TCCPI is a multisector collaboration seeking to leverage the climate action commitments made by Cornell University, Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College, Tompkins County, the City of Ithaca, and the Town of Ithaca to mobilize a countywide energy efficiency effort and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. Launched in June 2008 and generously supported by the Park Foundation, TCCPI is a project of the Sustainable Markets Foundation.

As long as the assurance proves true when the measure is passed as part of the state's $229 billion state budget in a vote that's expected next week, a majority of new buildings constructed in New York will be required to be outfitted for all-electric appliances such as heat pumps and induction stoves rather than furnaces, boilers, or water heaters that run on gas.

Climate group Food & Watch Watch (FWW) urged proponents to "keep the pressure on" lawmakers who will be hammering out the final details of the deal with Hochul in the coming days.

If passed, the law "will save New Yorkers money on energy bills, reduce climate-heating pollution, create jobs in clean energy, and reduce childhood asthma, a win-win for New Yorkers," said the Gas Free NY coalition, which includes Earthjustice, Food & Water Watch (FWW), New York Communities for Change, and NYPIRG. "It is also politically popular, with New Yorkers overwhelmingly in support."

A poll released by New Yorkers for Affordable Energy last month showed that 57% of New York residents support ending fossil fuels in new construction, and a study by the think tank Win Climate found that households would save between $904 and $3,000 per year if the state bans gas heating and cooking appliances.

The ban would go into effect in 2026 for buildings that are under seven stories and in 2029 for taller buildings, a delay that the climate coalition said would lock in "higher bills and decades of new pollution from the 40,000 new homes that are constructed each year until 2026."

The "handshake deal" reached between Hochul and lawmakers late Thursday still needs to be "fine-tuned" before the final budget vote, the governor told The New York Times. Hochul called the deal a "conceptual agreement."

Alex Beauchamp, Northeast director for FWW, told The Washington Post that the agreement reached Thursday, which brought New York one step closer to becoming the first state to ban gas in new buildings through a state law, was a "testament to the lasting power of the state's grassroots environmental movement."

"On the verge of a final agreement setting historic action into place, Gov. Hochul and the Legislature must not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by including the gas industry's poison pill provision that could kneecap the law from the start," said the Gas Free NY coalition.

"New Yorkers are watching carefully to make sure the final budget includes real action and doesn't defer to the gas lobby," the groups added. "New Yorkers don't want a big announcement that turns out to be a sham. Taken on its face, this will be an enormous victory, but the devil is in the details."

TCCPI meetings have moved online. Contact Peter Bardaglio, the TCCPI coordinator, for further details at pbardaglio@gmail.com.

The 112-acre landfill was opened in 1970, the year Tompkins County assumed waste management duties for most of its constituent communities and accepted an average of nearly 30,000 tons of waste annually prior to its closing in 1985. Since the closure of the Hillview Road landfill in Danby in 1992, all landfill waste has been trucked out of the county. The decommissioned landfill has been capped with a soil layer and vented for decomposition gases; monitoring wells check the groundwater around the site.

The wastewater that percolates through (called “leachate”) is collected in two underground tanks, regularly pumped out by a supervised contractor, and brought to the wastewater plant in Ithaca. According to a press release from NYSERDA, any renewable energy project on the site will be designed and constructed in accordance with New York State Department of Environmental Conservation post-closure maintenance and monitoring requirements for landfills.

According to NYSERDA, the MOU allows the agency to conduct further due diligence and community engagement to evaluate the prospects of a large-scale renewable energy project on the site. If there is local acceptance, strong project feasibility, and an agreement to move forward between NYSERDA and the counties, NYSERDA initiates development activities, including detailed engineering, interconnection, and permitting, as part of its “Build-Ready Program.”

“The timeline for this project depends on how quickly NYSERDA acts to complete the scoping work, which includes the site plan study and interconnection analysis,” said Town of Dryden Deputy Supervisor Dan Lamb. “It will most likely connect to the (electrical) substation on Peruville Road. Additional steps in the process include site plan approval at the municipal level, and NYSERDA soliciting potential solar developers. In the best-case scenario, work could start in 2024.”

Lamb added that the town has considered solar at the Caswell Road site for several years, so this isn’t exactly a new idea to town officials and staff. “Dryden considered this site in 2017 as an option for the solar projects. Those projects ended up being sited in Ellis Hollow and on Dryden Road. At the time, the cost of the interconnection and the challenges of siting the project on the landfill moved interest elsewhere.” 

“Since then, the state has set more aggressive goals for emission reduction and put forward the funding needed to make locations such as Caswell Road viable. Additionally, advances in the design of ballast mounted solar (arrays) have made former landfills appropriate locations. It’s important to note that the supporting structure for these solar panels will not penetrate the landfill cap.”

