12/21/2021 Climate Action Council Releases the Draft Scoping Plan of the CLCPA

Climate Action Council Releases the Draft Scoping Plan of the CLCPA

12/21/2021

Last night, the Climate Action Council (CAC) unanimously voted to release its Draft Scoping Plan for public comment. If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll know that the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) is massive climate legislation which calls for (among other things) a complete end to fossil fuel use in New York State by 2050. The legislation laid out goals and left the specific tactics for the CAC to develop. This Draft Scoping Plan is the beginning of that.

The draft scoping plan is a massive 339 page document which spells out in extreme detail the tactics that the CAC recommends in the transportation, building (that’s us), electricity, waste, ag & forestry, and industrial sectors. It included analysis of jobs lost and jobs gained, recommendations for how to phase out fossil gas infrastructure, impact to public health and the state economy and much more. The scoping plan will be released to the CLCPA Website, but has not yet been posted. If you’d like a copy, email me and I will send it out to you.

There is a lot to this plan, but for the sake of our industry, the highlights include:

TRANSPORTATION

  • The goal overall is to expand ride share and public transit and cut state-wide miles-driven in half. And those miles will be driven by zero emission vehicles, primarily electric, but also some hydrogen
  • NY will ban all new sales of fossil fueled light duty vehicles by 2035, with major incentives for people to move to electric leading up to that (this legislation has already passed)
  • All off road vehicles will also be all electric by 2035
  • Medium and heavy duty vehicles will follow in 2045

BUILDINGS

  • Similar to transportation, the goal is to cut building heating demand in half, while allowing for natural growth, and supplying that demand by electric heat pumps and geothermal, with electric resistance heaters for backup
  • Fossil fuels will be banned in new construction starting state-wide by 2030, and encouraging municipalities to pass local stretch codes sooner than that.
  • Fossil-fuel to fossil-fuel replacements banned beginning as soon as 2035 and possibly sooner than that
  • Carbon tax to disincentivize people from continuing to use old fossil fuel systems (thus financially encouraging them to replace them sooner than end-of-life) probably to start mid 2020s
  • Eventually fines to people who continue to use fossil fuels – this was only listed as a possibility not a definite
  • I can’t understate this portion enough. A great amount of effort is focused on improving building shell. Most of the money generated from the carbon taxes will be redirected to retrofitting homes with massive building shell upgrades with the intention of cutting the heating demand in half. They intend on these incentives to begin mid 2020s
  • Massive incentives (rebates, credits) to go to electric heat pumps starting mid 2020s, with “electric heat pumps the heating system of choice by 2028” and the only option beginning 2030 or 2035
  • Currently, the primary focus is on air source, but they actually prefer the effectiveness of geothermal, especially upstate. But the cost of geothermal drives them to air source.
  • These dates are a little loose, and also there are three different scenarios for the roll-out, and the dates differ by scenario. But in all scenarios, fossil fuels will be eliminated.

ELECTRIC GRID

  • All electric generation will be zero-emissions by 2050
  • Primary focus is on hydro, nuclear, wind and solar
  • Peak demand will be provided by battery storage
  • Effort will be given to improving the grid reliability

JOBS

  • Half of the CLCPA is dedicated to climate justice. I don’t talk about this a lot because it doesn’t hugely impact us, but it’s a big part of what’s going on.
  • So in short, anyone burning fossil fuels will pay a tax, fine or fee, which will be redistributed to:
    • Improving building envelope, with a focus around disadvantaged communities
    • Training and retraining, with the focus on disadvantage communities AND THE FOSSIL FUEL industry.
  • They expect they will ADD 22,000-24,000 jobs by 2030, mostly in the building shell/HVAC sectors and LOSE 22,000 jobs by 2030 mostly in gas stations

None of this is law yet… there will be a public comment period from January 1 to April 30, then the CAC will incorporate public comments, and by the end of 2022, give the final plan to the governor’s office to implement.

NYPGA plans on fighting this legislation hard in 2022. We have already pledged a significant donation to the Empire Center for Public Policy, who will generate press releases and white papers analyzing the flaws in this plan. We will launch a massive public awareness campaign designed to generate pressure on our representatives showing them the public is not in favor of their efforts. We will be increasing our lobbying efforts to tell our story at the capital. And the National Propane Gas Association is “loaning us” an expert on codes and standards to issue thoughtful criticism during the public comment period.

At NYPGA, we believe in fighting climate change, but we feel that the approach NY is taking sacrifices stability and security to chase a dream that can’t come true. We believe that cleaner and renewable energy like propane accelerates decarbonization and that access to cleaner, affordable and renewable energy ensures equity on the path to zero.

Please join us in fighting this effort. If you haven’t already, please

Thank you to the many companies who have already contributed!

Stay the course! We will fight this!

Bill