ALBANY, N.Y. (WTEN) — Governor Kathy Hochul signed a package of bills to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create new jobs. This comes just days after the Supreme Court’s Environmental Protection Agency Ruling, restricting the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gasses. 

Gov. Hochul says the recent Supreme Courts ruling was an attack on the EPAs responsibility to protect Americans against pollution. The Governor signed three bills that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create more jobs.

At a press event on Tuesday Gov. Hochul said, “My dad worked at the steel plant, my grandpa worked at the steel plant we’d drive by by day, and you could not see the color of the sky, in fact as a little kid I thought the sky was always orange. Because that was the smoke, the pollution, the toxins billowing out and no one paid attention to it.”

Hochul says just a generation later, those skies were pristine, all due to the efforts of the EPA, but the Supreme Court says the power to set emission regulations now belongs to Congress.

Commissioner of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, Basil Seggos says this ruling comes in the middle of a climate crisis, “And this has the chance to set the country back significantly and possibly irreparably unless the EPA and Congress are able to find ways to effectively regulate Greenhouse Gas emissions.”

Seggos says New York has strong climate laws and doesn’t need to rely on the federal government’s authority. With buildings being New York’s largest source of greenhouse gasses, one of this bills signed into law will help to promote thermal energy networks throughout New York.

Michael Sachse is CEO of Dandelion Energy, a company that helps homeowners switch to geothermal energy to heat and cool their homes. He says, the best thing we can do, is use less power, “If you’re getting solar to create electricity, if you’re buying wind power off the grid, our company provides geothermal which is incredibly efficient so you’re using a lot less power which means that your impact is less.”

Sachse says in this environment, it makes more economical sense to use cleaner sources of energy with the cost of everything on the rise.