Energy Justice in New York

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Jaron. [00:00:25] Speaker C: And I'm your other co host, Lonnie. [00:00:26] Speaker B: And today we have a special and timely episode for you. We have be joined By Eric Walker, We ACT's senior policy manager for energy justice, to talk about what's going on with, you guessed it, energy justice in New York. [00:00:42] Speaker C: Yeah, his title's fitting for this. [00:00:44] Speaker B: We weren't that creative on this title. It's okay though. The content's good. [00:00:47] Speaker C: And you've probably heard a lot of talk about energy affordability lately. It's all over the news, all through politics. Every headline is talking about it. And some of you may have even heard a major battle in New York right now over our landmark climate law known as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection act, or the CIA cpa. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Whether you're familiar with what's going on or not, stick around and we'll make sure that you get all the information you need. But first, Lonnie, can you share we act's mission? [00:01:14] Speaker C: Absolutely. We act's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices. [00:01:25] Speaker B: Thank you. So before we get into our interview with Eric, we want to provide a little bit of context for folks who are less familiar with our energy system here in New York. And a lot of this will be relevant for folks who live outside of New York as well. So, so, so stay tuned. Hopefully this will, you know, provide some context for, for how our energy system works. First of all, the question we have to start with is what is energy and how does it power our lives? So I won't go too in depth here. I'm just going to kind of walk through like, how does energy get generated and how does it make it to your home and then onto your utility bill, unfortunately. So first step, of course, is generation. So how is the power produced? So there we have power plants like coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar, all these different ways that we produce energy, either through fossil fuels or through renewable sources like wind and solar, others hydroelectric power. And all of these different forms of power generation really rely on the same technology, which is spinning a turbine through either air that's heated up or through the natural movement of air through wind, and that produces electricity. So once it's, once that energy is generated, wherever that power plant exists, before it can go very far, it actually has to go through what's called a step up transform. And so that's where the voltage of that energy is, is cranked way up to hundreds of thousands of volts. And that is what allows it to travel over long distances and to reduce the energy that's lost over those distances. And that's why when you are near transmission lines, which conveniently is the next stage of that process, after it goes to the transformer, it goes to these transmission lines, you hear that, that buzzing and those signs that say high voltage is because that energy, that electricity has been boosted to be able to travel long distances. And transmission lines are those tall steel towers that you see in fields and is what allows what's carrying that high voltage power across cities, states and regions from where it's generated to where it needs to go. And as it gets closer to where it needs to needs to go, it ends up at what are called substations. So you may have one of these substations in or around your community. And when power gets closer to where it needs to be used in your community or somewhere else, this substation or step down transformer brings that high voltage electricity back down to a level that's safe for use in homes and in neighborhoods. And then from there, from these substations, kind of in your respective communities, you have distribution lines. And these are what you probably see a lot more of which are those wooden poles on your street, or in some cases they're underground, but they carry that lower voltage power from the substation to your block. And the transformer on the corner closer to your building drops it even further down to what's considered a typical household voltage of 120 or 240 volts, which you may see on your appliances as you plug them in. They're labeled accordingly. So it's traveled at this point all the way from the power generation, the power plant, to your building, and is where you see it show up on your electricity meter. So as that electricity enters into your building or to your home, it goes through this meter that spins physically or digitally to count every kilowatt hour that's used for whatever it's being used for in your building or your home. And then of course, that amount of electricity that's used is what dictates your bill, your utility bill, your energy bill, which multiplies your kilowatt hours used, the amount of electricity that's used by the rate, the cost for that electricity, and then adds other things like delivery charges, taxes and fees. So it's a lot of different steps. Sometimes you don't think about how far electricity has to come or energy has to come to make it to your home. But we'll also include a link in the show notes that kind of talks a little bit more about what you see on your utility bill. So for folks who sometimes look at it and like, I don't understand