NYC Mayor Announces Environmental Policy Team With a Focus on ‘Climate Justice’

(Bloomberg) -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Monday announced three veteran environmental policy makers to lead climate policy for the city, providing a first look at how aggressively he plans to address environmental issues and his focus on what he called “climate justice.”

Rohit Aggarwala will become the city’s chief climate officer and commissioner of its Department of Environmental Protection. Aggarwala, an international and public affairs professor at Columbia University, formerly served as director of New York’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability under former mayor Mike Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

The city will also create a new office of climate and environmental justice. The office will be led by Kizzy Charles-Guzman, who previously served as policy director at the Nature Conservancy and at the long-term planning and sustainability office in City Hall.

Vincent Sapienza will become the environmental protection department’s chief operations officer. Sapienza has held various titles at the agency since 1983, currently serving as commissioner.

During a briefing on Monday, Adams pointed to the need to address recent extreme weather events and rising sea levels -- and to do so in a way that takes into account people of color and low income communities.

Adams said he wants to turn previous city plans “into progress and making sure progress is felt in every community across the city.”

The announcement of a climate team has been hotly anticipated as a sign of Adams’s stance on environmental issues. Many local advocates had expressed skepticism about the new mayor’s commitment to issues like building efficiency, electrification, and resilience, citing how environmental issues weren’t a top campaign issue.

“How he staffs up and who he appoints to key leadership roles across the agency is the most important indicator for where this term’s going to go,” said Daniel Zarrilli, former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s chief climate policy adviser and now special adviser for climate and sustainability at Columbia University. “Personnel will be policy.”

During his campaign for mayor, Adams pledged to create more green buildings, implement a white roofs program, fast-track resiliency projects such as storm water infrastructure, and conduct a “climate stress test” across the city.

Green Buildings

In a move that alarmed some environmentalists, Adams said a landmark building efficiency law championed by de Blasio may be too expensive for property owners, according to Pete Sikora, climate and inequality campaigns director at New York Communities for Change.

“There’s a great deal of uncertainty and fear that Adams is not going to lead on this issue,” Sikora said.

Known as Local Law 97, the regulation requires buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to reduce their carbon emissions by varying amounts or face fines, starting in 2024.

New York emitted 56.5 million tons of carbon in 2020, largely from the lights, appliances, heat, and hot water in its buildings. Buildings account for some two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions in the five boroughs. 

Lauren Bale, an Adams spokeswoman, said the mayor supports the goals of Local Law 97, but “acknowledges that in order to reach our environmental goals, the city needs to reduce the cost of retrofits and upgrades, and avoid overly punitive fines that do nothing to advance our sustainability goals.”

Adams supports city subsidies to help property owners with the cost of retrofitting and wants to invest in greening the city’s own buildings, Bale said.

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