Governor Hochul has proposed changes to the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act). One of the recommendations is to “change how emissions are calculated, including eliminating the state’s current 20-year Global Warming Potential metric, which factors in methane and emissions tied to out-of-state fossil fuel extraction.” In a new Institute for Policy Integrity report, Drs. Raimundo Atal and Al McGartland examine how this change to the CLCPA’s accounting method would affect New York’s progress toward its climate goals. Given its topical importance and my background, I thought a post on this topic would be beneficial.
I am convinced that implementation of the Climate Act net-zero mandates will do more harm than good if the future electric system relies only on wind, solar, and energy storage because of reliability and affordability risks. I am a retired air pollution meteorologist who has worked on New York energy and environmental policy issues since 1981. I was responsible for reporting emissions for various programs for decades and have extensive experience with air pollution control theory, implementation, and evaluation having worked on every cap-and-trade program affecting electric generating facilities in New York over the last 30 years. In addition, before I joined the utility industry, I worked for consultants who developed emission factors for EPA. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Overview
The Climate Act established a New York “Net Zero” target (85% reduction in GHG emissions and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. The Climate Action Council (CAC) was responsible for preparing the 2022 Scoping Plan that outlined how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” In 2025, the State Energy Planning Board approved the 2025 Energy Plan that “provides broad program and policy development direction to guide energy-related decision making “. Neither document provided a complete, transparent accounting of the total costs to achieve the Climate Act mandates or a feasibility analysis that demonstrated that the proposed dependency on renewable energy would provide safe and adequate electricity.
Bowing to reality, facing judicial mandates, and supporting her re-election campaign’s energy affordability agenda Governor Hochul’s has recommended changes to the Climate Act that could be implemented in this year’s budget bill. In February the Hochul Administration “leaked” a New York Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) memo that said that “full compliance with New York’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act could cost upstate households more than $4,000 a year – on top of what they are already paying today”. Hochul outlined some changes to the Climate Act to address affordability on March 20, 2026 saying “we need to change the accounting methodology we use to count emissions to align with the international standards used by the global community and nearly every other U.S. state.” This article describes what those changes would mean.
Weighing GHGs in New York
The descriptive title for the Institute for Policy Integrity report is Weighing GHGs in New York An Analysis of the CLCPA’s Approach to Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Related Policy Implications. I am going to provide my comments to the Executive Summary in this section.
The opening paragraph states:
Recent debates over the future of New York’s climate policies have highlighted the idiosyncratic approach to greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting in the state’s landmark 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which differs from the approach of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) used by most other states and countries. Some have argued that changing the CLCPA’s accounting approach to align with the UNFCCC’s will help it meet its climate goals; others have pushed back on this argument, either because they disagree with the argument’s underlying assumption or because they oppose any changes to the CLCPA (or both). This report aims to shed light on this debate, revealing how the CLCPA’s accounting approach affects (or doesn’t affect) New York’s progress toward its climate goals and highlighting how additional data from the state could better inform this analysis.
I appreciate the effort of authors Atal and McGartland because I think they have done a good job explaining the differences between the Climate Act GHG emissions methodology and the UNFCCC methodology that most jurisdictions use. As an aside, note that these differences are an example of the hypocrisy of the Climate Act authors who purport to “follow the science”. They followed the accepted UNFCCC science except when it was inconvenient to their biases. At that point the Climate Act authors went off on their own. Atal and McGartland describe the implications of these differences.
In a footnote they explain that their report:
Uses “CLCPA’s accounting approach”, “CLCPA accounting”, and similar phrases to describe the greenhouse gas emissions accounting protocols established by the DEC in its Part 496 regulation, which was adopted pursuant to CLCPA Section 75-0107. See N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 6 § 496. Similarly, the report uses “UNFCCC’s accounting approach”, “UNFCCC accounting”, and similar phrases to refer to the conventional accounting approach used by most other states and countries. See N.Y. State Department of Environmental Conservation, 2025 Statewide GHG Emissions Report: Summary Report vi-vii (2025), https://perma.cc/NED5-TGFD (referring to the conventional accounting approach as UNFCCC accounting. The DEC’s GHG emissions report also refers to the UNFCCC approach as “Conventional Format”.).
Hochul has suggested that New York should use the UNFCCC methodology. Atal and McGartland describe three differences between CLCPA and UNFCCC GHG emissions accounting .
The CLCPA’s accounting approach differs from UNFCCC accounting in three key ways, all of which increase measured emissions at all relevant points in time:
- Time horizon for Global Warming Potentials: The CLCPA’s approach uses a 20-year time horizon for calculating Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) when converting non-carbon dioxide gases into CO2-equivalent (CO2e) units, which increases methane emissions in CO2e and thus total emissions compared to the UNFCCC’s standard 100-year time horizon.
- Out-of-state emissions: The CLCPA’s approach considers a larger universe of emissions because it includes out-of-state emissions, including emissions from exported waste and from imported fossil fuels and electricity, while the UNFCCC’s approach would exclude these emissions.
- Net emissions: The CLCPA’s approach calls for gross emissions accounting (at least for most purposes), while the UNFCCC’s approach calls for net emissions accounting (incorporating removals from natural sinks such as wetlands and forests).
To give you an idea of the impact of just one of these factors, consider out-of-state emissions. 2025 NYS Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report Sectoral Report #1, Energy Table SR 1.2 2023 Energy Emissions by Gas (mmt CO2e GWP 20) lists total GHG emissions of 260 mmt and 61 mmt or 31% is from out of state.