what any of this means, you can take a look at that and it'll break down some of those items I just mentioned, including the actual usage of your energy or electricity. And then those other things like delivery charges, taxes and fees, which we won't get into just right now. [00:06:09] Speaker C: I think it's always great to kind of have that reminder of what happens when you flip your light on. There's so many things that going on in the background that you don't think about. And I think we're really. [00:06:16] Speaker B: It's not magic. [00:06:17] Speaker C: It's not. It's not magic. And I think we're lucky and grateful to have kind of the power system that we do have. You may be asking yourself, okay, that's cool. That nerdy breakdown on what goes on and how I get my power is, it's all fine and cool, but why are we talking about this right now? And the simple answer to me is utility bills are too high. That is the simple answer. But when people think about utility bills being unaffordable, we think about someone being energy burden, which we talked about on the show before a few times. And that's usually defined as someone paying more than 6% of their monthly income on utilities. And so that's electric heating and cooling or and cooking fuel. Right. And sometimes those are all one thing and one bill because maybe you have an all electric home where you're just getting electric bill. Sometimes you have, obviously you might have electric, but then you may have heat that's by natural gas or oil. And just so everyone kind of knows a little bit, just get some numbers and stats out here. In 2025, across New York state, about 1.4 million household utility bills were overdue by 60 days. So if you are someone who has not been able to keep up with those bills, you, you are not alone. There are 1.4 million households across the state who are experiencing the same thing. And some people are very close to being overdue as well. And there are many reasons why utility bills keep going up and getting higher. One of those main reasons are if you're thinking about kind of your heating bills or your, or your cooking fuel is a lot of fossil fuel. Volatility drives up these costs. A lot of upstate households heat with oil or gas and they remain exposed to commodity price spikes. So whenever something goes on in the market, when it comes to gas or oil, that affects the price of your actual energy bill. And most renters in multifamily buildings in New York City might experience this through rent increases. Right. Because a lot of times your heating and your cooking gas is included in your rent. Another component to that is aging grid and infrastructure costs. So there's a lot of major upgrades to the transmission and distribution at Jaron had talked about that are passed on directly to ratepayers which show up on your bill. And you know, we'll have the link in the show notes for you can see how to read that bill. And that's determined through these things called utility rate cases. So utility companies actually have cases that they have to make in order to increase your bill. But utility companies lately have been asking to increase your bill all the time and quite frequently. And part of that is because they haven't kept up with the infrastructure to get to the transmission lines and substations and things like that. And so that's a kind of a structural driver to your rising bill. Also there's a lot of underfunded and under enrolled programs like HEAP and also EAP and wap. Like we will unpack a lot of those programs with Eric. We'll talk a little bit more about those programs, but they're chronically underfunded and those create structural barriers that leave the most vulnerable households with without access to any type of relief or efficiency upgrades just to make your bill a little bit cheaper. But you know what's not a driver of energy unaffordability? The clcpa. There's a false narrative being put out there by our governor that New York's climate law is the cause. And that's not true. And luckily we have Eric here to talk to us about that. [00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for that, Lonnie. So yeah, that narrative will be a big piece of what we unpack and talk through how what's going on with the CLCPA and programs that are available across the state to help deal with energy affordability. But hopefully some of this context is helpful as we, we get into our conversation with Eric. So with that, let's, let's go ahead and jump in. [00:10:02] Speaker C: Let's go. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Well, it's long overdue, wouldn't you say, Lonnie? We finally got the man, the myth, the legend, Eric Walker on the podcast with us to talk about some energy related stuff, right? [00:10:22] Speaker C: Yeah. We've talked about some energy stuff before and we've been hiding Eric, I feel like, in this conversation. So now we finally get a chance to actually talk to Eric, who is our energy guru. [00:10:36] Speaker B: So with that, Eric, before we get too far in, if you don't mind, for people that don't know you, besides Lonnie and myself, can you just introduce yourself really quick and just tell the listeners about your role here at WE act? [00:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's good to be on the legendary Uptown Chats podcast. Finally, after a couple years in the chair here, I think my formal title is Senior Policy Manager for