NY climate law rollback boosts gas system amid reliability concerns: experts

New York's rollback of its landmark 2019 climate law is expected to delay the state's transition away from its natural gas system, as reliability concerns raise questions about retiring gas-fired generation plants.

As part of the 2026-2027 fiscal year budget process, New York rolled back several provisions of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA, including delaying the timeline for the Department of Environmental Conservation to issue regulations, shifting toward a 100-year time frame for counting greenhouse gas emissions and introducing a new 2040 emissions reduction goal.

"There's not going to be as much need for additional action on a regulatory or policy basis by the state, less pressure to transition off of the gas system," Jon Binder, the executive director of the Model Climate Laws Initiative, said June 2 at a New York State Bar Association event.

The changes to the CLCPA reduce the law's overall ambition and will make natural gas appear less impactful in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, according to Binder.

"Instead of being a national leader in advancing climate policy, the state is now a leader in weakening climate law," he said.

Natural gas to benefit

Panelists from the natural gas industry also said the shift to a 100-year time frame for counting greenhouse gas emissions will benefit the industry.

"The opportunity is if you changed the accounting mechanism from the 20-year global warming potential to the 100-year global warming potential, you're now able to go back to those long-term plans and recalculate what the least cost pathway forward would be to achieve the same reliability for your customers on the utility side," said Nicholas Stalnecker, the lead for Williams Companies' government affairs division in the northeast region.

The previous 20-year time frame was designed to account for near-term impacts, but Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said they were out of step with emissions accounting methodologies used by other states.

"If you were going to deploy non-pipe alternatives or if you're going to deploy [renewable natural gas] or hydrogen at a higher cost than shale gas, with this new accounting mechanism and with the dates pushed out and with considering the cost effectiveness, you're going to be able to use more shale gas, deliver energy more reliably and deliver energy more affordably than before these budget changes," Stalnecker said.

In April, Williams broke ground on the Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline, a project that will transport natural gas from Pennsylvania to the New York City and Long Island regions.

Gas peaking plants

The CLCPA changes follow the state's approval of a new energy plan that extends the use of gas-fired power generation through 2040.

Independent power producers have pushed for repowering older units, arguing that the aging generation fleet could lead to reliability risks.

The New York Independent System Operator has also warned of deteriorating reliability in the state due to an aging generation fleet and a lack of new dispatchable resources.

Kevin Lang, an energy law attorney at Couch White LLP, said the state's reliability situation is "getting more and more dire almost by the day."

Those concerns have led to further questions about gas generation in New York's energy mix. In April, independent power producer Alpha Generation withdrew retirement notices for its Gowanus and Narrows barge-based gas-fired peaking units after NYISO said shuttering the units, that have a combined nameplate capacity of 672 megawatts, would lead to reliability concerns.

The reliability concerns go beyond delaying retirements of gas plants and raise questions on whether new fossil fuel-fired generation is needed in the state, Lang said.

"I know the idea of building fossil plants is not very popular in the state, but we also need something that is dispatchable, and we haven't figured out what that is yet," Lang said.