Somerset Generating Plant (formerly Kintigh Generating Station) in Somerset, New York. Photo by Matthew Wilson.
On January 13, during his State of the State Address, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an historic announcement: New York will be coal-free by 2020 and will obtain 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. Governor Cuomo in his address promised that: "We will eliminate all use of coal in New York State by 2020. We will help the few remaining coal plants transition, but we must clean our air and protect our health and that must be our first priority." This promise was coupled with announcements of tens of millions of dollars in the State's 2016 budget for job retraining, community tax base support, and money for waterfront revitalization in New York's reinvigorated Environmental Protection Fund, all of which will ease the transition for workers and communities affected by the retirement of aging coal plants.
The governor's coal and community transition announcement, which follows intensive advocacy led by the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign and supported by many partners and allies, is a critical step in moving New York away from fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure and ramping up on renewable energy. Last year, the governor made the vitally important decision to ban hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the state. That ban ensures that much of the state's natural gas resource, extractable only through fracking, will remain locked in the ground, not warming our atmosphere. Last week's announcement that the Empire State is eliminating the use of coal within four years while doubling down on renewable energy is an essential next step on the path to fossil fuel independence.
Currently, despite their relatively small share of the state's power generation, New York's coal plants account for 13 percent of the state's power sector greenhouse gas emissions. They also account for an outsize share of the state's air and water pollution, killing billions of fish and other aquatic wildlife through their discharges into local waterbodies, poisoning our air and water with their releases of mercury and other hazardous pollutants, and jeopardizing our ground and surface water through the disposal of coal combustion waste in poorly lined pits. As recently as a year ago, the state was still supporting bailouts for uneconomic coal plants in New York, prolonging their lives while ratepayers footed the bill. At the same time, plant owners were proposing reanimating "zombie" coal plants—plants that had previously ceased operations and shut down. Through the Sierra Club's legal, policy, and public advocacy work, aggressively challenging coal bailouts and zombie coal plants, frequently together with a diverse set of national, state and local partners, and calling on New York State to phase out coal by 2020 with a just transition for communities and workers, the political needle on coal has swung back.
This week's announcement represents a recognition by Governor Cuomo that in order to make the leap to the clean energy economy of the future, it is necessary to make a break with the past. To bring in thousands of megawatts of clean onshore and offshore wind and residential and commercial solar, New York must move beyond the dirtiest fossil fuels. We already have a glimpse of what the renewable economy of the future can look like. Thanks to the governor's NY-SUN initiative (that will bring over 3,000 MW of solar online in the next ten years) and the state's investment in Buffalo solar, New York already seen an over 300 percent increase in solar energy and is building a robust solar manufacturing base here in New York. The state's renewable energy economy will continue to grow, especially once New York takes the next big step and invests in a long term, large scale offshore wind program. By providing worker retraining and transition funding for communities where fossil fuel plants have been permanently shut down while at the same time doubling down on the state's investment in renewable energy development, Governor Cuomo has taken an important step to accelerate a just and responsible transition for New York away from dangerous fossil fuels.