Back to Issues

100% Clean Energy by 2030

• Plan the Rapid Transition to Clean Energy: Enact the New York Off Fossil Fuels Act (NY OFF Act, A.5105/S. 5908) to require New York State to plan a transition to 100% clean energy by 2030.

• Clean Energy Production from distributed solar, wind, wave, tidal, hydro, and geothermal energy production, where every home, office, and factory is retrofitted to be a solar power producer.

• Energy Storage from electrolytic hydrogen, battery, potential, and thermal energy.

• Electrified Transportation through electrified vehicles on rails and roads. Require all new vehicles in the state to be zero emission by 2025.

• Clean Heating and Cooling by electric-powered air- and ground-source heat pumps, heat exchangers, and backup electric resistance heaters.

• Smart Grid: An interactive smart grid to match energy supply and demand and sales and purchases of distributed energy producers and consumers.

• Net Metering: Restore net metering for community solar projects.

• Offshore Wind: Enact a state power purchase agreement for 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2025 and 10,000 megawatts by 2030.

• Green Buildings:

  • Require all new buildings to have net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Retrofit all existing buildings for net zero greenhouse gas emissions, with the NY Power Authority financing solar power, ground-source (geothermal) and air-source heat pumps for heating and cooling, and other renewable energy systems for existing buildings, with no upfront costs to building owners and costs recovered over time though savings from lower energy costs.

• Regenerative Agriculture

  • Financial Incentives: Enact financial incentives for farming practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester atmospheric carbon in the land by regenerating soil ecosystems.

  • Food Recovery and Recycling Act: Enact this bill to provide surplus food to hungry people, convert organic waste into compost, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by diverting organic material from landfills.

• Clean Energy Investments

• • No Delay for Clean Energy Tax Credits: Oppose the proposed two-year delay of tax credits for solar generation and electric vehicle charging stations.

  • End All State Fossil Fuel Subsidies

  • Fossil Fuel Divestment: Divest state funds from fossil fuel companies.

  • Tax Carbon: Enact a progressive carbon tax with rebates to low- and moderate-income households to make polluters pay for their damages and make investments in clean energy pay off.

No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure

• Ban Fracking Waste Imports

• No New Gas Pipelines: Stop Pilgrim, Millenium Valley Lateral, Constitution, Rockaway Lateral, Spectra Algonquin expansion, Dominion expansion, and other proposed new natural gas pipeline infrastructure.

• No New Gas Power Plants: Stop Sheridan Hollow Fracked Gas Microgrid, Competitive Power Ventures (CPV), Crickett Valley, Lincoln Park, and other proposed gas plants

• No Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Export Facilities

• No Bomb Trains: No railway tank cars, tank trucks, or liquid cargo barges carrying Bakken fracked shale oil or Alberta tar sands bitumen through New York State.

• No New Fossil Fuel Storage: Reject the storage of natural gas or liquified propane or butane in the Seneca Lake salt caverns.

No Nukes

• Stop the $8 Billion Nuclear Bailout: We can replace these three economically failing upstate nukes' power production with energy efficiency and clean energy, while providing worker retraining and wage support and property tax replacement for municipalities at lower cost than subsidizing their continued operation. Stop throwing good money after bad.

• A Safe and Just Shut Down of All New York Nuclear Power Plants

  • Shut Down All NY Nukes: Clean replacement energy is already available.

  • Just Transition for Workers: All of the current workers should be retained by the company owning the nuke, starting with the imminent closer of the Indian Point nukes. These workers are familiar with the plant and it's processes and should be the ones in charge of the 15 year process to safely close the plants. Any workers that have not reached retirement age by the end of that process should have their income and benefits maintained while they transition to other jobs.

  • Just Transition for Communities: The local and county governments and school districts should receive state aid to cover the loss of property taxes and receive Federal 'host community' payments for storing the onsite nuclear waste material since there is no national repository for nuclear waste.

  • Plant Owners Responsible for Decommissioning: Nuclear plant owners should not be allowed to sell a plant to another company for decommissioning. They should be held responsible for decommissioning safely.

Just Transition

• A Superfund for Workers: Establish a state superfund for workers who lose jobs due to the transition to clean energy so they receive full income and benefits as they make the transition to alternative work.

• A Superfund for Communities: The superfund should also assist local governments that lose tax revenues from the closure of power plants in the transition to clean energy with superfund payments cover the loss.

Public Power

• Municipal Public Power: Promote the expansion of publicly-owned power utilities.

• Community Choice Aggregation: Promote municipal energy buying from clean energy sources.

• Public Renewable Energy: Remove statutory limits that prohibit the NY Power Authority from building and owning renewable power generators, offering the full array of energy-related services, and expanding its customer base beyond the current statutory limits.

• Public Energy System: Restructure the NY Power Authority as a democratic federation of local/regional public power utilities, with exclusive responsibility for the production and distribution of electricity and the procurement and distribution of fossil fuels (gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal) with the earnings from fossil fuel sales reinvested in clean energy.