New York's climate goals are teetering. Trump could knock them over.

E&E News

06-06-2025

Donald Trump is stress testing New York's climate goals.
The Empire State was already struggling to meet its ambitious climate targets before Trump returned to the White House in January. Renewable deployments lagged. Transportation emissions barely budged. And concerns over rising energy bills pushed emission reductions down state leaders' priority list.
Trump has only added to those difficulties. The president quickly took aim at a state plan to limit the number of vehicles entering Manhattan after reassuming office. He followed up by temporarily halting construction of an offshore wind project that would connect to the electric grid in Brooklyn. His price for lifting the halt: building a pair of pipelines that the state had previously rejected.
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The result is a showdown over one of the country's most ambitious climate plans. Trump and business interests contend new gas pipelines are needed to lower energy costs, bolster economic growth and help household budgets. One pipeline developer, Williams Cos., recently refiled a permit with federal regulators for an expansion of an existing line and has signaled it may resubmit plans for a second new line.
'The President is unleashing the might of American energy and lowering costs for the American people,' White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. 'Increasing the flow of U.S. natural gas is vitally important for Americans living in the Northeast, and the President's leadership has successfully driven this critical pipeline to life.'
Environmentalist say such moves are folly. Gas already generates roughly half the state's electricity and is the leading heating source for buildings. They maintain that burning more of it will not only blow a hole in the state's climate goals, but in consumers' wallets as well.
Trump, a Manhattan real estate magnate, is simply seeking to make an example of his former home state, climate advocates say.
'New York has been a leader on climate and this administration is coming after progressive climate policy,' said Raya Salter, a climate advocate who serves on the state's Climate Action Council. 'That's why we need for our state to fight and push harder than ever and be the model that this country and the world needs.'
The seeds of the current conflict were sown during Trump's first term, when New York blocked a pair of pipeline proposals and passed one of the country's most ambitious climate laws. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which passed in 2019, requires the state to cut emissions 40 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050.
As part of its climate efforts, New York committed to generating 70 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030. New York City enacted a ban on new gas hookups in new large buildings in 2024, a requirement that will extend to all new buildings by 2027. The state passed a new building code with a similar requirement, halting new gas hookups for most large new buildings in 2026 and nearly all new buildings by 2029.
But hitting the state's targets would already be difficult, even without Trump's meddling.
New York's greenhouse gas emissions were 9 percent below 1990 levels in 2022, according to the state's most recent figures, meaning the state will have to make huge strides to reach a 40 percent reduction by the end of the decade. Only a quarter of the power online today is considered renewable, and the vast majority of that is hydropower. Gas interests have challenged the ban on new hookups in court — and while New York City won a court challenge earlier this year, appeals are expected.
Emissions from transportation, New York's largest single source of climate pollution, have hardly moved. In 1990, New York's transportation emissions amounted to 70 million tons of carbon dioxide. In 2022, they were 71 million tons, or about 40 percent of New York's total greenhouse emissions, according to the state's figures.
Rising costs
New York's difficulty cutting carbon has been compounded by rising energy costs.
While most of the U.S. saw natural gas prices fall in 2024, New York and New England were exceptions. Gas prices in New York increased by 14 percent compared to 2023, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's annual state of the markets report. Electricity prices also increased 17 percent in the New York City area, though they remained below their five-year average.
Rising costs have become a pressing political issue in Albany. In a sign of the growing political pressure, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, blasted the utility Consolidated Edison in February for proposing an 11 percent increase in electricity rates and a 13 percent increase in gas rates.
The difficulty cutting emissions and Hochul's increasing focus on affordability has caused concern among environmentalists, many of whom were already skeptical of the governor's commitment to climate.
'New York has really good climate goals on paper, but the Hochul administration has a long way to go to implement the greenhouse gas commitments the state has already made,' said Judith Enck, who served as EPA Region 2 Administrator in the Obama administration.
Those frustrations come with new ones from the Trump administration.
