Photo Courtesy of Kevin Coughlin/Office of the Governor
“Climate change is a reality, and the consequences of delay are a matter of life and death,” Gov. Cuomo cautioned on Thursday.
By Forum Staff
The Green New Deal, a clean energy and jobs agenda that aims to aggressively put New York on a path to economy-wide carbon neutrality, is included in the $176 billion 2019 Executive Budget, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Thursday.
The plan provides for a just transition to clean energy that spurs growth of the green economy and prioritizes the needs of low- to moderate-income New Yorkers, Cuomo said.
The Green New Deal will, according to the governor, mandate New York’s power be 100 percent carbon-free by 2040. The cornerstone of the new mandate is a significant increase of New York’s Clean Energy Standard mandate to 70 percent from 50 percent renewable electricity by 2030. According to Cuomo, this ramp-up of renewable energy will include:
• Quadrupling New York’s offshore wind target to 9,000 megawatts by 2035, up from 2,400 megawatts by 2030;
• Doubling distributed solar deployment to 6,000 megawatts by 2025, up from 3,000 megawatts by 2023;
• More than doubling new large-scale land-based wind and solar resources through the Clean Energy Standard;
• Maximizing the contributions and potential of the state’s existing renewable resources;
• Deploying 3,000 megawatts of energy storage by 2030, up from 1,500 megawatts by 2025.
Additionally, the GND will create the state’s first statutory Climate Action Council, comprised of the heads of relevant State agencies and other workforce, environmental justice, and clean energy experts to develop a comprehensive plan to make New York carbon neutral by significantly and cost-effectively reducing emissions from all major sources, including electricity, transportation, buildings, industry, commercial activity, and agriculture. The Climate Action Council will consider a range of possible options, according to the administration, including the feasibility of working with the U.S. Climate Alliance to create a new multistate emissions reduction program that covers all sectors of the economy, and exploring ways to leverage the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to drive transformational investment in the clean energy economy and support a just transition.
Cuomo also announced $1.5 billion in competitive awards to support 20 large-scale solar, wind, and energy storage projects across Upstate New York. These investments will add more than 1,650 megawatts of capacity and generate more than 3,800,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy annually—enough to power nearly 550,000 homes and create more than 2,600 short and long-term jobs. Combined with the renewable energy projects previously announced under the Clean Energy Standard, New York has now awarded more than $2.9 billion to 46 projects statewide, enough to power more than one million households.
“Climate change is a reality, and the consequences of delay are a matter of life and death. We know what we must do. Now we have to have the vision, the courage, and the competence to get it done,” Cuomo added. “While the federal government shamefully ignores the reality of climate change and fails to take meaningful action, we are launching the first-in-the-nation Green New Deal to seize the potential of the clean energy economy, set nation’s most ambitious goal for carbon-free power, and ultimately eliminate our entire carbon footprint.”
