today reminds me of the doctors doing tobacco advertisements in the fifties and sixties. I do agree nuclear power must be considered for the transition. Smaller power plants, not built on coastlines or earthquake fault lines, are better than fifty years ago. Advancing technology for nuclear fusion, smashing atoms together instead of fission (outward) is creating more power with much less radioactive waste.
NY has not driven a majority of industry away. In case you missed it de-industrialization was a nationwide phenomenon that began well before NAFTA. Fifty thousand factories closed and moved to Asia just under George W, after trade with mercantile predatory China was normalized. GM announced the end of Buick City in Flint seven years before NAFTA, destroying a beautiful middle-class city. When I was a young kid Rochester was the third largest manufacturer of clothing and accessories in the country. First, they moved to the non-union minimum wage South. See the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton in the movie ” Norma Rae “. That was not good enough, so they went south of the border. That was not good enough, so they went to Asia. Much of the world’s clothing comes from places like Bangladesh now. Not that many years ago the workers there, all women and girls, went on strike to raise their pay to $130 a MONTH for 60-hour weeks, from $90 a MONTH. It is corporate greed not corporate need. American products, made by American Corporations, sold to Americans for higher and higher profits, see cell phones, with low wage labor and no cost for safety and environment has nothing to do with Ricardo’s English wool for Portuguese wine.
Semi-conductors are a problem and tech for a smaller footprint is advancing. We cannot run much, including our energy infrastructure and National Defense without them. We cannot rely on any foreign power, especially a hostile one, in those areas. Natural gas was and is a transition fuel, except when it is produced by fracking which releases methane, a horrible pollutant.
There is no evidence that environmentalists are protesting Tesla or involved in the minimal vandalism. These are people angry with Elon Musk for what he is doing to government and democracy, after spending over a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Trump. In Musk’s defense, I have not seen any more of the several fascist Nazi salutes, the last one to a neo-Nazi group in Germany, for about a month.
Important and informative article. For those that do not believe in the science of man-made global warming, it matters little. This is where the economy and investment are going for the good jobs today and in the future. Investors know it. Even fossil fuel giants are investing in these technologies and jobs. I may not care for most of the one percent, but I have never said they do not know where to invest.