Energy justice at WE Act. I don't really put too much stock in titles, so I often forget it. And Lonnie, if it's not the right one, correct me if I'm wrong. But essentially what that means is I look at a bunch of different places where energy policy that impacts low and moderate income households and communities of color and start thinking about how do we formulate a position on any of those policies? What do we want out of those policies? What is the end goal of implementation of our Climate Community Protection act with respect to those communities? We have a couple of equity mandates in the law that I think are really important to make sure we don't lose sight of, particularly now as we're going through a bunch of rigmarole around changes to the clcpa, and then build some relationships with some traditional allies to advance those ideas. But also think about some unconventional relationships that might prove useful to help promote what our vision is for that clean energy transition. [00:12:18] Speaker C: In a nutshell, Eric does a lot is how I like to describe it when they say what. Eric doesn't know what his role is, but it's extremely important. In a lot of work that we do, energy touches on a lot of aspects of decarbonization, public health. There's a lot of intersectionality there. So we're excited to dive into some questions that I think we've all been having and listeners have been wanting to know when it comes to energy. So I kind of want to start with just kind of thinking through maybe the current state of energy policies and programs as they are right now in this moment when we're recording. And I'm just going to kick this off and just say, how would you describe the current landscape of the energy policy in New York work? And are we moving in the right direction? Or where. And where are some of our biggest opportunities? [00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a juicy question. Right there. The, the short answer is the landscape is very fragmented. They're, you know, folks who are listening probably know there are a bunch of different kinds of programs, many of which are not well coordinated, particularly as they serve the low income space. So you got the big three, the energy assistance program heap, and for folks in single family homes, you have the Empower plus program. I think those will be characterized as the big three energy related programs that folks participate in. And so those are run by three different agencies respectively. And so you have a fragmented landscape. You have really generally much, much higher demand for those programs. And there is, there are resources for those programs or there is funding for those programs. And so that creates a huge gap both in terms of the effectiveness of the reach of those programs and maybe more importantly the degree to which we can actually make an impact on people's bills. Right. So if you don't coordinate those programs well, they don't work well. And if you don't have enough money to go into the pot, then not enough people get their energy needs met. And so we have this long backlog of unmet needs that should, and probably rightfully so, is really frustrating for people who feel like the state's not going to be doing enough to address the energy affordability crisis that we're in right now. [00:14:47] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Eric. I feel like landing ending that point on the terms energy affordability crisis, I think probably resonates with a lot of people either from like what they're living and experiencing right now of struggling to pay their energy bill, their utility bill, or people that are just paying attention to like the narrative right now in New York State of what you were talking about with the CLCPA and this narrative around our progress towards climate goals being, quote unquote, competition with energy affordability and this narrative that's kind of been created. But either way it's like, it's really a hot topic right now, this idea of energy affordability. So I appreciate you kind of setting, setting the stage for that and you talking about all these different programs, including Empower plus is really setting us up for an episode that hopefully we'll be doing soon about the clean energy hubs, you know, including the Manhattan Clean Energy Hub, which we act coordinates. [00:15:40] Speaker C: But I want to know if you could dive into one program or types of programs that you think do the most meaningful work for underserved communities and what are some ones that kind of fall short of what they're supposed to do? [00:15:57] Speaker A: Folks, think about Heap, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, liheap that's federally funded gets administered by the Office of Temporary Disability Assistance. I forgot to mention that one. So there's like a big four, maybe not just a big three. That's a hugely impactful program. I mean, huge. You can't, you can't overstate the value of that program. I think we as a state maybe need to have a big conversation around where we direct those funds, not just for buying down people's bills, but helping use those funds to support the folks on ramp to the energy transition. So some states help use those funds to help them support community solar subscriptions, for example, aside from just buying down their electric and gas bills. And so for a long time, LIHEAP has been essentially a cash transfer