Kathy Hochul Calls for ‘Cap and Invest’ to Slash Emissions
GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL on Tuesday announced a plan to put an economy-wide price on carbon, which, if adopted, could mark one of the most sweeping plans in the country to ditch fossil fuels.
The plan, known as “cap and invest,” would require businesses to buy allowances to pollute, gradually reducing the number of allowances — the cap — until emissions are brought down by at least 85 percent, in line with New York’s climate law. To get there, the state would invest revenue from the allowance sales in efforts to cut pollution, like installing electric vehicle chargers, weatherizing buildings, and replacing fossil fuel appliances with electric ones.
Hochul’s proposal first emerged from the state’s Climate Action Council, which formally recommended cap and invest in December as part of its roadmap to meet the climate law.
NY Renews — the broad coalition of environmental, community, and labor groups that spurred the climate law’s passage in 2019 — was originally wary of the cap-and-invest proposal. But it appears to be coming around. On Tuesday, the coalition said Hochul’s directive “could set a national standard for climate action.”
“A program that caps and then ratchets down on greenhouse gas emissions, while raising money from polluters to spend on climate solutions, has a lot of promise,” said Katherine Nadeau, program director at Catskill Mountainkeeper and a steering committee member of NY Renews.
“We have to just be careful that if we go down this path, we don’t replicate the mistakes that have been made in other states and countries,” Nadeau told New York Focus. “We have to make sure that we put justice and equity at the center of any programs, so that cap and invest doesn’t create pollution hotspots and toxic hotspots, or further deepen them, in environmental justice communities.”