Albany, NY — A coalition of environmental advocacy groups has filed a lawsuit against New York State, alleging that the state has failed to implement its landmark climate law in a timely manner. The law mandates a transition away from fossil fuels to reduce carbon emissions, with a target of a 40% reduction by 2030.

The lawsuit, filed in state court by Citizen Action of New York, the Sierra Club, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and PUSH Buffalo, claims that New York’s emissions are rising instead of falling. the groups’ attorneys wrote,

With only five years until the first deadline, New York’s emissions are rising rather than falling. The state must not only reverse this trend but must rapidly decrease emissions in the next few years.

The legal action targets the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and centers on the proposed “cap-and-invest” program. This program, part of the state’s scoping plan developed by the Climate Action Council, would impose a tax on carbon emissions and reinvest the proceeds into renewable energy projects and infrastructure.

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act set a deadline of January 1, 2024, for the regulations to implement the program. However, the lawsuit claims that the DEC has not released the necessary draft regulations, despite reportedly having them ready for publication. The lawsuit said, DEC has failed to even release draft regulations to meet this requirement, even though it has prepared regulations that are reportedly ready for publication.

Governor Kathy Hochul announced in January that the first set of regulations would be proposed early this year, which occurred last week. These regulations outline how companies would report their carbon emissions to the state, but they cannot be adopted until July at the earliest, pending public comment. Hochul previously said,

We also have to measure pollution before you can solve the problem. We don’t have the data necessary right now that we thought we would have.

The lawsuit argues that the remaining two sets of regulations are also ready for public comment. The lawsuit said, In late 2024, DEC privately told representatives of some (of our) organizations that the draft regulations that had been under discussion for nearly two years were essentially ready and would be released imminently, in January 2025.

The plaintiffs are seeking a court order for the DEC to immediately issue the draft regulations and finalize a timeline for their adoption. Rachel Spector, a senior attorney at Earthjustice said,

These regulations are not just a technicality — they are the primary means of ensuring the state meets its climate mandates. We don’t have time to wait to act on climate, and that’s why our clients are going to court today.

DEC said in a statement to CBS6,

DEC does not comment on potential or pending litigation. The draft Mandatory Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reporting regulation lays the foundation for a potential future cap-and-invest program under development by DEC and NYSERDA. The proposal, which will help to better inform the State’s GHG emissions and comprehensive efforts to reduce pollution, is one of the many significant steps New York is taking to achieve the emission reduction targets of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.