Statement from Public Power NY Coalition on Governor Hochul’s State of the State:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 5th 2022

Contact: Aaron Eisenberg, (914) 980-9117 Aaron.B.Eisenberg@gmail.com

“President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created NYPA as Governor of New York, which helped to inspire his New Deal as President. We ask you to include the Build Public Renewables Act in the budget to fulfill the promise of the CLCPA and cement New York’s status as the Green New Deal model for President Biden.”–Letter from Public Power NY Coalition and 55 Legislators to Governor Hochul, December 16, 2021

“FDR literally rebuilt the economy from the ground up, and the policies of his New Deal didn’t just help families who lost everything, they spurred decades of economic growth.”–Governor Kathy Hochul, January 5, 2022

Despite the Governor symbolically agreeing with the need to be bold, what we heard today were more half measures and claiming the mantle of climate leadership without the facts to back it up. The Governor announced already funded renewable energy projects, pushed for a later time frame than existing state legislation for getting off of gas, and called to lead the nation in green hydrogen without having a renewable grid to make that physically possible.

We need to scale renewables by 850% over the next eight years to meet the CLCPA. We sit at 6% wind and solar and yet there was nothing in today’s announcement close to the scale of what she mentioned. There were no policies to spur decades of economic growth.

This is not the time to wait and assess. Depending on the private sector alone to meet our challenge has failed for the last two decades. The only time in NY’s history when we led on energy was under FDR. It is time to unleash the nation’s largest Public Power provider adding up to $90 Billion to the State’s economy over the next decade at zero cost to the state budget. If she wants to invoke FDR’s legacy she must include the Build Public Renewables Act (A1466A, S6453) in the Budget. Anything less is nothing short of climate denial.

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About the Public Power NY Coalition: The Public Power NY Coalition is a statewide movement of community and advocacy organizations fighting for an environmentally sustainable energy system that’s also racially, socially, and economically just. We believe energy and a habitable planet are human rights, and that we need to avert the climate crisis by eliminating the use of fossil fuels and transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy. We aim to accomplish these goals by taking over our for-profit energy system and bringing it under public, not-for-profit, local, and democratic ownership and management.

For more information please contact us at: info@publicpowerny.org