A new study released by NY Renews shows that investment in climate programs and infrastructure under the Climate and Community Investment Act (CCIA, S4264-A/A6967) would create and sustain 160,000 jobs over a ten-year period. These jobs would reach beyond the renewable energy sector and include jobs in public transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, the care economy and schools, professional services, and pollution remediation. The jobs would be created in all regions of New York State.
NY Renews released the study, “The Climate and Community Investment Act: An Engine for Good Job Creation,” at a press conference during which they pushed back on corporate polluters’ scare tactics and deceptive claims about the bill. Far from imposing costs on hardworking New Yorkers, the CCIA would invest billions of dollars into communities across the state, provide the majority of New Yorkers with annual tax credits of $700 – $1200, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, reduce pollution and increase New York’s resilience to the climate crisis, leading to healthy, thriving communities.
Under the CCIA, an emissions fee on corporate polluters would generate an additional $10-$15 billion per year in state revenue, to be spent in four categories: community- based projects such as tenant-owned solar or energy efficiency; large-scale renewable infrastructure; energy rebates for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers; and funds for fossil-dependent workers and communities.
The CCIA includes gold-standard labor provisions such as promoting high wages, best-value contracting, apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, and access to unions. Benefits are designed to flow in particular to people in disadvantaged and front-line communities.
Projects that could be funded under the CCIA include:
- Converting the Capitol building and Empire State Plaza to 100% renewable sources for cooling, heating and electricity, and making renewable sources widely available to the surrounding low-income communities of color.
- Ensuring Long Island becomes a major hub for the Regional Offshore Wind Energy Industry, as noted in this report by the Workforce Development Institute: OSW MOU – Orsted NJ and NY.
- Supercharging efforts such as Buffalo’s Massachusetts Avenue Project, a nonprofit urban farm located on Buffalo’s West Side providing year-round youth employment and training with job readiness and leadership skills through farming, a Mobile Market, kitchen and nutrition education, as well as food policy training and civic engagement.
