Pass the "Climate Solutions Now Act"

UPDATE: In 2021, the bill failed to pass the Maryland General Assembly... but it passed in 2022!

In Maryland, climate change is no longer some far-away problem. It’s making life harder right now. And we are just beginning to feel the true impact of fossil fuel pollution and the global warming it continues to unleash.

But Maryland’s current climate plan, put forth by Governor Hogan and his administration, fails to match the urgency of the crisis. We need a new climate plan. It starts by passing the Climate Solutions Act of 2021.

It's "The Climate Decade": Climate Change Is Here. Now We Have To Act.

Climate change is already making life harder in Maryland.

As the state with the second-most tidal shore communities at risk of flooding, we’re already starting to lose islands (like Fox Island) in the Chesapeake Bay due to sea level rise.

Our flooding risk extends far beyond our waterfront areas, as we tragically experienced during two “thousand-year floods” in Ellicott City within 22 months. Rising temperatures have already damaged the health of the Chesapeake Bay, weakening the tourism and seafood industries that support many Maryland livelihoods. Maryland has the fourth most premature deaths in the nation caused by dirty energy-created air pollution.

Tidal flooding at Fox Island

But it will only get worse

The 2020s are projected to bring more severe storms, more dangerous flooding, and more extreme heat. Between 1981 and 2010, Maryland averaged about six days above 95 degrees per year. If we continue on our current path of greenhouse gas emissions, we will have 20 days above 95 degrees per year — more than triple that of before — by the end of the decade. Extreme heat is linked with severe negative consequences, such as decreased economic activity, increased violent crime, and worse educational outcomes.

And we’re running out of time:

​This decade is also our last window of time before the climate crisis kicks into high gear. According to the world’s leading climate scientists, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 to prevent the worst climate devastation. For Maryland, one of the wealthiest states in one of the wealthiest nations, that means we need to do even more: reduce our emissions by 60 percent by 2030. Between worsening consequences and the closing window for action, it’s clear that the 2020’s will be The Climate Decade.

 
ellicott-city-flooding
Historic floods in Ellicott City

Under the Hogan Administration, Maryland Trails Other States on Pollution Reduction

In 2009, Maryland became one of the first states to address climate change when it passed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act (GGRA), requiring a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. We then expanded that law in 2016, requiring a 40 percent reduction by 2030.

However, other states have passed more ambitious reduction targets and climate scientists have since warned that we need to do more than previously understood. The IPCC issued a crystal clear message in 2018 that states like Maryland need to cut our emissions by 60 percent by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2045.

And even our weak emissions goals likely won’t be met. According to the Center for Climate Strategies, an independent nonprofit that helps states and nations develop climate action plans, Maryland “is unlikely to meet state mandated emissions reductions targets in 2030 or long term decarbonization pathways needs through 2040 and 2050” due to methodological errors in the Hogan Administration’s draft climate plan.

Hogan’s current plan has the following flaws:

  • It relies heavily on fracked gas as an energy source and new fracked-gas infrastructure. Fracked gas leaks at every stage in extraction and piping, emitting methane, which is 86 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a 20 year period;
  • It makes no plan to phase out coal as an electricity source, even as the Hogan Administration’s draft climate plan includes data that shows electricity generated from coal continuing through 2040.
  • It is especially flawed when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the transportation sector, due to unrealistic assumptions on widespread electric vehicle adoption, dubious claims that highway widening will result in fewer emissions, and a lack of proposed strategies for reducing car travel demand.

Meanwhile, many other states have much more ambitious emissions reduction targets and are moving forward with real plans to meet those goals. Both California and New York have set 2045 and 2050 respectively as deadlines by which their entire state economies will reach net zero emissions. Those two states also join six others in setting more ambitious medium-range emissions reduction targets. For example, North Carolina plans a 40 percent reduction in 2025 (five years before Maryland), and Colorado (50 percent by 2030), Maine (51 percent by 2030), and Vermont (58 percent by 2028) each plan to far exceed Maryland’s outdated 2030 target.

It’s worth mentioning that in California specifically, that with their climate legislation, a higher percentage of spending than was mandated was spent in disadvantaged communities. Why? Because spending more in historically disadvantaged communities had a higher impact on emissions

To stay a climate leader, our law needs an update to match new science. Maryland, like most of the world, has tough work ahead in the next decade when it comes to slowing climate change.

