NYC Mayor Faces Climate 'Litmus Test' on Buildings Law (2) - Bloomberg Law

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, having appointed three respected policymakers to his climate-change leadership team, now faces what is seen as an even bigger test of his climate ambitions.

Adams (D) is sticking to an assertion he made last year as a mayoral candidate, saying he’s unsure about fines for building owners who violate a landmark 2019 emissions regulation that is set to take effect in two years. The regulation—known as Local Law 97—matters because buildings account for some two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions across New York City.

As a result, where Adams lands on Local Law 97 will largely determine whether he ends up being a climate champion, according to Margaret Perkins, co-chair of the local solutions group at environmental organization 350NYC. Adams was sworn in on New Year’s Day.

“Fines are the only thing building owners understand,” Perkins said. “Without enforcement, they’ll get away with what they can. This is the litmus test. We feel that the responsibility of implementing of Local Law 97 is now up to us, because I don’t think Adams is going to do anything.”

Lauren Bale, an Adams spokeswoman, told Bloomberg Law in January that the mayor supports the law’s goals, but “acknowledges that in order to reach our environmental goals, the city needs to reduce the cost of retrofits and upgrades, and avoid overly punitive fines that do nothing to advance our sustainability goals.”

That position hasn’t changed, Bale said Feb. 2.

Adams’ statements on the issue “tend to be alarming,” said Daniel Zarrilli, former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) top policy adviser on climate. “Local Law 97 is a world-leading law to drive down carbon emissions and create jobs, and we need to see it enforced.”

‘Easy Win’

The law requires buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to reduce their carbon emissions starting in 2024. New York City emitted 56.5 million tons of carbon in 2020, largely from the lights, appliances, heat, and hot water in its buildings—as much as 6.8 million homes’ energy use for one year.

The city’s worst-polluting towers could face multi-million dollar fines unless they clean up their operations, according to Pete Sikora, climate and inequality campaigns director at New York Communities for Change.

Zarrilli said Adams can notch an “easy win” if he simply follows through with the penalty formula laid out in the law.

Gernot Wagner, an environmental studies professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, agreed, saying the hard work of getting the law passed has already been done.

“In many aspects, especially vis-a-vis building efficiency and electrification, the right laws are already in place,” Wagner said. “The name of the game is implementation.”

Local Law 97 gives the mayor some discretion to relax penalties, although Adams could face legal challenges from environmentalists if he attempted that. The mayor doesn’t have the authority to tweak Local Law 97’s formula for calculating penalties.

The powerful Real Estate Board of New York embraces the goals of the law but is “baffled by the fact that the penalty is not earmarked for anything related to sustainability or helping reach our shared climate goals,” said Alex Shapanka, the board’s assistant vice president of policy.

Shapanka said many of his group’s members have long been trying to reduce their carbon emissions, in some cases going “above and beyond what’s mandated in legislation.”

New Hires’ Responsibilities

The new faces joining Adams’ team include Rohit Aggarwala, the former director of New York’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability; Kizzy Charles-Guzman, a past policy director at both the Nature Conservancy and the long-term planning and sustainability office in City Hall; and Vincent Sapienza, the commissioner of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Zarrilli called the new hires “great appointments,” noting that all three have been working on New York issues for years.

“Now the question is, what’s he going to ask them to do? There are big, complicated questions, and the political capital is going to be important. It depends on what kinds of fights he wants to pick on climate.”

Some environmentalists also have questioned Adams’ enthusiasm for cryptocurrency, which they say generates huge amounts of greenhouse gases during mining. Adams said in January that he would be taking his first paycheck in Ethereum and Bitcoin.

“I believe the mayor’s enthusiasm for bitcoin is in part to assure that New York City remains a center of tech and finance, which I also support,” said Philip Kahn, co-leader of the New York City chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, who emphasized he was speaking on his own behalf. “However, I hope that the mayor’s position on crypto considers that increased mining conflicts with the city’s and state’s climate goals.”

Mayoral spokeswoman Bale said Adams supports investments in renewable energy and “is encouraged to see that crypto currency largely uses electricity generated from clean energy sources, like hydropower.”

The mayor also “wants to see New York’s crypto industry become carbon-neutral as soon as possible,” Bale said.

Support for Resiliency

Adams has taken steps that hearten at least some parts of New York’s wildly diverse environmental community.

The new mayor has pledged to find more funding from Congress and the state government for a massive plan to protect lower Manhattan from flooding. The latest piece of the plan, unveiled in December, involves a flood wall and other resilient infrastructure for the low-lying Financial District and South Street Seaport.

It’s expected to cost between $5 billion and $7 billion. Physical infrastructure work hasn’t started yet, but the designs needed to seek out permitting have been completed.

Failing to protect the Financial District and Seaport, home to nearly one million New Yorkers, will cost the city $20 billion by the end of the century, according to Rachel Loeb, president of New York City Economic Development Corporation.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Lee in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chuck McCutcheon at [email protected]

source: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/nyc-mayor-faces-climate-litmus-test-on-building-emissions-law

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