When the dust settled on the passage of the state budget last week, two critical initiatives were left on the negotiating table that together would have saved New Yorkers billions of dollars every year: the NY HEAT Act and the Climate Change Superfund Act. Fortunately, there is still time before the legislative session ends in June to pass these bills and deliver massive savings for New York families.

The New York Home Energy Affordable Transition Act, or NY HEAT, aligns our state utility laws with the requirements of our Climate Law, so that gas ratepayers are no longer forced to subsidize the expansion of the gas system, spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year to hook up new customers and line the pockets of utility company shareholders.

Under NY HEAT, ratepayers will also be relieved of the burden of paying more than $150 billion dollars over the coming decades to replace old, leaky pipes, which translates to $35,000 for every gas customer in New York. This status quo is not only unsustainable, it’s unaffordable, and it’s driving rate increases across our state.

Under a three-year agreement recently announced by National Grid, currently under........

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