March 16, 2025
“The world keeps turning on NY’s go-it-alone climate agenda”
Repeatedly in this column over the past six years, ever since the approval in 2019 of the all-Democrat climate agenda known as the “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act” (CLCPA), I have shared warnings – my own and those of many others – that New York State is going too far, too fast.
It keeps turning out that we haven’t just been crying wolf. It hasn’t just been a chorus of so-called “climate deniers.” Not at all. In fact, over the past year we have been joined by plenty of voices on the Democrat side of the aisle recognizing it too.
Recognizing what? The latest example focuses on just one of a long line of unaffordable, impractical, and unrealistic energy mandates being imposed on all New Yorkers—but it’s the one at the moment that stands for the shortcomings of the entire strategy. It remains a politically and ideologically driven, go-it-alone strategy that will have virtually no impact on the global climate but will be extremely costly for New York State’s consumers and ratepayers, unreasonably restrictive for local economies, and businesses and industries, and enormously burdensome for local governments and local taxpayers.
Specifically, what’s back in the news this week is a current mandate known as the Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) rule. It was a regulation adopted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in 2021 as part of the CLCPA. Beginning this year, it will require an increasingly higher percentage of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles – buses, pickups, vans, garbage trucks, long-haul trucks, and the like – to be electric, zero-emissions vehicles.
Like the all-electric school bus mandate that we have also highlighted as a hugely expensive unfunded state mandate for local school districts and property taxpayers (and the reason I sponsor legislation to delay its implementation), the looming ACT mandate poses similar consequences for numerous industries, including trucking companies vital to the overall fabric of our state and local economies, municipal highway and public works departments, small business owners, and other consumers.
It’s a far-reaching mandate being implemented too fast at a time when the technology and infrastructure isn’t ready for it. It’s too expensive. It’s unworkable, and it was adopted and keeps moving ahead without a straightforward and responsible cost-benefit analysis. That’s the point my colleagues and I in the Senate Republican Conference have been making to Governor Hochul, including in a letter as far back as early last fall raising our concerns over ACT.
In that letter we wrote, “Zero emission truck technology is still in its infancy. The majority of these trucks currently cost three to four times the average cost of a diesel-powered vehicle. Requiring the purchase of these vehicles within a substantially limited timeframe artificially creates an imbalance between demand and supply, which will drive costs even higher, both on the truck dealers and small businesses.
“For municipalities and businesses that are forced to incur these expenses, this cost will ultimately be passed on to taxpayers and consumers across the state. Consumers are already struggling with the effects of high inflation and the last thing anyone can afford to do right now is pay more because of an arbitrary rule…Additionally, the charging infrastructure needed to power this fleet is not currently available at this time. Without the necessary charging infrastructure or grid capacity, mandating the sale of these vehicles through regulation is akin to putting the cart before the horse.”
ACT will triple the cost of a semi-truck, dump truck, and snowplow and reduce the range of these trucks to 150 miles or less requiring four to six hours to recharge. It will negatively impact the desired emission reduction as those owning and operating trucks on the road today will be encouraged to keep their older, dirtier, and less safe trucks, that they would otherwise replace, on the road longer. It also raises the concern that businesses may relocate their trucking fleets out of state since they could continue to operate those trucks in New York.
Now, finally, our concerns are being echoed by leading legislative Democrats. Legislation has been introduced to delay the rule until at least 2027. According to the sponsors, “Unfortunately, the ACT regulations are nearly impossible for the trucking industry to comply with because of a lack of truck charging infrastructure, cost factors, and other challenges…there is no point in putting an entire industry at risk in the process.”
Better late than never, as they say.
It becomes increasingly clear that the Albany Democrat strategy for New York’s energy future is not affordable, feasible, or realistic under its current timelines, including this one for the ACT regulation — the latest example of this state under one-party control pushing forward with a mandate without a straightforward and honest cost-benefit analysis of how much it will cost taxpayers and consumers, the consequences for the state and local economies, its impact on an already burdensome business climate, and whether it will have any effective impact at all on emissions at this time.