from customers to utilities. And there's probably a better way to look at it if we're talking about getting into a new energy future where we're not just essentially paying utilities for access to service. The other meaningful, I mean, you can't, you also can't overstate the value of Empower plus, which is the, the state's sing most like flagship single family energy efficiency program. It has done, you know, an incredible amount of work over the last couple of years after ramping up from a few thousand jobs every year to like over 20,000 installations. I think it was 23,001 last year. And that's huge. That's a huge amount of work to be done. And we're seeing after a funding crisis in Empower plus the real recognition from the legislature and the governor's office, the need to kind of keep that program funded at its current levels, at least for now, to make sure that people are not getting sucked back into a deeper energy crisis by not having access to energy efficiency. In terms of programs that are falling short, I think we don't have, you know, we don't have a clear pathway on how we're going to meet the governor's 800,000 low and moderate income climate ready homes goal that was made a couple of years ago. We have a lot of building efficiency, energy efficiency and building electrification to do in order to meet some of the building targets in the climate act. And we don't have a roadmap to get there. We don't have a clear set of funding streams that are going to be braided together to make sure that they're sort of easy to participate in access and get the kind of concierge style support to end up with an upgraded home at the end of the day where we all feel good about where our money is going and how it's going to help us out. I think we need a very clear political story about the failure of the state to try and bundle all that together and make it simple and easy. And what I think makes it easy for our opposition to target is that fragmentation, that lack of clear roadmap. It's a lot of fancy talk, but not a lot of, not a lot of meaningful action. And as I said before, the last thing I'll say is we really need to talk more about the, I think unfortunate decision by the Public Service Commission to not meet our request for half of the energy efficiency and building electrification funding to go to LMI households. Considering that we are in an energy affordability crisis of epic proportion, it's really unfortunate that they made that decision. [00:20:04] Speaker B: Thank you, Eric. Just kind of at a high level, how is we act approaching the goals of energy justice? What's some of the work that I know that you are leading in a lot of ways or just things that we're working on as an organization. [00:20:20] Speaker A: So first and foremost, we're really trying to lift up the legacy of react's founding, which as most folks listening know, was in kind of protest to the community being used as a dumping ground for, you know, environmental waste. And that's kind of at the heart of the way that we're approaching the work of energy justice, which is making sure that communities aren't left behind or treated as though they can be disregarded as the state tries to implement a clean energy transition pursuant to the clcpa. And that's the sort of top line. But more operationally, we're in lots of different places. We're doing state level policy advocacy in both the legislature and in the Public Service Commission regulatory space. We're working programmatically with state agencies that lift up how programs that they design are implemented and ultimately serve low moderate income households, environmental justice and disadvantaged communities. And with the goal of making sure that the folks most affected by energy decisions have real power in both process and the outcomes of those policy decisions. Right. So when we're talking about how that plays out with regard to, I think the state's flagship policy, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection act, for example, the CLC says two things really clearly that helps that support our work. One is that there's a 35% with a goal of 40% of the investments and benefits. So those are two distinct things. Investments are distinct from benefits have to be distributed to disadvantaged communities. And I want to make sure that's really clear because sometimes state agencies conflate the idea of an investment or a dollar spent in a disadvantaged community as a benefit. And they're not the same thing. The, you know, we, we're trying to essentially fight for the CLCPA's survival right now. Folks may or may not know that the governor proposed a bunch of changes to the law this year and has been over the last couple of months waging a really kind of unhinged effort to try and roll back the CLCPA in what some would call a de facto repeal of the legislation, turning many of the mandates and targets in that law into unenforceable goals. And so we have to make sure that that doesn't happen because we do need to one, get our system off of fossil fuels. And much to the chagrin of the gas industry, it's not cheaper than renewables. Renewables are faster to build, cheaper to build, ultimately bring down people's bills. And natural gas, for example, is the thing driving people's bills because of volatility in pricing. If you noticed, people are starting to feel the pinch from that cold snap in February where natural gas prices spiked really