Sticking to fossil fuels means unpredictable and unaffordable bills for New Yorkers 

Bob Ciesielski is Co-Chair of Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter’s Energy Committee

Weakening the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) will not help New Yorkers' wallets. The most cost effective pathway forward for New Yorkers energy bills includes moving rapidly and responsibly away from dirty and expensive fuels like gas and oil. We need to transition to renewables, then use this clean power for widespread electrification. Fossil fuel prices are volatile and highly susceptible to price spikes caused by extreme weather, wars and other global market factors. Sticking to fossil fuels means unpredictable, unaffordable bills for New Yorkers. The 2025 Consumer Price Index showed that heating gas prices rose 3 to 4 times the rate of general inflation.

There are economic and climate advantages of renewable energy. New York State imports almost all its fossil fuels. The State would benefit enormously from creating a renewable economy. Doing so would eliminate the cost of fossil fuels into the State estimated at $50 billion annually (U.S. Energy Information Agency State Energy Data System). It would also create renewable energy jobs and industry. To retreat towards a fossil fuel-based economy as is being demanded by the Trump Administration, will only hurt our residents, job creation and our economy.  Continuing to burn fossil fuels for energy and heat is, in fact, a “self-imposed financial penalty”. Therefore, increasing renewables, battery energy storage, and electrification to the maximum extent possible is in the State’s best interest.

Home grown renewable energy built and generated in New York State is the most practical way to reduce the rising costs and risks of climate change while creating jobs and stabilizing energy prices. Solar and wind linked to battery storage are less expensive for generating electricity than gas or nuclear. When considering the cost of energy, utility-scale solar costs between $0.04 and $0.08 cents per kilowatt-hour, even without subsidies. With battery storage, solar costs between $0.05 and $0.13 cents per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, generating electricity from fracked gas costs $0.13 to $0.26 cents per kWh. Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+), 18th ed., June 16, 2025.

The more power we generate from wind and solar here in New York, the less we’re exposed to global fuel price spikes. Once a renewable energy generator with storage facility is built, it provides constant electricity year after year without the need to continuously purchase ever more expensive and market volatile fossil fuels – a constant and increasingly expensive addition to a homeowners’ budget.

With federal climate oversight weakening, the responsibility for meaningful action increasingly falls to the State. In this landscape, laws such as the CLCPA serve as essential protection against unchecked pollution. It also benefits New York to remain as a leader in renewable energy nationally. Rather than scaling back commitments, this is a time for firm resolve and forward-looking leadership to safeguard public health, our pocketbooks, and ensure a cleaner, more resilient future.

Nuclear Power is not Failproof - Jay Wopperer

Jay Wopperer has been a member of the Sierra Club Niagara Group for many decades. His "Another Voice" piece was published in the Buffalo News on 2/1/26.

I am against Governor Hochul’s initiative of nuclear power projects in New York State because the technology is not failproof. In the past, there have been many nuclear reactor failures around the world. This includes the 1979 meltdown of Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, PA; the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, Ukraine; and in 2011, the meltdown at Fukushima, Japan – as well as many other events.

The best technology and engineering were used to construct these nuclear power reactors, yet they failed. These projects are expensive to construct and require a long time to build. Solar and wind power are much cheaper and takes less time to activate. Nuclear power requires transport and long-term storage of nuclear waste. How can this be done safely?

In 1986, I attended a public meeting of the West Valley Demonstration Project. West Valley was a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant south of Buffalo that reprocessed spent fuel rods from nuclear power reactors across the country. The company walked away, leaving NYS and US taxpayers to pay the bill for the cleanup of the site. I asked the expert scientists there if the radiation sensor alarms at the project ever went off. The response was yes, but the isotopes were from the Fukushima meltdown. The radiation had travelled around the planet!

Do we want to take a chance on a technology that has not proven to be consistently safe, and where the smallest human, mechanical or natural error can be devastating?

Energy Plan must keep to Climate Goals - Bob Ciesielski

Bob Ciesielski is the Co-Chair of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter Energy Committee and Vice Chair of the Niagara Group. His "Another Voice" piece was printed in the Buffalo News on 10/1/25.

It’s essential that the New York State energy plan under consideration must keep the state in a leadership role to meet our renewable energy and emission reduction goals.

This is a crucial time in the world’s history of energy use and climate change. New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) set goals for 70% of our electricity to be produced from renewable sources and a 40% reduction in climate altering emissions by 2030.

The New York Climate Action Council has recommended the electrification of all sectors of the state’s economy to the maximum extent possible as the least expensive and quickest way to achieve emission reductions.

It is now clear that the CLCPA and the Climate Action Council ticked all the correct energy and emission boxes to attain a prosperous and sustainable future. On the question of affordability, unsubsidized solar and land-based wind power coupled with battery storage provide electricity cheaper than gas, oil or coal power and are much less expensive than nuclear power. As a result, last year, 90% of new electric generation facilities worldwide were fueled by solar power.

