Steve Everley: Guess Who Pays the Bill For Municipal Gas Bans?

[Note: Steve Everley is a Sr. Managing Director at FTI Consulting, and a longtime friend. He published this excellent commentary on LinkedIn, and I thought it deserves highlighting here.]

The bill is coming due for the rush to ban natural gas, and it's families on fixed incomes who are paying the tab.

In 2019, the New York City Council passed Local Law 97, which requires tens of thousands of buildings to slash their emissions 80% by 2050. They didn't say "natural gas ban" but that was clearly the intent. As usual, there were concerns the policy would raise the cost of living in a city that already struggles with affordability. Also as usual, those concerns were ignored.

As it turns out, those concerns were justified.

At the Queensview cooperative, a 726-unit housing complex, residents are concerned that the monthly $1,000 maintenance fee they already pay will soon double to cover the cost of electrifying their heat and hot water systems. About half of the residents are retirees.