Mrs. Miriam Wasser
December 1, 2023
Source: Wbur
Photo Source: Unsplash,
Massachusetts is legally required to zero-out planet-warming emissions by mid-century, and to get there the state must do several critical things: Replace fossil fuel-powered vehicles and home heating systems with ones that run on electricity; develop more renewable resources like wind and solar; and use nature-based solutions to sequester and store as much carbon as possible.
So how is the state doing on all of this? On Friday, the Healey administration revealed in its first annual climate report card that the state is on track for its 2025 goals.
But, when it comes to meeting the 2030 and 2050 goals, a lot more work (and funding) is needed. And success is far from a sure thing.
“Overall, this report card is an honest assessment of where Massachusetts is and where it needs to go. And it shows that there is a ton of work that needs to happen in a very short period of time,” said Jeremy McDiarmid of Advanced Energy United, a clean energy trade association group.
McDiarmid added that he is “cautiously optimistic,” about the state’s trajectory, “but things need to change and big things need to happen over the next five years.”
The progress of decarbonizing — or dramatically slashing emissions — is not linear. And the state Clean Energy and Climate Plan anticipated a slow ramp up period, followed by a rapid acceleration as a critical mass of residents, businesses and industry adopt the necessary changes. By 2025 the state is supposed to cut emission 33% over 1990 levels. By 2030, emissions need to be down 50%, and by 2040, they need to be down 75%.
“We are at a period where we are entering the hardest part of meeting our climate goals,” said Katherine Antos, undersecretary of decarbonization and resilience at the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. “We know that more is needed — and interventions are needed — so that we can continue to remain on track.”
For this reason, tracking progress — and challenges to that progress — is increasingly critical.
But calculating statewide greenhouse gas emissions is tough work, and the state’s data lags by a few years — the most recent data comes from 2020 and shows a 31.4% reduction. So in the absence of 2023 data on emissions reductions, the state’s Climate Chief, Melissa Hoffer, ordered an annual report card assessing other metrics that can be used as proxies for progress.
“The report card shows us exactly what we need to do and it’s a call to action,” she said in a statement.
In addition to assessing decarbonization progress in four areas — transportation, buildings, electricity and natural and working lands — the report card looks at the state’s efforts to promote climate resiliency and center environmental justice.
Transportation
Fossil fuel-powered cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles account for 37% of greenhouse gases, making it the single largest source of emissions in the state. Replacing these vehicles with electric ones is the state’s main strategy for this sector, though the state climate plan also calls for getting more people to use public transportation, bikes or walk.
Without an up-to-date analysis of the sector’s overall emissions, the state report card relies on other metrics such as the number of EVs on the road and the number of publicly available chargers to measure progress.
EVs on the road
With over 70,000 electric vehicles registered in Massachusetts, the state has already surpassed its 2022 goal of getting 60,000 electric vehicles on the road. But once again, the real challenge starts now. By 2025, we need to nearly triple that number to 200,000 EVs on the road, and by 2030, we need 900,000.
Public EV chargers installed
With about one-third of Massachusetts drivers lacking a designated off-street parking spot, getting enough EVs on the road will require a robust fleet of publicly available electric chargers throughout the state.
The Clean Energy and Climate Plan calls for 15,000 public charging stations by 2025 and 75,000 by 2030. As of late 2023, there were 6,436 public chargers installed.
Conclusions
Massachusetts is on track to meet its 2025 transportation emission targets, the report card concludes. But while EV adoption in the state is growing, ramping up to the extent needed will take a lot of money and deliberate action. The state may need to increase rebate levels to make EVs more affordable for lower income residents and it must continue its work to make sure there are adequate (and functioning) public chargers where people need them — a challenge made more complicated by high interest rates, supply chain issues and the expensive electrical upgrades often needed for installation. Finally, the report card notes that the state’s goal of getting more people out of cars and onto public transit depends in large part on whether it can solve the many problems at the beleaguered MBTA.
Buildings
Though you might not think of your home or local school as a big source of greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to the natural gas and oil products we use for heating and cooking, buildings account for 35% of statewide emissions. Decarbonizing this sector to meet the state’s goals requires doing a few things simultaneously: swapping out fossil fuel-based heating systems for electric ones, increasing energy efficiency in existing buildings, and making sure that all newly constructed buildings are as green as possible.
Heat pump installations
The state is off to a slow start in installations of electric heat pumps. The state’s climate plan calls for putting them in at least 100,000 homes by 2025, and at least 500,000 homes by 2030. But over the last three years, there were about 30,000 new installations, which brings the state about 30% of the way to its 2025 target.
Though state has a long way to go to meet the 2030 target, the report card is optimistic about the prospect, noting that state expected a gradual adoption curve that accelerates just before 2025.
“Residential heat pump installations through Mass Save rebate offerings in 2022 and in the first half of 2023 have been above expectations, particularly for former natural gas customers,” the report card states.
What’s more, at least half of all new residential buildings in the state are being constructed with heat pumps.
Homes weatherized
There isn’t a clear benchmark for how many homes need to be weatherized in coming years to reduce building emissions. Last year Mass Save completed over 40,000 weatherization projects — improving efficiency by adding new insulation, better windows and other efforts to seal leaky walls and roofs. But without any overall targets, it’s hard to say whether this
represents sufficient progress.
Conclusions
Decarbonizing the building sector is one of the bigger climate challenges facing Massachusetts. Electrifying and retrofitting buildings is costly and difficult for homeowners and landlords, many of whom face little incentive to do this work. And many of the incentive-based programs that currently exist provide little assistance to renters.