The first signs of trouble between the president and his native state came over New York's congestion pricing plan to limit traffic below 60th Street in Manhattan and raise revenue for its ailing public transportation system. Trump rescinded support for the federal program in February, drawing an immediate legal challenge from the state. Last week, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Trump from ending the program while the case is heard.
Congestion pricing is not a climate policy, per se. But its backers say it has the added benefit of reducing emissions. A March paper by researchers at Stanford University estimated it had reduced the emissions rates of vehicles traveling in the city's central business district by 2 to 3 percent.
As New York works to reduce traffic, it is also attempting to connect a major offshore wind project to Brooklyn homes. Empire Wind 1, which began offshore construction on its 54 turbines in March, is slated to provide enough electricity to 500,000 homes.
Offshore wind is a centerpiece of New York's climate and energy plans. The state has a goal of bringing 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity online by 2035. But its plans have been frustrated by rising interest rates and construction costs, which have forced the state to cancel a series of contracts to buy power from offshore wind developments.
Empire Wind 1 is one of two offshore wind projects that would add about 1,700 MW of offshore wind capacity to the state's power grid. But in April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum halted the project, claiming its permit approval had been rushed by the Biden administration.
Hochul lobbied Trump hard to lift the stop work order, saying the project was essential for creating jobs and powering the economy. The president ultimately agreed, saying he did so in exchange for permitting new pipeline capacity into the state. Hochul disputes that, even as she signaled she is open to new pipelines that can demonstrate a need for the gas and meet the state's permitting requirements.
Many greens doubt Hochul.
'I think this was a deal with the devil that was unnecessary,' Enck said. She predicted the state would have won if it had challenged the stop-work order in court. 'It is deeply disappointing. Of course we want offshore wind, but not at the price of more fracked gas.'
Paul DeMichele, a Hochul spokesperson, said the governor 'is embracing an energy policy of abundance to make electricity more affordable and meet the growing demand of businesses looking to expand here — which includes her recent successful effort to save Empire Wind from the federal government's attempt to shut it down.'
But if environmentalists saw a sellout, business interests saw a potentially groundbreaking compromise that could end more than a decade of pipeline fights in the Northeast.
An attractive gas market
A recent S&P Global Study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce concluded an additional 0.5 billion cubic feet per day of gas capacity into New York would decrease wholesale gas prices by 17 percent. Williams' Northeast Supply Enhancement project — or NESE — would add 0.4 bcf per day of additional capacity.
'It seems natural to me that we could be arriving at a bargain like this,' said Dan Byers, vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Energy Institute. 'It's hard to think of a clearer example of a self-inflicted economic pain than blocking pipelines to limit supply of gas to your own citizens.'
When Williams' initially proposed NESE in 2017, it struck an agreement to supply a pair of National Grid subsidiaries in the New York City area for heating consumption. Today's push comes at a time when New York is trying to wean itself off gas consumption in buildings. A National Grid spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams contends the additional capacity would not only lower gas prices for consumers, but bolster the reliability of the state's electric grid, which can be strained during the winter months when New York's limited gas pipeline network labors to keep up with heating and power demand. Many gas plants in the state are equipped with oil tanks and switch over to the fuel during periods of cold.
Williams has also signaled it plans to revive the Constitution Pipeline project, which would run 127 miles from Pennsylvania toward Albany.
'The NESE and Constitution projects are essential to address persistent natural gas supply constraints in the Northeast, constraints that have led to higher energy costs for consumers and increased reliance on higher-emission fuels like fuel oil,' the company said in a statement.
Gas drillers in Pennsylvania view New York and New England as attractive markets because the region boasts some of the highest gas prices in the country, said Ira Joseph, a longtime gas analyst and senior research associate at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. New York's relative proximity is also attractive for Pennsylvania producers who now ship much of their gas to the Gulf Coast, where it is liquefied and exported abroad as LNG, he said.
New York's electrification mandates could limit gas demand growth in the future. The question is whether they will cause gas demand in buildings to fall, he said, adding,'the goal of moving pipelines into New York state is not to have gas demand fall.'
Consumers would likely benefit in the form of lower prices, but it would likely come at the expense of the state's climate goals, Joseph said.
'It's going to be hard to reach the goals if you keep building infrastructure to expand consumption,' he said.