As the old Marx Brothers joke goes, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

Doreen Harris, president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority,  told lawmakers that she was setting the record straight, and that “We are not taking away gas stoves, as one example of perhaps misinformation we need to correct.”

But the Climate Action Council that she Co-Chaired produced a Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA)  Scoping Plan – which she voted to approve – that says the state will in fact be taking away gas stoves.

It’s right there on page 190, in the chapter on buildings, for all the world to read.

So where’s the misinformation?

Granted, there’s no plan to have an oven constabulary storm into homes and rip out existing ranges, but there is an explicit plan to police their replacement.

Granted also that Governor Hochul avoided a call to ban replacement gas stoves in her State of the State address, but that doesn’t turn down the heat on this issue. 2035 is 12 years away, leaving plenty of time for Hochul or a future governor to call for implementing the Scoping Plan proposal. Or the legislature could enact legislation on its own.

It also leaves plenty of time for the Department of Environmental Conservation – which is supposed to take its cue for implementation of the CLCPA from the Scoping Plan – to enact regulations without any direct prompting from the governor or legislature.

And Hochul did call for banning replacement fossil fuel furnaces in existing homes, as well as incentivizing homeowners to switch to all-electric. As less gas is used, the per-customer cost of maintaining the gas system will increase, making it unaffordable to continue cooking with gas.

Ultimately, the Scoping Plan speaks for itself, as well as for the Climate Action Council’s intentions. At more than 400 pages, few people are going to read the whole document.  But those who at least look at selected chapters of it should have no qualms about believing their own eyes.

You may also like

The Wacky Math of New York’s Essential Plan

Thanks to an absurdly wasteful federal law, New York's Essential Plan is expected to continue running billion-dollar surpluses even as state officials more than double its spending over the next several years. Read More

In a Tight Budget Year, New York’s Hospital Lobby Shoots for the Moon

As Governor Hochul calls for spending restraint next year, influential hospital lobbyists are pushing what could be the costliest budget request ever floated in Albany. In a , the G Read More

Putting the Mission in Hochul’s Health Commission

Last week Governor Hochul answered one big question about her Commission on the Future of Health Care – the names of its members – but left a fundamental mystery unresolved:  W Read More

Hochul’s Promised Health Care Commission Has Yet To Be Appointed

A health-care commission that is supposed to be helping the state control soaring Medicaid costs – which Governor Hochul promised in January and described as "under way" last month – appears not to exist. Thre Read More

State Regulators Propose a $10 Fee for Filling Prescriptions

The Hochul administration is proposing to mandate a $10.18 "dispensing fee" for almost every prescription filled in New York, a change that would add billions of dollars to health-care costs statewide. Read More

NY Needs a Tall Pour of Reg Reform

Governor Kathy Hochul this week made around one of the state’s messiest bureaucracies when she took steps to allow bars to serve fans on Sunday morning as they watch their Bills play five time zones ahead in London. But offic Read More

One Brooklyn Health’s Money Troubles Raise a Billion-Dollar Question

A brewing fiscal crisis at One Brooklyn Health, which has received more than $1 billion in turnaround funding from the state, raises the question of whether that money has been well spent. Read More

Hochul Signals Tough Budget Ahead

Governor Hochul’s administration this week urged agency heads to keep their budgets flat next year. It's the most serious acknowledgement yet of state government’s looming financial shortfall. Read More

Empire Center Logo Enjoying our work? Sign up for email alerts on our latest news and research.
Together, we can make New York a better place to live and work!