Lamb noted that the project would help the town achieve its net-zero energy goal by the year 2045, at which point the town would provide enough renewable energy to equal all energy locally consumed. In addition, the Caswell Road solar project would potentially provide some taxpayer benefits through a payment in lieu of property taxes (PILOT), changing the property from county-owned tax-exempt to a private taxable entity, albeit at a reduced rate from the “fair market assessment” of the infrastructure.

We know from the work of Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth and other scientists that two properties of methane make it a critical greenhouse gas: on the one hand, it has roughly 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and on the other, it begins to dissipate in the atmosphere after a decade, as opposed to many centuries for carbon dioxide. Together these characteristics mean that rapidly cutting methane can have a major impact in the near future on heading off runaway climate change.

For this reason Howarth, a member of the NY Climate Action Council (CAC), sought to secure a new approach to methane emissions as part of the 2019 Climate Protection and Community Leadership Act (CLCPA), measuring them over a 20-year time frame rather than the 100-year time frame previously used in the state. Doing so, in his words, provided NY policymakers with a tool that "more heavily weighs the role of methane as an agent of warming over the next few decades."

U.S. Methane Emissions by Sector, 2020. Photo credit: Climate Central.

Most officials in Albany and the climate and environmental justice movements assumed this change was a settled matter following the release of the CAC's final scoping plan last December.

But in early April Gov. Kathy Hochul indicated her support for bills sponsored by Democratic chairs of the State Senate and General Assembly energy committees to abandon the new method of methane accounting embedded in the climate law and the CAC report, reverting to the 100-year time frame.

Highlighting the Hochul administration's support for this initiative, the co-chairs of the CAC published an opinion article arguing that the change was necessary to protect "the competitiveness of our businesses" and retain jobs. “As it stands today, the climate act’s emissions accounting method is certain to be a major driver of future costs for New York families," wrote Basil Seggos, commissioner of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, and Doreen Harris, president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

Besides the proposed alteration in measuring methane emissions, the bills introduced by Sen. Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn) and Didi Barrett (D-Hudson) would exclude emissions generated by the combustion of biomass and biofuels from statewide totals of GHG emissions and include anaerobic digestion and forest biopower in the state's definition of "renewable energy systems," contrary to the CLCPA and CAC.

Coming in the midst of budget negotiations, these moves set off a firestorm. Opponents in the climate and environmental movements rallied immediately, asserting that the bills would deliver a “a body blow” to the nation-leading climate law and constituted “an accounting trick" designed to placate the oil and gas lobby. “Governor Hochul would side with the fossil fuel industry to torpedo New York’s landmark climate law, along with her own budget proposals to address the climate crisis, should she move forward with a proposal to weaken the state’s accounting for methane emissions,” said Liz Moran, the NY policy advocate for Earthjustice. TCCPI joined dozens of other groups in sending a memo of opposition within 24 hours of the breaking news.

The ability of so many organizations to mount a powerful campaign of phone calls, emails, and social media messages on such short notice was both impressive and inspiring. The depth and breadth of the backlash clearly came as a surprise to the Hochul administration. Two days after the Seggos and Harris op-ed, Gov. Hochul backed off the drive to weaken the climate law as part of the budget negotiations. It was not a coincidence that this took place the same day that Howarth and two dozen other scientists from Cornell University, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent a letter of protest.

In the end, at least for now, science won and the fossil fuel industry lost. There is a distinct possibility, however, that the attempt to water down the climate law will raise its head again following the approval of the state budget. As it is, the proposal to redefine renewable energy to include biofuels is still on the table. Both this and the effort to change the methane accounting rule must be kept from becoming law.

It is one thing to stop these kinds of ill-considered and ill-timed moves and another to achieve victory for the crucial climate justice and clean energy legislation still under consideration in Albany. As reported above, the "conceptual agreement" on the budget reached this past Thursday includes a ban on the use of fossil fuels in new construction, and the proposal for a cap-and-invest program is still in the mix. The details of both, however, as well as the fate of other important climate and energy bills, remain uncertain.

Time grows short to implement the measures necessary to ensure the success of the CLCPA and bolster the CAC's plan to avoid even worse climate chaos. The lesson to be learned from the latest developments is clear: the only real possibility of success in the face of the relentless pressure brought to bear by the oil and gas lobby is unstinting collective action by well-organized citizens fighting for their communities. We must remain vigilant and make sure our elected representatives hear us.

Be sure to visit the website for TCCPI's latest project, the Ithaca 2030 District, an interdisciplinary public-private collaboration working to create a groundbreaking high-performance building district in Downtown Ithaca.

309 N. Aurora St.,

Ithaca, NY 14850

607-229-6183