California’s electric grid is operating for long stretches of the day most days of the year on 100% renewable energy stored in batteries.

China, in the first five months of this year, installed 144 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity, enough to power 115 million average American homes. China’s greenhouse gas emissions have begun to drop this year.

The Trump administration’s efforts to further subsidize the fossil fuel industry and destroy renewable energy industries is causing energy prices to rise. As an example, the Revolution Wind project off the coasts of Connecticut and Rhode Island, recently canceled by the federal government, would have provided enough clean renewable electricity to power 350,000 homes for the next 25 years at approximately half of the current cost.

The timeline to meet New York’s goals may be delayed by the federal government, but a properly structured state energy plan can do much to help attain our targets and support cleaner, less expensive power sources. We urge Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Energy Planning Board to strongly support the goals of our state’s climate law.

WNY Legislators Did their Job. Now it’s the Governor’s Turn. - Bill Nowak

Bill Nowak is a longtime member of the Sierra Club Niagara Group. His "Another Voice" piece was printed in the Buffalo News on 9/22/25.

Families across Buffalo and Western New York are bracing for hundreds of dollars in extra charges thanks to back-to-back energy bill hikes from National Fuel and NYSEG. National Fuel is on track to cost the average household over $200 more a year by 2028 on the delivery side of the bill alone, with the first painful increases already landing. And NYSEG? Bills are jumping so fast in Erie County with the company now angling for yet another hike, 23.7% more for electricity and a staggering 33.5% more for gas.

Governor Hochul has stepped up and blasted utility rate hikes, calling on the PSC to “ensure these companies have the resources to keep our energy grid going but are not making additional profit off the backs of ratepayers”.  She’s right and now she has the chance to walk the talk.

Awaiting her signature is a bill that scraps one of the worst utility corporate giveaways on our books: the 100-foot rule, which is nothing but an outdated utility handout. For decades it’s let gas companies run new pipelines to buildings that are within 100-feet of existing service lines and dump the tab on the rest of us.  That “free” construction isn’t free at all.  In just 2022 and 2023, we ratepayers got stuck with nearly $400 million in charges.

Why should struggling families in Buffalo be forced to pay higher rates so gas utilities can keep expanding their monopoly empires?  New York’s climate law requires us to slash gas use and, instead, turn to building safer, higher quality buildings with modern, clean alternatives to gas. The 100-foot rule makes no sense in 2025.

Lawmakers have already done their part. Earlier this year they passed A.8888/S.8417 to end the 100-foot rule and five of seven Buffalo-area legislators voted yes. They saw the chance to deliver relief to their constituents. And voters are with them. A December 2024 Siena poll found that 43% of voters said reducing the cost of living should be Albany’s top priority in 2025, with 71% identifying the cost of living as one of their top two issues.. Polling also shows majorities of Democrats, independents and nearly half of Republicans want laws that update our energy policies passed, with especially strong support upstate, in union households and among Black and Latino New Yorkers.

The affordability crisis in New York is undeniable.  Energy costs are a huge part of that. We need  Governor Hochul’s strong focus on affordability to translate into a signature on this measure designed to cut our utility bills.

National Fuel Gas (NFG) wants you to promote Gas for Heating - Janet Lenichek

Janet Lenichek is Chair of Sierra Club Niagara Group. Her LTE was published in the Buffalo News in September of 2025.

Mr. Colpoys, the president of National Fuel Gas (NFG), writes that New York needs to keep burning gas “for the foreseeable future”. (“Western New Yorkers: Now Is your chance to shape New York’s energy future," 8/27/25) Mr. Colpoys is in the business of extracting, transporting and selling natural gas, so he seeks to convince NYS not to greatly reduce the use of natural gas as an energy source over the next 15 years.

The tobacco companies knew that smoking greatly increased the risk  of cancer and cardiovascular diseases, but their profits depended on denying or ignoring that inconvenient fact. Similarly, Mr. Colpoys doesn’t mention that burning natural gas pollutes our air and contributes to high levels of both respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses in NYS, including childhood asthma.

Many of us in WNY comfortably heat our homes and cook our food with electricity that can be generated from wind, sun and/or hydropower. (Back up power can come from vehicle and in home batteries which are becoming less expensive every year.) Natural gas is not required anymore and it is more expensive than solar and wind power. NFG will soon be instituting regular rate increases. The build out of gas pipelines is one reason that ratepayers have to pay more for gas services.

As of 2025, renewable energy from solar and wind are far less expensive than natural gas because no pipelines have to be built. My own comments on the NYS Draft Energy Plan will urge Gov. Hochul to stay true to New York’s goal of managing an affordable and reliable transition to a clean energy future by quickly expanding solar and wind power while reducing the use of natural gas as an energy source.

Let NYS know that you are tired of paying for the expansion of gas pipelines and want to see a faster build out of renewable solar and wind power in NYS! That’s the best way to keep your energy bills from skyrocketing over the next 15 years.