The state has rolled out several grants and other programs designed to help jumpstart this work and make it affordable, and it’s looking into new standards that would require greater electrification, but there are no cheap or easy “one-size-fits-all” solutions.
What’s more, while residential buildings account for more than half of emissions in this sector, the state also needs to engage commercial and industrial building owners in the decarbonization efforts, said Kate Dineen, president and CEO of A Better City, a sustainable development nonprofit that represents business interests in the Greater Boston area.
Electricity
While transitioning the grid so its powered primarily by renewable energy is the backbone of the state’s plan, Massachusetts will also need substantially more electricity in the coming decades to power all those EVs and heat pumps.
Carbon-free electricity consumed
The state says its requirements that utilities buy an ever-increasing percentage of their electricity from local renewable sources are working. In 2021, the most recent date for which data exists, 48.2% of the electricity consumed in Massachusetts came from “clean sources” like wind, solar, hydropower and nuclear, which is on par with the state’s standards.
Carbon-free electricity generated
The state has made progress on its wind and solar goals, but will soon need to significantly ramp up development. As of 2022 Massachusetts had 113 megawatts of wind, moving toward a target of 180 megawatts by 2025. Then in the following five years a huge leap is required to hit 3,650 megawatts of wind by 2030.
When it comes to solar, the state had 3,325 megawatts as of 2022. Compare that to a 2025 target of 4,470 megawatts of solar capacity and a whopping 8,360 megawatts required by 2030.
Challenges
While the state is on track to meet its 2025 goals, “we will face significant challenges deploying clean energy at the scale and pace necessary to meet our power sector [targets] for 2030 and beyond,” the report card states.
The problems are complex: Slow siting and permitting processes, struggles to finance big renewable projects like offshore wind and a lack of capacity to integrate new projects on the grid, to name a few. Many of these issues are not unique to Massachusetts and reflect larger macroeconomic issues.
But the state is working hard to increase the supply of clean power. It recently launched its largest offshore wind procurement to date, and has set up working groups and offices to advise on how to speed up the siting and permitting process. The state is also looking toward the federal government — which is planning to invest billions in electrical infrastructure improvements in the country — and examining ways to reduce future peak demand.
Natural and Working Lands
Massachusetts doesn’t expect to completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, so it’s relying on its trees, marshes and farm land to suck carbon from the air and store it in the ground.
Amount of land conserved
As of 2022, the state was close to the near-term goal, having permanently conserved 27% of its land — or about 1.4 million acres – with a target of reaching 28% by 2025. But with goals of conserving at least 30% of all land by 2030 and 40% by 2040, the state needs to ramp up work in this arena. It currently conserves about 10,000 new acres, or 15 square miles, of land per year and will soon need to double that effort.
Challenges
Massachusetts is a relatively small state with big housing and development needs, so there’s a lot of competing desires for the land that exists.
Still, Steve Long of The Nature Conservancy called the conservation goals “both ambitious and achievable,” so long as the state commits to investing more money in this sector.
“The biggest challenge to doubling the pace of conservation is funding,” Long wrote in an email. “We need to both increase existing funding sources and ultimately establish a long-term dedicated funding source for land and water conservation.”
Environmental Justice
Historically, low-income communities, racial minorities and other vulnerable populations have been the most impacted by our current carbon-intensive, polluting economy and climate change.
Gov. Healey has said that environmental justice is central to all of the environmental work the state does, and she’s committed to making sure that energy transition doesn’t leave the most vulnerable behind. But reversing trends of the past and restructuring society is not easy work. So how does the state measure progress in this area?
The report card is short on answers. It lays out a lot of initiatives and money the state has spent — creating the first Undersecretary of Environmental Justice and Equity and allocating millions of dollars to decarbonization efforts in low-income communities, for example. But it’s hard to assess if that work has been successful or is enough.
Climate adaptation and resilience
As this past summer’s extreme weather has demonstrated, climate change is already affecting the state. Just focusing on decarbonization does not ensure that people and infrastructure are prepared and protected from what’s coming — extreme heat, sea-level rise and inland flooding.
But like the report card section about environmental justice, the assessment of the state’s efforts to promote climate resiliency lacks trackable metrics. There are plenty of details about the federal money the state has secured for hazard mitigation planning, and the new initiatives it’s set up, such as the recent announcement to create a regional coastal resilience plan, but no analysis of whether it’s enough.
Still, Julie Wormser, who works on regional climate resilience and policy issues for the Mystic River Watershed Association, said even including sections about resilience and environmental justice is “incredibly progressive” and important.
“Climate resilience is really about climate equity,” she said. “This report card shows that we're at the beginning of institutionalizing climate resilience [planning]. And to me, as a practitioner on the ground, it really feels like help is on the way.”
Antos of the Energy and Environmental Affairs office acknowledged the lack of metrics during a call with reporters and said the state is working to create some.
“It’s one thing to measure how much our greenhouse gas emissions are going down or how many heat pumps we have, whereas for resilience, what we’re trying to measure is the avoided emergency or the reduction in risk. It’s a tricker thing,” she said.
In next year’s report card, she added, the state hopes to include measurable goals to track its progress in creating climate resiliency and environmental justice.
"The report card is a good baseline, but it’s time to put in place some new regulations to get us where we need to go on slashing emissions and preparing our communities," Caitlin Peele Sloan, vice president of Conservation Law Foundation in Massachusetts, wrote in a statement.
"It’s so important that we do not leave frontline communities behind in this process."
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