Atal and McGartland were too kind to ascribe motives for the differences. On the other hand, I think the reason for these differences is that they “increase measured emissions at all relevant points in time”. Climate Act authors glommed on to different methane global warming potentials without recognizing that it is a laboratory construct that measures the molecular difference between long wave radiation absorption and does not reflect what is happening in the atmosphere. Out-of-state emissions adds to totals but also makes the New York inventory incompatible with our neighbors because of double counting. Gross vs, net emissions difference was included because it was perceived that net emissions accounting could be used to bias reporting.
While I applaud the authors for their description of the differences I disagree with their presumptions regarding abatement strategies. I agree that the 20-year GWP was chosen to increase the relative importance of natural gas emission reductions. It is part of the Climate Act authors vilification of natural gas.
The implications of these choices for the state’s ability to meet the CLCPA’s targets are nuanced. In particular, while the CLCPA’s approach increases measured emissions, the choice of a 20-year time horizon for calculating the GWP increases the contribution of methane emission reductions towards meeting the targets.
Atal and McGartland are academic economists. There is a glaring disconnect between emission reduction in theory and emission reductions in the real world. GHG emissions and energy use are inextricably connected and there are limited opportunities for sources that emit GHG emissions to control those emissions. That leaves most sources with two options – switch to less emitting fuels or reduce fuel consumption and energy production. The argument that the relative costs of methane and CO2 abatement are somehow incorporated into the emission reduction pathway may be true for the modeling assumptions but the presumption that this will evolve along the most cost-effective pathway is unrealistic.
This higher relative weight of methane emission reductions can potentially outweigh the increase in measured emissions and, depending on the share of methane and carbon dioxide abatement specified in an emission reduction pathway and the costs of methane abatement relative to carbon dioxide, a 20-year timeframe for GWP could ultimately decrease the distance to the targets and the total cost of meeting them.
Next Atal and McGartland argue that the cost outcome will depend upon marginal abatement costs and implementing an “economically efficient abatement strategy”. Given that the most efficient emission reduction approach for point sources has been cost-effective fuel switching to natural gas I believe that makes abatement costs for natural gas more challenging and probably more expensive. In theory the state could implement an economically efficient abatement strategy but I have yet to see any government program that works as well as theory predicts.
Thus, even if—as recent analysis in the New York State Energy Plan shows—switching to UNFCCC accounting would reduce the distance between current emissions and the CLCPA’s 2030 and 2050 economywide emissions targets, that reduction does not necessarily mean that meeting those targets would be cheaper. The cost to meet the targets depends on the marginal abatement costs of specific greenhouse gases and whether the state implements an economically efficient abatement strategy.
They summarize their analysis:
In this brief, we analyze how the CLCPA’s unique accounting approach affects New York’s ability to meet its climate targets by evaluating three primary outcomes: (1) the distance between current emissions and the statutory targets (needed abatement); (2) the efficacy of currently proposed emission reduction pathways in reaching those targets; and (3) the potential compliance costs.
I agree with the points made in the following paragraph with one caveat. I have a problem with the economic theory presumption that abatement strategies are meaningful beyond ten years. The point that the GWP timeframe has received all the attention, but the other differences are as important is a good point. I hope that the proposed changes revise those two differences too.
We find that, while the CLCPA’s unique accounting approach puts New York further away from the statutory emissions targets and increases needed abatement compared to UNFCCC accounting, the required emission reductions, especially for the 2050 target, remain substantial regardless of the accounting approach. Furthermore, while the GWP timeframe has dominated the GHG accounting debate, the effects of that timeframe are often comparable in magnitude to the CLCPA’s inclusion of out-of-state emissions and its practice of measuring gross rather than net emissions.
The next paragraph makes a point that I have been making for years. There simply is not enough data to understand any of the nuances of the control strategies and costs including changes to the accounting methodology. The presumption that the currently proposed policies “could be sufficient” is unsupportable given the fact that there is no feasibility analysis showing that the list of control strategies in the Scoping Plan and State Energy Plan are viable.
We also explain and find evidence that New York’s choice of accounting approach substantially alters the cost-effective abatement strategy. Given the relationship between the cost-effective abatement mix and the accounting choices, it is impossible to say, in the absence of more detailed cost data (from the state), whether switching to UNFCCC accounting would result in higher or lower total compliance costs.
The conclusion highlighted in the Executive Summary makes two points. First, more data is needed and I agree. However, the presumption that marginal abatement cost assumptions will somehow produce cost effective emission reductions is just another magical solution.
We conclude that key additional data—specifically, the marginal abatement costs for different gases and sectors—are needed for stakeholders, including policymakers, to properly evaluate the emission reduction pathways under consideration in the 2025 New York State Energy Plan.
The other point is the obligatory call to continue the emission reduction crusade. Given the energy cost crisis a full accounting of Climate Act costs is appropriate. Advocates for climate leadership and ambitious emission reduction goals should define what they think is an acceptable increase in consumer costs. A bright line limit would probably derail the Climate Act because the costs are immense.
And while accounting methodologies have implications for compliance strategies and costs, debates over these methodologies should not derail New York from its climate leadership and ambitious emission reduction goals.
Conclusion
This is a useful report because it provides clear descriptions of the differences between the Climate Act and UNFCCC GHG emission reporting methodologies that are currently being discussed by New York policy makers. I am confident that the lawmakers discussing them have no clue about the ramifications of these definitions. I am not as enamored in the report’s description of how the economic theory will play out.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 