ALBANY, New York — New York is struggling to meet its climate goals. The state budget didn’t offer a helping hand.
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and lawmakers failed to take major steps that the state’s climate plan called for in this year’s budget passed last week — dashing the best hope this year for action on thorny issues like the future of natural gas in New York.
“It was bad for climate,” state Sen. Liz Krueger, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said. “We have more work to do on climate.”
The budget included no significant measures to address planet-warming emissions from buildings or transportation, the biggest sources of pollution in New York. Instead, there was a sales tax exemption for residential energy storage systems, a few million dollars to plant trees and marginal changes to speed up construction of transmission lines.
