Gov. Hochul has spent much of her 4 ¹/₂ years in office facing a time bomb left by her predecessor: drastic, legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets that the state has no practical means of meeting.
The 2019 Climate Act requires New York to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about one-quarter from that year’s levels by 2030. The state has made little progress toward this goal, in part because officials shuttered New York’s largest nuclear power plant in 2021.
The law remains on the books, and its defenders balk at revision. If Hochul can’t persuade them to change it, Albany’s green dreams will cause harsh conditions in the Empire State — steep electric bills, green-energy boondoggles and rolling blackouts…