have been decried by Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, D-Esopus<\/a>. Shrestha has argued that Hochul\u2019s actions undermine the state\u2019s climate goals and will force ratepayers to pay more.<\/p>\nThe letter cites a 16% increase in electric bills proposed by Western New York utility National Fuel in its opposition to the state\u2019s continued use of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
The letter offered three recommendations to state lawmakers going forward. First, the letter urged lawmakers to follow the Climate Law.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew York\u2019s law is based on the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels endangers the planet and that the world must wean itself off of such power by the middle of this Century,\u201d the letter said. \u201cIndeed, failure to do so will cost the state more than complying with it. The increasingly likely failure to meet the upcoming Law\u2019s climate goals is a failure of will, not the targets themselves. New York\u2019s goals are attainable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter also urged lawmakers to focus on what it said were the \u201cleast expensive\u201d ways of generating electricity, like solar energy and battery storage. Activists also recommended that lawmakers adopt measures to fight utility rate hikes.<\/p>\n
Blair Horner, senior policy advisor for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement, \u201cThe states that have invested the most in renewables over the last 10 years have lower energy prices than New York. It is cheaper and less ecologically destructive to build out solar production than gas facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew York\u2019s failure to boost solar production contributes to higher energy prices,\u201d Horner added. \u201cElectrifying New York through solar production and battery storage will lead to lower energy prices and is a more appropriate response to the climate crisis, which we have seen is wreaking havoc in communities everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KINGSTON, N.Y. \u2014 Several Mid-Hudson climate activist organizations joined more than 100 other statewide in a letter Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[85,267,22722,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,87,4941],"class_list":{"0":"post-118531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-mid-hudson-valley","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-ulster-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}