Between worsening consequences and the closing window for action, it’s clear that the 2020’s will be The Climate Decade. In other words, we have less than 800 days of the Maryland General Assembly left to act. Each one needs to count.

The Fix: Climate Solutions Now

We need to move to 100 percent clean and renewable energy, greatly expand public transit and accelerate the conversion to electric vehicles, retrofit existing buildings and construct “zero emissions” new buildings, and sequester carbon pollution in forestry and healthy soils. We will need to do so in a way that protects workers and invests in communities that are on the frontlines of the climate crisis or have historically seen racial discrimination.

We can take the first step in that work by strengthening our climate plan in 2022. Climate Solutions Now will align our emissions reduction targets with the world’s leading science and reposition Maryland as a climate leader. It will require fixes to our state’s flawed climate plan and take some immediate climate actions, from planting millions of new trees to increasing energy efficiency. And it will lay the groundwork for an equitable transition to a new, clean economy.

Our proposed bill will:

Align Maryland’s emissions reduction requirements with the latest climate science, by increasing our 2030 emissions reduction goal from 40% to 60% based on 2006 levels and get us to net zero emissions by 2045.

Improve the Maryland Department of Environment Climate Action Plan, requiring the agency to redevelop its plan with a few changes:

      1. MDE will be prohibited from claiming emissions reductions from the widening of highways. Research has been clear that adding lanes of highway leads to induced demand, encouraging more cars on the road and increasing vehicle-based emissions.
      2. MDE will have to use a 20-year timeframe for calculating methane emissions instead of a 100-year timeframe. Methane is a relatively short-lived pollutant and gets undercounted unless measured over twenty years.
      3. MDE will prohibit the use of carbon capture and storage technology as part of the emission reduction plan.

Invest in frontline and disadvantaged communities, requiring MDE to create a Climate Justice Workgroup, made up largely of environmental justice representatives, to identify frontline and disadvantaged communities and study whether they receive an equitable portion of climate investment.

Put workers first in climate action, creating a Climate Jobs working group will bring union leaders, legislators, industry representatives, and climate advocates to the table to develop a pro-worker climate plan.

Reduce greenhouse gas pollution now with the following actions:

      • Increasing Energy Efficiency: The bill increases our electricity efficiency requirements from 2% annual rate savings to 3%, moving Maryland into the top tier of the country.
      • Electrifying State Vehicles: The bill will require 100% of new state busses to be zero emission after 2022 and 100% of light duty vehicles to be zero emission after 2024.
      • Requiring Zero Emissions Public Buildings: The bill requires all new buildings with at least 25% of their funding coming from the state to meet net zero emissions building standards. Public schools, with the exception of one of the next five in each school system, are exempted.
      • Plant 5 Million Trees: To aid carbon sequestration, the bill will require the state to plant 500,000 additional trees every year for ten years. Ten percent of those will be planted in historically redlined, underserved urban communities.
      • Boost Rooftop Solar: The bill will require all new buildings with at least 25,000 square feet of roof space to to be solar-ready.
      • Invest in Healthy Soils: The bill sends $500,000 each year to the Maryland’s Healthy Soils Program to aid soil sequestration strategies. 

Climate Solutions Now Is Funded By Fossil Fuel Fees Expanded Under the Hogan Administration

Maryland is one of eleven states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an interstate cooperative that caps carbon emissions on fossil fuel polluters and charges a fee for the allowance of exceeding the limit. In 2017, member states agreed to reduce the cap 30% by 2030, effectively charging polluters more. Under regulations implemented by the Hogan Administration, Maryland is estimated to receive $446 million in additional revenue by 2030.

Climate Solutions Now funds its immediate climate actions with annual RGGI revenue above $50 million. Right now, that’s about how much money goes to existing programs, like energy bill assistance, energy efficiency, and clean and renewable energy programs. So the bill will not take existing funding away from those programs, but instead directs new money to climate pollution reduction strategies — exactly what the RGGI revenue is meant to fund.

This is the measured, bipartisan way for Maryland to retake its mantle as a national climate leader. Let’s pass Climate Solutions Now in 2021.

READ MORE ABOUT THE CLIMATE SOLUTIONS NOW ACT OF 2022

 

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