high and it hits your bill, you know, a month or two later and you're getting huge bills that you can't afford to pay for. Rate increases because of infrastructure spending are driving the people's bills and we have to address that as a function of getting off of, off of gas. Sorry, went a little bit of a tangent there, but just have to say that we are fighting for the CLTPA really, really hard because it helps us create to build the sector specific targets, whether it's buildings, transportation or agriculture that need to be met in order to shift where our money is from the fossil fuel based economy to a clean energy based economy. And if the governor is successful in rolling back this law, then we're going to have a much, much harder time making that transition. And the people who are going to be paying that price are going to be the folks who are in the footprint of peaker plants that spew particulate matter running on number four diesel and all that jazz. And so we don't need to do that right now, especially when we know that changing the law is not going to be resolved. The affordability crisis, it's not going to bring down anyone's bills later. And it's not the cause of why people are paying high bills right now. So if the governor is serious about energy affordability, should leave the CLCPA alone. [00:25:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I definitely appreciate you bringing it up because I think a lot of people Right now, at the time of this recording, there's a lot of kind of hostility towards environmental justice, climate work, building out renewables, particularly coming from the Trump administration, kind of more explicitly than anything. So I don't think, I think some people don't realize that there's also an internal fight going on within New York State where we have a very ambitious climate law that includes all of those, the aspects of the things that we want to see done in the environmental justice, I mean, in the energy justice space specifically. Can you unpack a couple. I know that you've talked about this before with some of our members and we've had some of these conversations, but can you talk a little bit and unpack some of these myths around the relationship between achieving the goals of the CLCPA and kind of energy affordability? Right. There's a conversation where these two things are being put together in terms of saying that having this ambitious law is making your energy bill more expensive. That kind of be the top line narrative that's going around. Can you just kind of talk about how that's a myth and why and how that came about? [00:26:24] Speaker A: Sure. So part of that conversation started when the governor earlier this year had said along the lines, something along the lines of if we could change the clcpa, it would help bring people's bills down. And that was quickly followed up by the release of a memo from the State Energy Research and Development Authority on ICERDA outlining how implementing part of the law under a program called Cap and Invest would cost households thousands of dollars. That's annually. And that was essentially kind of a scarecrow tactic because it wasn't a fair representation of the program. In fact, one is where it gets a little wonky. Here is the program that was proposed a couple years ago and ultimately shelved by the governor was one that had all these kind of cost containment measures built in cost mitigation strategies to help lower the impact of implementing that program. And we act along with Earth justice in the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote a report that they then updated that showed households, you know, in, in the making, under 200k essentially would come out whole. Right. They wouldn't have a net impact if they were to adopt into both electrifying their heating system and their, their transportation. Right. Their buildings and their transportation. So the more we electrify the data shows that the more people actually get back from this program. And so it was a bit of a scarecrow tactic to say that's going to cost you all this money when it was based on a Mythical conception of the program. So then they go out and essentially say, hey, if you really don't want to pay that money, let me go and roll back this law. And everybody was like, oh, my God, are you serious to it? You know, we had to kind of say, no, that memo is fake. The narrative is false. And if we do the work of building out renewables faster, which, as I said before, are much cheaper and can be built more quickly than the gas pipeline that was authorized in, in October of 2025, then we. We actually get the lower bills, right? We want to install the cheapest capacity on the grid as possible, not the most expensive stuff. And that's just basic math, right? The more it costs to build, the more ultimately rate pairs have to pay in order to get it online. And so that's the two myths, right? One around the law being unaffordable for households, and the second one that gases the cheaper option. So if we just scuttle the law, we could build more gas that would be cheaper for everybody in the long term. Those are a couple of myths that are being banged about. And the governor since retreated from a couple or walked back a couple of those statements around the. The law being unaffordable. But I think the sort of underlying story is that the world thinks we need more gas right now, and we