Dear Neighbors:
I hope you are looking forward to our expected return to warmer temperatures tomorrow, which should help us recover from last weekend’s snow storm. In this letter, I describe this year’s expected review of the Act on Climate.
A. The 2025 Climate Action Strategy
In 2021, the General Assembly passed (and the Governor signed) the Act on Climate, which set a timetable to reduce Rhode Island’s greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” by 2050. It created the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) to develop an implementation plan. EC4 published a Climate Action Strategy at the end of last year. The Strategy contained greenhouse gas emissions models, one of which concluded that the State’s current policies placed Rhode Island on track to reach the emission reduction standard for 2030, but that additional policies needed to be implemented to meet the reductions called for in 2040 and 2050.
B. Criticisms Of The Climate Action Strategy
The Appendix to the Climate Action Strategy includes comments by advocates, who question the Strategy’s ability to achieve the reduction standards. The Strategy places near-exclusive reliance on the success of certain existing programs whose viability is facing severe challenges. For example, the Strategy assumes a dramatic growth in the sale of electric cars in trucks beginning this year, but those assumptions were based on the continuation of federal subsidies and mandates that have been eliminated by statute or executive order. There is still a chance that court challenges will revive some of these measures, but the Strategy lacks redundancy and/or alternative policies to implement should some of these key pillars be knocked out.
C. The Governor’s Budget
1. Extending The Renewable Energy Standard Timeline
As noted in last week’s letter, the Governor’s budget includes an “affordability agenda” proposal to reduce utility rates by an average of $15 per month by scaling back some of renewable energy programs that are added to electric bills, including a proposal to dilute the “renewable energy standard.” Under current law and policy, Rhode Island currently is required to obtain 100% of its electricity supply by renewable sources by 2033, but the Governor’s budget would extend that deadline to 2050.
2. Resulting Impact On The Act On Climate
As described in a presentation that EC4 made to the Senate Study Commission last Wednesday, this extension would effectively disembowel the entire Act On Climate. Simply stated, the Act on Climate’s overall plan to reduce emissions in every sector (transportation, industry, building heating and cooling and energy generation) consists of a two-step process. First, each of these sectors must convert their energy source from fossil fuels (gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, etc.) to electricity. Second, the generation of electricity must be converted from a mix of fossil fuels and renewable sources to exclusively renewable energy. For example, even if we succeed in transforming the great majority of cars on the road from gasoline power to electric power, that change alone will not reduce emissions reductions significantly, unless we also change the source of the electric power from fossil fuels (mainly natural gas) to renewables (hydropower, wind and solar).
3. Other Paths To Affordability
A recent Providence Journal article included this Chart obtained from the Public Utilities Commission identifying the components of a typical Rhode Islander’s electric bill in recent years. The chart indicates that renewable energy programs added $20 to the typical bill in 2025, but that the overall bill declined by almost $15 due to a reduction in the cost of supplying the energy. As noted in last week’s letter, we may see another reduction in the coming year once the Revolution Wind turbine farm goes online. I am hoping we will be able to estimate that anticipated savings through the model that the EC4 developed.
4. Next Steps
Over the next two Wednesdays, the Senate Act On Climate Study Commission will hold two hearings to receive presentations and testimony from stakeholders and experts. The first will take place on Wednesday, February 4 at 4:00 p.m., at which time the Commission will hear from Timmons Roberts (EC4 Science and Technical Advisory Board), Tina Munter (Green Energy Consumers Alliance) and Mike Stenhouse (RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity).