The Buffalo News: New law requires fossil fuel companies to pay for climate change-fueled damages
December 30th, 2024
December 26, 2024
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ALBANY – Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday signed a bill into law requiring companies that have burned fossil fuels and contributed to atmosphere pollution to help pay for damages caused by climate change.
The new “climate change superfund” is expected to contribute a combined $75 billion over the next quarter-century and could send an estimated $71 million to Western New York communities.
The legislation – heralded by environmentalists and strongly opposed by fuel companies – will target businesses that have “contributed significantly to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to bear a proportionate share of the cost of infrastructure investments required to adapt to the impacts of climate change in New York State,” according to a memo for the bill sponsored by Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz, D-Bronx, and Sen. Liz Krueger, D-Manhattan.
The bill establishes a Climate Change Adaptation Cost Recovery Program that, according to the bill, will require companies to pay into the fund because their products caused the pollution. The goal of the law is to collect $75 billion over the next 25 years from gas and oil companies most responsible for the pollution, which, in turn, is expected to fund climate change programs across New York.
It’s a similar framework to the already-established inactive hazardous waste disposal site program, also known as the state superfund program, and the oil spill fund.
New York’s measure follows Vermont, which enacted a similar climate superfund act in May.
The top polluters are expected to pay some $3 billion annually over the time period. And the new law will require the State Department of Environmental Conversation to complete a master plan to guide the payments from companies in a timely and equitable manner to all regions of the state. DEC, the State Department of Taxation and Finance and the state’s attorney general will enforce the law.
“With nearly every record rainfall, heatwave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment,” Hochul said in a statement.
The governor said the bill would “hold polluters responsible for the damage done to our environment and requiring major investments in infrastructure and other projects critical to protecting our communities and economy.”
Projects including coastal wetlands restoration, storm water drainage system upgrades, energy efficiency upgrades and extreme weather response improvements could all be funded under the climate superfund.
The bill makes clear that no admission of wrongdoing by the companies is required. It is well established by the scientific community that a buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere has fueled climate change, leading to more frequent and severe disasters such as hurricanes, flooding, drought and extreme heat.
In Western New York, the effects of climate change are seen in worsening winter storms, rising temperatures and coastal flooding. Even climate-change-fueled hurricanes have affected the region after remnants of Hurricane Beryl, which was driven by warm ocean currents, caused destructive tornadoes in Erie, Chautauqua and Genesee counties in early July.
Environmentalists and political organizations alike applauded the bill’s passage Thursday.
“Our region is already experiencing negative impacts from climate change and as we accelerate our work on building resiliency in our Western New York communities and shorelines, another source of infrastructure investments can only help,” said Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper Executive Director Jill Jedlicka in a statement. “Waterkeeper will continue to help advocate for resources like these for our Great Lakes and Western New York region.”
Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, noted that the bill places financial onus on oil and gas companies for damages caused by their pollution.
“The governor’s approval of the Climate Change Superfund Act is a welcome holiday gift for New York taxpayers. Until her approval, New York taxpayers were 100% on the financial hook for climate costs,” Horner said in a statement. “Now Big Oil will pay for much of the damages that they helped cause.”
The bill was not without heavy opposition, however.
The Williamsville-based National Fuel, which fought against the legislation, spent at least $228,194 in 2024 on three lobbying firms and used its own staff to lobby lawmakers and Hochul’s office on the bill and other measures, according to filings with the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government.
Upstate United, a nonpartisan taxpayer organization based in Rochester that lobbied against the legislation, slammed the bill signing as a “misguided move” and a disservice to New Yorkers. Justin Wilcox, the organization’s executive director, is a former Monroe County Democratic legislator who served as a legislative aide in Albany.
“New Yorkers will STILL rely on fossil fuels to get to work and heat their homes, and in upstate New York, having the ability to do just that, with heating oil, natural gas, and propane, is the difference between life and death,” Wilcox said in a statement. “This ill-advised decision is guaranteed to be quickly met with a host of lawsuits and legal challenges, further burdening New York taxpayers with the responsibility to foot the bill.”
A number of other entities paid firms to lobby on the bill, among other proposals, including the Brooklyn-based Food & Water Watch ($45,000) and Manhattan-based EarthJustice ($38,513).
In early June, as the state legislative session was nearing its end, the bill appeared to have little chance of making it into law when Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, expressed concerns that corporations will pass on their costs to consumers.
However, in the final hours of session on June 8, the Assembly passed the bill 92-49. It had passed the Senate 43-27 on May 7.
In Western New York, Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo, had been a vocal supporter of the bill.
“How about the people who created the problem pay for it? I think that’s fair,” she said at a news conference where she urged the governor to sign the bill. “If we want to leave this environment, this country, our city, our communities in a condition where the children who we’re educating right now can live healthy, clean, safe lives, then we have to do something now.”
Among Western New York’s delegation to Albany, lawmakers voting for the bill included Peoples-Stokes and Assembly Members Patrick Burke, D-Orchard Park; William Conrad, D-Tonawanda; Karen McMahon, D-Williamsville; Jonathan Rivera, D-Buffalo; and Monica Wallace, D-Lancaster, as well as Sen. Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo (now-Rep. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, voted for the bill while in the Senate in 2023).
Local lawmakers who voted against the bill included Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt, R-North Tonawanda and Senators George Borrello, R-Silver Bay; Patrick Gallivan R-Elma; as well as Assembly Members Marjorie Byrnes, R-Caledonia; David DiPietro, R-East Aurora; Joseph Giglio, R-Gowanda; Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown; Stephen Hawley, R-Batavia; Angelo Morinello, R-Niagara Falls and Michael Norris, R-Lockport.
Sen. Thomas O’Mara, R-Big Flats, was excused from the vote.
Krueger in a statement said courts have repeatedly dismissed lawsuits against the gas and oil industry by saying that climate culpability should be decided by state legislatures.
“I hope we have made ourselves very clear: the world’s largest climate polluters bear a unique responsibility for creating the climate crisis, and they must pay their fair share to help regular New Yorkers deal with the consequences,” she said. “And there’s no question that those consequences are here, and they are serious.”
Dinowitz stated: “We refuse to let the entire burden of climate change fall on the backs of our taxpayers while Big Oil reaps record profits at the expense of our future. The Climate Change Superfund Act is a groundbreaking victory for accountability, fairness, and environmental justice.”