don't have a real pathway to do that quickly or cheaply enough to address the affordability crisis. I feel like I'm rambling a little bit right now. [00:30:20] Speaker B: No, that's great. All this is great, Eric. This is good. I feel like the more context people can get around this, these, these myths, the better. Because obviously we work in this space, we spend a lot of time thinking about these things. But, you know, the average person, they hear a sound bite here and there, and they don't have much more to go off of. So all this extra context is really helpful. So I appreciate, even if it feels like a rant, I know, at least for me, like, as someone who definitely spends less time in it than you, it's helpful for me. So. So thank you. I think the next natural piece, I wanted to kind of build off from there some of the other points that you've made and just thinking about for the average person, what this means in terms of, I guess, pushing back or advocacy. What does advocacy look like in this space? And both combating this narrative, but also trying to move the work forward in the right direction. And given this narrative and given this dynamic at the state level, what does advocacy look like, including work that we act is doing to kind of move things in the right direction where we do want to see them going. [00:31:28] Speaker A: Yeah. The short answer is talking to our friends in the legislature right now. This has become one of the governor's high level priorities, rolling back to CLCPA in the context of the budget. The reason why the governor wants to do that within the context of the budget is because they don't want to be held accountable to implementing the CLCPA through the lawsuit that we act and several other organizations participated in and are engaged in right now. So about this time last year, we filed a petition to hold the governor accountable for not releasing greenhouse gas emission reductions rules that were legally mandated to be put forward in early 2024. It was then 2025, and a judge ruled in our favor and directed the Department of Environmental Conservation, or the DEC to issue those rules. They then appeal that ruling and that's kind of where things are right now. So we're in a little bit of legal limbo in terms of getting a key piece of the CLCPA's implementation framework up and running. And the governor does not want to have to risk losing that appeal and then have a judge say again, no, you need to go do this because the law says you need to go do this. And so she's trying to roll the legislature over a barrel with all the power that she has in the budget to insert this as a priority and say, I'm not going to give you guys an inactable budget until you give me some concessions on the clcpa. It's completely a political ploy led by that narrative that I laid out before that essentially tries to conflate CLCPA with both being unaffordable to New Yorkers and not achievable. And so we think that that's just nonsense and the legislature needs to essentially stand firm on not changing the law because it is the law. And in fact, the legislature is the set of folks who adopted it into law and ultimately a governor signed it into law. [00:33:56] Speaker C: So, Eric, I really appreciate you kind of laying that out there, talking about some of the myths and what advocacy looks like and I think obvious, you know, we, we love for when people can actually get involved tangibly and whether it be small ways or large ways. So are there any opportunities right now for listeners who really want to help you out in the work that you've been doing talking legislature? Is there anything that folks listening can do right now? [00:34:25] Speaker A: Well, we did have a huge rally on March 25 that brought hundreds of people nearly 1,000 folks into the halls of Legislature and we were supported by nearly 30 different legislators from both the Senate and Assembly calling for defense of and no rollbacks of the clcpa. And so folks can echo that call through any number of action alerts. We have one, we act has one going. The New York leader of Conservation Growers has one. Our friends at New York Renews who are also a member of that coalition. And now folks have a call to action on. You know, send a message to your legislators to defend the clcpa. It'd be great if folks who were listening could click on one of those action alerts. I'm imagining you'll be putting it in the show notes for folks to click on later that can help just put their name in that to just show the legislature, hey, we see you continue to stand stand tall for the clcpa because it is the number one way that we're going to transition our economy from one that doesn't work for everyone to one that does. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts about the show or suggestions for topics you want us to discuss, we encourage you to reach out to [email protected] I also want to [00:36:02] Speaker C: remind folks about our Uptown Chats hotline where listeners can call in with questions they have about climate and environmental justice. So if you've got a question, call 877-Uptown 6 that's 877-Uptown 6 and check [00:36:15] Speaker B: out we act on Facebook at weact4ej that's W E A C T F O R E j on Instagram, bluesky and YouTube act4ej that's W E A C T number 4ej and check out our website react.org for more information about environmental justice. Until next time. Bye. [00:36:40] Speaker A: It.