City and State Governments Failing to Meet Their Own Climate Goals

The city and state governments in New York are both failing to meet the carbon-reduction goals in their own climate laws. And unlike building owners, including co-op and condo boards, those governments will face no financial penalties for their failures.

The city’s building decarbonization law, Local Law 97, requires owners of most large buildings to slash their planet-warming emissions under prescribed caps, of face stiff fines. The carbon caps become increasingly stringent in the years to come. Under the law, city government was required to lead the way on a faster timeline with a steep carbon cut of 40% to municipal buildings (from 2006 levels) by July 2024, and then 50% by January 2030. But the Adams administration has majorly missed the mark, Crain's reports.

City government has reduced its building emissions by just 25% — and doesn’t expect to get its emissions down to 40% by July 2026. Some policy observers say they find the missed milestone troubling as the city works to bring private properties into compliance.

“As the largest landlord in New York City it is imperative that the city itself lead by example,” says Eli Dvorkin, policy director at the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy think tank focused on improving the city’s fiscal health. “That’s a real concern because not only is the city a significant contributor to building emissions, the city really sets the tone for the building sector overall.”

City government is the largest property owner across the five boroughs with a portfolio of more than 4,000 buildings, including schools, libraries, hospitals, and many other structures. In its section of the mayor’s management report, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) admitted to multiple snags in the past fiscal year that have led to projects being put on hold or outright canceled, including supply-chain challenges, construction delays and staff vacancies. City officials have additionally pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic as contributing to delays.

Budget freezes also created “procurement and project delivery delays” that upended several projects, the agency said. DCAS spokesman Dan Kastanis pointed to fiscal challenges driven by the migrant crisis for the disruptions. Among two dozen projects that were effectively paused, Kastanis said the agency is working to restart some of those efforts this year while others have been deemed no longer feasible. The city would not share a list of the sustainable buildings projects it has canceled, or clarify precisely why they’ve been nixed.

Meanwhile, New York State is also failing to meet its ambitious renewable energy targets. The blame rests primarily on the agencies tasked with guiding the state toward achieving those goals, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Monday at a Citizens Budget Commission event.

“From my perspective, one of the challenges has been that the state agencies charged with giving us a roadmap just haven’t done their job,” DiNapoli said. He argued one such agency, the Public Service Commission within the Department of Public Service, hasn’t taken appropriate steps in assessing and planning around potential obstacles, like supply-chain challenges, when it comes to supporting new renewable energy projects.

Under the state's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which was approved by the Legislature in 2019, the state is required to phase out the use of planet-warming fossil fuels and generate 70% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030. State officials conceded in a July report that New York will likely fail to meet that major target by at least three years, if not more.