Written by Jonathan Allen
New York – New York state will fine fossil fuel companies a total of $75 billion over the next 25 years to pay for climate damage under a bill Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law Thursday.
The law is intended to shift some of the costs of restoring and addressing climate change from individual taxpayers to the oil, gas and coal companies the law says are responsible. The money raised will be used to reduce the impacts of climate change, including repairing roads, transport, water and sanitation systems, buildings and other infrastructure.
“New York has fired a shot that will be heard around the world: Climate change companies will be held accountable,” New York Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said in a statement.
Fossil fuel companies will be fined based on the amount of greenhouse gases they emitted into the atmosphere between 2000 and 2018, which will be paid into the Climate Superfund starting in 2028. It will apply to any company that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation determines is responsible for more than $1 billion in greenhouse gas emissions.
New York becomes the second state to pass such a law after Vermont passed its version this summer. The rules are modeled after existing state and federal superfund laws that require polluters to pay to clean up toxic waste.
Repairing the damage and adapting to extreme weather caused by climate change will cost New York more than $500 billion by 2050, Krueger said in a statement. Big oil companies have made more than $1 trillion in profits as of January 2021 and have known since at least the 1970s that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels contributes to climate change, he said.
Energy companies are expected to file legal challenges to the new law, saying it is limited by federal law governing energy companies and polluters.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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