Governor Hochul: “This is not hypothetical. It's not, ‘This is going to happen someday.’ This is the here and now, my friends. And shame on all of us if we don't act with that urgency every single day. So, I'm proud to announce that the Climate Alliance has agreed to make many more significant commitments. This is what we do together. And there's a lot of power in this when you represent 60 percent of the country's economy, you can have a real impact, a broad-based impact.”
Hochul: “Collectively we've said, ‘We can do more. Let's set the bar high. Let's reach for the stars.’ So, we have agreed to have 20 million installations of heat pumps across our states by the year 2030. 20 million by 2030. And we want to ensure that at least 40 percent of the benefits flow into disadvantaged communities. We could never leave people behind.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a series of new commitments on behalf of the U.S. Climate Alliance to decarbonize buildings and quadruple heat pump installations by 2030 alongside Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Maine Governor Janet Mills. Building on this commitment, Governor Hochul also announced a $200 million EmPower+ home retrofits program to reduce energy costs for low-income New Yorkers, advancing the Governor’s goal to achieve two million climate-friendly homes by 2030 and supports the State’s nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent by 2050.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
If we're going to quote musical talent, what about Taylor Swift's “Immortal,” “Welcome to New York.” So, we're delighted to host you here. You and six billion other people who found their way to our streets this particular week. This convergence of brilliance from around the planet - with Climate Week, it's United Nations General Assembly, and of course the Clinton Global Initiative. But it's a week we're very proud of, but a week that all of us locals know this is the week you take the subway like I did yesterday. It was great, it was clean, it was fast. So, there's my promotion. And next year or year after, with congestion pricing in effect in the first city and state in America, I think you'll see a few less cars. So, that's something to look forward to.
So, thank you to my fellow governors for their leadership. And Jay Inslee, you've been synonymous with pushing this country forward and a reckoning of our practices, what we've done as a people to have this state of affairs we're experiencing now. You've been, like Al Gore, you’ve been a voice for a long time when a lot of people weren't listening. So, I want to thank my good friend Jay Inslee for his leadership and his dedication of his life to helping battle the effects of mankind's assault on Mother Earth. So, let's give another round of applause to Jay Inslee.
And another colleague of mine, Janet Mills, and I think there's nine women governors. So, we can hold up one bar. I mean, we all get together and there's a special bond because we are also parents. And you feel very seriously as a mother, the first mother of New York, in that sense, our weight of responsibility to what we're doing for our children's children as well. And I thank you for what you're doing in an incredibly beautiful state, and I thank you for joining this effort as well.
We talked about what we're doing here today, and I am so cognizant of the fact that we are the first generation to really feel the effects of climate change, and indeed, we are the last generation that can do anything meaningful about it. That's the sense of urgency all of us and Casey and Ellie and our administration in Washington, the Biden administration bring to this. And that's why this Climate Alliance is so important. We're not talking about an impending threat. We're talking about something that is in the here and now.
And as governors representing 25 states with this alliance, but speaking for all of them, this has been a hell of a year. 2023, I think we're at day 270 or so of this year. My own state, a 1,000-year flooding event. And I'm not sure who knew back then and were keeping track a thousand years ago, but that's what they tell me. But I was going with multiple year after year, 100-year flooding events, and now we hit our first 1,000-year event. We had record snowfall, and I'm from Buffalo and I'm sure they could handle this in Maine just as well, but seven feet of snow record just nine months ago in a 36-hour period. The worst blizzard in our history, taking the lives of many New Yorkers. And not to mention, just the year before, we had not one, but two hurricanes my first 10 days on the job. More than Florida had that year. Something's up.
And the fact that New York City and the City of Syracuse were tied for having the worst air quality on the planet four months ago because of the wildfires from Quebec sending down the billowing orange smoke that we were all breathing - heck, it reminded me of my childhood growing up next to the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Buffalo where we breathed orange air every day. We didn't think anything of it. And swam in a polluted lake, one of the greatest freshwater lakes on this earth. So, I have been seared in the knowledge of my childhood of what I saw. And the reality of what I'm dealing with as governor and all of our governors have, I just was with the Governor of Hawaii talking about the unprecedented climate effects that destroyed one of his beautiful communities, Maui.
And so, this is what we deal with. This is not hypothetical. It's not, “This is going to happen someday.” This is the here and now, my friends. And shame on all of us if we don't act with that urgency every single day. So, I'm proud to announce that the Climate Alliance has agreed to make many more significant commitments.
This is what we do together. And there's a lot of power in this when you represent 60 percent of the country's economy, you can have a real impact, a broad-based impact. So, here we're talking about how to make buildings more energy efficient and reduce carbon emissions. And collectively, we believe that banding together, we can quadruple the installation of heat pumps by the end of the decade. Building emissions make up more than 30 percent of global greenhouse emissions. And that's why, to reduce this, we look to our buildings.
Now, when you come to New York City, we have some rather iconic buildings. Many of you think of one. Name a big building not far from here. Yes, the Empire State Building. Bingo. And even, think about the Empire State Building, it was built in the depths of the Depression. They were building it, started in 1930, finished it in 1931, 13 months later. That was extraordinary. But now, we're literally changing, and have changed, the Empire State Building. And it's committed leadership, like Tony Malkin, who was one of the panelists at the Clinton Global Initiative. And the Empire State Building absolutely completed an entire retrofit, an entire retrofit. And they now have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent. That's possible in one building. Imagine the ripple effect of that with all the skyscrapers you see here. That's what we're going for. So, we're continuing these efforts.
Collectively we've said, “We can do more. Let's set the bar high. Let's reach for the stars.” So, we have agreed to have 20 million installations of heat pumps across our states by the year 2030. 20 million by 2030.
And we want to ensure that at least 40 percent of the benefits flow into disadvantaged communities. We could never leave people behind. Because these are the people that tended to live in places like the trailer park my parents were in next to a steel plant because they couldn't lift themselves out of it.
We will not let that happen to this generation and the next generation. They do not deserve to live in an “asthma alley” because of what's going on in their own community. So, these heat pumps will eliminate tons and tons of carbon pollution. But it's also about shaping a clean energy future as we strive to do even more here.
In New York, we have a goal of achieving 2 million climate friendly homes by 2030 and to be net zero, net zero by 2050. All of you younger people make sure we hit that in 2050. We have a responsibility to every single New Yorker, to make sure, regardless of their economic status, that they have access to these clean energy options.
That's why today I'm also announcing for the state of New York a 200 million dollar initiative to ensure that we can help lower income individuals be able to retrofit their homes, make these conversions, make it so it's easy for them to do and they can start having a reduction, not just in the emissions, but also in their bills, ultimately, when these conversions complete.
We call it the EmPower+ Program. They can add insulation, energy efficient appliances, clean energy, and how about heat pumps? That's what we're going for. It's all about the heat pumps today, right?
So, it's going to take some work. That's alright. We're up for the task. That's what governors do. We work every single day. But I want people to look back at this time as a turning point in how we take this climate assault seriously and do something once and for all about it. Urgency and action together mean we'll save the planet for future generations. That's our responsibility. That's the responsibility of every single person who breathes air on this beautiful planet. Thank you very much.