The City Council’s Air Conditioning Folly

Photo by Michael Nagle/Getty Images

In a familiar end-of-year rush that left little room for public scrutiny, the New York City Council, at its last meeting, passed Intro 994, a bill that will require property owners to provide air conditioning in all “tenant-occupied” dwellings by 2030, where tenants have opted in to receive air conditioning. It’s a curious mandate, compelling an increase in electricity use as city and state leaders attempt to reduce the state’s carbon footprint. Apparently, higher emissions aren’t a problem so long as landlords are footing the bill for more tenant entitlements.

Under the bill, beginning June 1, 2030, landlords would be required, upon tenants’ request, to install air conditioning capable of maintaining an indoor temperature of at least 78 degrees Fahrenheit in tenants’ primary sleeping room. The legislation is essentially modeled after the city’s century-old heat law, which mandates minimum indoor temperatures between October 1 and May 31. The new “cooling season” would run from June 15 to September 15, meaning that landlords would be on the hook for some form of temperature regulation for the entire year, less four weeks. Tenants whose units exceed the maximum temperature can file a complaint against their landlords to enforce the law.

While heat is a life-safety necessity in winter, air conditioning is still considered a luxury in many developed countries. In France, less than 25 percent of homes have air conditioning, and in warmer Spain, only about 40 percent do. Though some populations are vulnerable to extreme heat, Intro 994 is not limited to such cases (as opposed, for example, to special rights that senior tenants receive in New York).

Lincoln Restler, former co-chair of the council’s Progressive Caucus and the bill’s chief sponsor, framed Intro 994 as a climate-safety measure: “We need to keep New Yorkers safe from the most dangerous effects of climate change,” he said, having previously called climate change “the most existential threat facing our City.” But if climate mitigation is the animating concern, it is hard to square that with a mandate that will increase summertime electricity consumption across the city—precisely when demand is already highest.

Perhaps Restler and his colleagues assume that renewable, zero-carbon electricity will mostly power the city when the law takes effect, but that’s essentially impossible. According to the state grid operator’s 2025 report, more than 90 percent of downstate New York’s electricity comes from oil- and gas-fired power plants. That’s grown from about 70 percent in 2020, thanks mostly to the foolhardy closure of Westchester’s Indian Point nuclear power plant. Despite years of ambitious climate targets and billions in subsidies, renewables have not picked up the slack.

As MI’s Ken Girardin has noted, the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s aggressive push toward intermittent sources like wind and solar has already left New York City operating with perilously thin margins during peak demand—while falling far short of its 2030 goal to reduce emissions by 40 percent. The Hochul administration, meanwhile, has repeatedly opposed expanding or modernizing gas-fired plants that could provide reliability during heat waves.

The result is a grid increasingly vulnerable to failure. If a blackout occurs, as Girardin has warned, that would immediately place untold thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers at risk—not to mention cause havoc.

Five years from now, when Intro 994 goes into effect, can anyone seriously believe that the downstate region will expand renewable capacity enough to accommodate a citywide increase in air-conditioning use?

The bill’s lengthy implementation timeline implies that Restler and his co-sponsors understand the difficulty of this legislation—but want to score political points today. Like other climate legislation—most notably the notorious Local Law 97, which will soon begin fining buildings that exceed city-set emissions caps—Intro 994 allows today’s lawmakers to claim an immediate political win while postponing the real costs until well after many have moved on because of term limits.

When the costs hit, they will fall unevenly. Market buildings frequently have air conditioning included—it’s an amenity that tenants pay for as higher rents. Rent-stabilized buildings, or those constructed before 1974, will not be as fortunate. Their wiring is often not equipped to handle the strain of a window unit that uses a kilowatt or more every hour. Intro 994 vaguely provides that Housing Preservation and Development must warn tenants who’ve opted-in that installation “may result in an increase to such unit’s regulated rent.” But the amount of such an increase isn’t specified, suggesting that it would be governed by the Rent Stabilization Law’s meager provision for individual apartment increases. Intro 994’s hardship provision would only grant owners a potential extension for compliance.

The Council has already compounded this pressure with other legislation this year, including a law forcing landlords to pay brokers’ fees, and the recently passed Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, which grants city-approved nonprofit organizations preferential rights when properties are put up for sale—first through an exclusive negotiation period, then through the right to match private offers.

Taken together, these policies suggest a coherent objective to shake out private rent-stabilized owners. By piling costs onto them, restricting their recovery, and then steering distressed properties toward nonprofit acquisition, the city’s far left is engineering a gradual transfer of housing from private ownership to quasi-public control by politically connected nonprofits. If Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani succeeds in imposing rent freezes under a future administration, property values will fall further still, accelerating the private-sector shake out.

Mayor Adams may veto Intro 994, but with 40 votes already secured, the council can override him, including after Mayor Mamdani takes office on January 1. New Yorkers should be clear-eyed about what this legislation represents—not just an air-conditioning mandate, but a wolf in sheep’s clothing, part of a broader project to regulate, subsidize, and ultimately replace private real-estate ownership, regardless of the harmful consequences.

As New York shivers through the holidays, leave it to the council to look ahead to the warmer months—to stick it to landlords yet again.

John Ketcham is director of Cities and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.