New Yorkers experience dramatically different air quality depending on where they live. Some New Yorkers are breathing in dirty air and dying from it. Polluting infrastructure, land use policies, and discriminatory decisions are causing air pollution that contributes to the detrimental health and environmental crisis that disproportionately affects low-income communities of color. We must act now to break the patterns of decisions and investments that poison communities of color as the State figures out how to implement the Climate Act and meet its emissions and disadvantaged community mandates. However, the proposed “Clean” Fuel Standard (CFS) is a false solution to our fight for clean air.
Access to safe, clean air is a racial justice, public health, and environmental justice issue. There are proven solutions to reduce air pollution that address these disparities and injustices, including rapidly electrifying and investing in the transportation and transit systems in our state. Full electrification and improved public transportation will result in numerous benefits for all New Yorkers, but especially for communities of color and low-income communities. Benefits include less vehicle pollution, cleaner air, lower asthma rates, fewer hospitalizations, increased bus and train service and access, and more union jobs and workforce opportunities.
The so-called “Clean” Fuel Standard (CFS), promoted by the fossil fuel industry and a small faction of other groups, would delay and even prevent the materialization of these benefits and investments for communities of color; it is a “false solution” opposed by the environmental justice movement, along with ally organizations. False solutions are known as industry-supported technological “fixes” that purport to reduce emissions but often are found to not decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) and co-pollutant emissions.
The Clean Fuels NY Coalition is an industry-dominated group pushing biofuels and other false solutions that might look good on the surface, but are rooted in generalizations, mischaracterizations, and imperfect evidence. In an op-ed published in the New York Amsterdam News titled “A Breath of Injustice,” Bertha Lewis, a Clean Fuels NY Coalition member, acknowledged the inadequacy of a similar policy when commenting on NYC’s heavy-duty vehicle fleet transition to renewable diesel: “This is a step forward, but let’s be clear: it’s not the systemic change we need to fully confront the disproportionate air quality impacts faced by communities of color every day.”
The “Clean Fuel Standard” should not be mistaken for a tool to advance New York State (NYS) climate action and decrease emissions in environmental justice communities. Co-pollutant emissions from vehicles lead to harmful health impacts, such as cardiorespiratory diseases in communities of color that are disproportionately burdened by air pollution. Studies have shown that blending biofuels actually could increase co-pollutant emissions. An International Council on Clean Transportation meta-analysis found that modern combustion engines emit 4% more NOx, 7% more hydrocarbon, and 10% more carbon monoxide with a mere 20% blend of biodiesel with conventional diesel. Yet this bill is silent on the negative health-impacting
co-pollutants and does nothing to address the reduction of co-pollutant emissions. We will move in the wrong direction if the State diverts and wastes funding, time, and energy by giving industry incentives for “cleaner, low-carbon fuels” that require combustion—aka, burning toxic fossil fuel—and creating harmful air pollution and increasing asthma, heart disease, and stroke in our communities.
The current proposed CFS bill also includes a toothless directive to meet the existing NYS legal requirement that 40% of clean energy benefits and investments be directed to disadvantaged communities. Troublingly, the lower carbon fuel standard would create a market that allows big businesses, who are directly responsible for the pollution, to choose how and where to invest in solutions. We cannot afford to continue investing in half-measures and fall for industry-peddled games and lies that only sicken and kill our communities and waste critical time and resources on ineffective approaches.
Some have cited similar policy measures in California as a success. California has made some progress on air pollution, but proponents cannot offer clear evidence that the California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) has been the reason for air quality improvements. Environmental justice groups in California have expressed concerns that the LCFS has allowed polluters to continue polluting and harming vulnerable communities and demanded program reforms and protections that are not in this bill. We know that trading emissions credits can create or perpetuate disproportionate environmental and public health impacts in environmental justice communities. The California program has incentivized polluting vehicles over zero-emission electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. In 2022, nearly 80% of LCFS credits went to non-zero-emissions vehicles and fuels. The system is built to incentivize new methane gas and biofuel rather than zero emissions. A methane-driven truck in California receives three times the credit value of an electric vehicle charged with 100% renewable electricity.
These problems are compounded by the fact that if the program is enacted and more people start blending biofuels into their fossil fuels, we will almost certainly raise food prices and increase food insecurity. Crop-based biofuels are leading to increased food prices and insecurity, contributing to deforestation, and when grown incorrectly, may not even be low-carbon. The NYS legislation does not offer any guardrails that would prevent the bad outcomes in California from occurring here; in fact, it replicates the design that has been proven harmful on the West Coast.
Passing this bill will only exacerbate inequality and worsen air quality in New York’s frontline environmental justice communities and forsake all the health, environmental, and labor benefits from rapidly electrifying and investing in the transportation and transit systems in our state. The NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA) strongly opposes this bill because of the harm it would cause our communities. Almost every environmental and climate group in New York, including NYC-EJA’s member organizations, Environmental Advocates NY, EarthJustice, and NY Renews oppose this bill.
It is now a constitutional right in New York to have clean air—not slightly cleaner air. Our communities deserve clean air and meaningful progress toward environmental and racial justice. We get there with proven solutions supported by frontline communities, not by expanding a slightly-less-toxic fossil fuel market that will only continue to poison our lungs and take our lives. The evidence is clear: the Clean Fuel Standard will not reduce pollution in our communities. It’s time we fully charge ahead to an all-electric future and put this bad-faith policy in our rearview mirror.
Eddie Bautista is an award-winning organizer, planner, strategist and non-profit leader who serves as the Executive Director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA), a network of community-based organizations of color advocating for the empowerment of environmentally overburdened neighborhoods.