NYSEIA Delivers Testimony at the Energy and Environmental Conservation Budget Hearing
- Sumyia Belal
- Feb 6
- 2 min read
On January 28th, 2026, NYSEIA’s Policy Director, Jonathan Cohen, delivered NYSEIA’s testimony at the Joint Energy and Environmental Conservation Committee Hearing on the 2026 Executive Budget Proposal.
Dozens of Senators and Assemblymembers of the Energy and Environmental Conservation Committees joined to examine the Governor’s Executive Budget, and hear testimony from state agency leaders, clean energy stakeholders, and advocates.
A major topic of concern for these committees in the hearing was New Yorker’s rising energy bills. Concurrently, the State is falling behind on its clean energy goals, and is being faced with an impending reliability crisis from rapidly increasing energy demands.
As Jonathan describes, NYSEIA’s testimony prescribes a clear, simple, and effective budget policy that would address each layer of New York’s energy crisis– the Accelerate Solar for Affordable Power (ASAP) Act [S.6570 | A.8758].
The ASAP Act does three things:
Increases the State’s rooftop and community (“distributed”) solar goal to 20 gigawatts by 2035
Implements no-regrets interconnection reforms to drive down costs
Continues the NY-Sun program to provide upfront incentives to New Yorkers
Solar is the lowest-cost, fastest-to-deploy energy resource in the world. Distributed solar has been a bright spot in New York’s clean energy development. In 2024, the State achieved its 6 gigawatt statutory solar goal over a year ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget. But with federal funding cuts, rapidly increasing and volatile energy costs, and large load growth projections in the coming years, we need to rapidly scale up the State’s solar deployment ASAP!
Jonathan outlined many benefits of the ASAP Act in the testimony. By deploying 20 gigawatts of distributed solar by 2035 and meeting the State’s energy storage goals, New York saves $1 billion a year in wholesale electricity costs according to a recent study by Synapse Energy Economics. These savings are evenly distributed across all of New York, and are additional to the millions of dollars in upfront utility bill savings solar and energy storage customers receive.
Jonathan made it clear– the bottom line is that rooftop and community solar paired with storage is a $1 billion dollar energy affordability opportunity for the State.
Furthermore, the ASAP Act comes with no fiscal impact on the State’s budget, acknowledging that the State is already working with constrained finances.
In our written testimony, NYSEIA also outlines several “next steps”, policies that will further progress solar deployment and energy affordability. These include streamlining residential solar permitting, setting standards for community solar siting, providing upfront savings for energy storage, and expanding solar savings for nonprofits and affordable housing.
Check out our full written testimony here!
