If New York’s Democrats all agree on something, chances are good that it’s Donald Trump—or climate change. Despite differences on issues like housing, criminal justice, and public education, the Empire State’s governing class broadly concurs on the need to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs). Lawmakers and Governor Kathy Hochul, however, have paid too little attention to the potential environmental benefits of bringing more economic and population growth to downstate New York.
Rather than encourage growth, New York’s laws and regulations mandate emissions cuts. Most importantly, the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act requires the state to generate 70 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent from zero-emissions sources by 2040. By 2050, the act requires an 85 percent statewide reduction in GHGs relative to 1990 levels.
To reach these goals, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently proposed regulations that would require the state to abandon use of industry-standard hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) even faster than the Environmental Protection Agency’s mandated 85 percent stepdown of HFC production and consumption by 2036. HFCs are nontoxic, highly stable compounds of hydrogen, carbon, and fluorine used in refrigeration and air-conditioning systems. They generally don’t deplete the ozone layer, but their global warming potential may be thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide. Even accounting for this potency, HFCs account for only about 2 percent of total GHGs.
If enacted, the DEC’s regulations would affect industry and residents alike. Food distributors and supermarkets would need to replace large refrigeration equipment, often well before the expiration of its useful life. By 2040, the rules would ban bulk HFC distribution, sale, and manufacture, reducing New Yorkers’ access to the refrigerants needed to maintain their heating and cooling systems.
These measures would raise the cost of living in New York, which already ranks among residents’ top concerns. Food distributors and supermarkets would pass along the cost of new equipment through higher prices. Since consumers can’t avoid buying food, they will effectively bear all of the regulation’s long-term costs. Further, the state and federal governments have subsidized replacing residential oil and gas heating systems with electric heat pumps—moving from systems that don’t require HFCs to those that do. The refrigerant ban would make repairing these electric systems more expensive in coming years, on top of the state’s already exorbitant energy prices. But that likely won’t deter the DEC from pressing ahead with regulations that will inch the state closer to meeting the goals of the 2019 climate law.
Increasing New York’s living costs could backfire on climate progress by diverting population growth to regions with higher carbon footprints. The downstate region’s dense, space-efficient built environment and existing infrastructure already make New York the lowest per-capita GHG emitter of any state. It boasts America’s most extensive and best-serviced train system, which has used electricity for well over a century to transport workers to increasingly low-emitting, service-based jobs. Steam—a by-product of electricity generation—provides heat and hot water to Manhattan’s skyscrapers. The city’s multifamily housing stock requires less energy to heat and cool per unit, thanks to efficiencies made possible by its shared walls.
But residents are fleeing—some 546,146 since 2020, according to the Census Bureau’s intercensal population figures, largely because of spiraling living costs and insufficient housing supply. Often, they’ve moved to fast-growing metros in the South where residents rely heavily on personal automobiles and live mostly in sprawling single-family homes.
Rather than impose costly climate mandates like the proposed HFC regulations, state and city leaders should focus on halting these outflows and encouraging more Americans to call New York City and its transit-rich suburbs home. Making the downstate region more affordable—particularly by building more multifamily rental housing and reducing nation-leading tax burdens—would boost residents’ living standards, attract newcomers and firms, and produce more dollars of output at lower average per-capita emissions.
A new climate leadership centered on the economies of urban density can promote prosperity and sustainability. New York’s leaders need only lay out the welcome mat.
Photo: Bruce Yuanyue Bi / The Image Bank via Getty Images
