Despite the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to spur a resurgence of fossil fuel development, many state officials, along with government leaders around the world, are moving in the opposite direction as they continue to advance programs and projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The need has never been greater. Current climate modeling has underestimated future warming, said Phil Duffy, who served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Biden administration. “My mind goes to what’s called derailment risk, which is the idea that compound climate events can consume so much energy and so much attention that it becomes impossible to take the steps we need to take to address the underlying drivers of the risk,” Duffy, now chief scientist at the nonprofit Spark Climate Solutions, said during a September 22 panel at the annual Climate Week conference in New York City.
Scheduled each year to coincide with the September meetings of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, the event shares some of the international focus of the General Assembly along with local and national concerns.
This year’s sessions and announcements demonstrated how localities, cities and regions are expanding their agency in climate response, including pooling resources and building partnerships. “In recent years we have seen state and regional governments … gain increasing international recognition as climate leaders,” said Andrew Forth, head of policy and advocacy at the Climate Group.
On September 22, the US Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 US governors, announced a partnership with Climate Mayors, a group of more than 350 mayors from 47 states committed to advancing climate action.
State officials noted that despite the administration’s headwinds, U.S. states and cities are still moving forward with plans and projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and still retain significant authority to do so.
The goals of the collaboration include sharing resources to accelerate the deployment of clean energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, and build resilience to the impacts of climate change.
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Alliance Co-Chair and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson (D) said, “Together, we are a force. Working together, we can continue to make significant progress on climate, clean energy, electrification and more.”
On September 23, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Ferguson announced that Washington had reached a milestone in updating its regulatory framework, allowing the state to connect to the carbon market of California and Quebec by 2027. Together, these three jurisdictions would rank as the third largest economy in the world.
The California-Quebec carbon market has generated $13 billion since its inception, Jean Lemire, Quebec’s envoy for climate change and northern and arctic affairs, said in a separate session. “[It] put a price on pollution. That’s the key,” he said. “With the geopolitical situation, we’re not going to have a lot of money if we don’t find a way to self-fund what we do,” he added. One of the key uses of that money is to help overcome business expenses related to electrification.
The Under2Coalition, which now has more than 187 local governments, states, regions and other “sub-national governments” among its members working to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, represents 1/8 of the world’s population and more than half of its GDP. “In many places in the world it’s the subnational governments that have the powers, the laws … we have to be around the table,” Lemire said, adding that the coalition shows that subnational governments have “a real influence that will continue.” The coalition also announced a partnership with Climate Policy Radar, which creates databases and other searchable information on climate legislation and legislation, to enable sharing of effective laws and policies, such as carbon markets.
“The transition to Net-zero is a construction project”
In a panel focused on sustainable materials, particularly less carbon-intensive concrete and steel, Lisa Kaufman, senior director of the Climate Group, told attendees, “Essentially, the transition to net zero is a construction project. The climate-resilient cities of tomorrow, the walls that protect our coasts, the transmission grids that connect clean energy, all depend on steel and concrete to make this transition.”
At the same panel, Mariane Jang, senior adviser for policy, resiliency and sustainability at the New York State Office of General Services, pointed to a 2022 executive order from Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) that required state agencies to reduce the carbon incorporated in their building materials. “That’s where the opportunity for us is as a policy driver,” he said.
Since Hochul signed Executive Order 22, the state has issued several sets of guidelines to state agencies on how to reduce the levels of carbon incorporated in materials, Jang said, but added that while the state is “very motivated and very driven,” general awareness of the issue across all sectors and across the value chain would help scale the use of less carbon-intensive materials.
The Climate Group launched its Blend Better Cement campaign earlier this year, calling on governments to switch to a less carbon-intensive blended cement, which is based on supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) such as calcined clay or limestone. The campaign advocates for supportive policies such as updated building codes and works with industry to increase supply and access to SCMs, prioritizing their use in public projects.
“Working people must be at the center of climate policy and the energy transition, or we’ll be back where we started with solutions that don’t work and won’t work,” argued Jason Walsh, executive director of the labor and environmental coalition BlueGreen Alliance, in a session on how workers and environmentalists can work together to achieve climate goals. Walsh envisions the return of climate legislation that will combine emissions reduction targets with investment and benefits for workers.
One area where these goals work together is port modernization and decarbonization, said USW International President and BGA Co-President Roxanne Brown. “Labor and environmentalists can work together to make sure we test our port infrastructure here in America and build that infrastructure for the future.”
“The political opening for climate change has never been more open,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “We can say that cheapest also aligns with our work priority. Cheapest for you also aligns with solving the planetary crisis.”
While we’re still reeling from a storm that “set us back two years of the progress we were making,” Gary, Ind., Mayor Eddie Melton is gearing up for a recovery that will harden infrastructure in anticipation of future migration influenced by climate change, he said in an interview. “[The] The Midwest will be a key area where people will move from across the country because of the largest body of fresh water in the Lake Michigan area, so we need to protect that asset while balancing the needs of surrounding industry and infrastructure, including construction of a new convention center and plans for a downtown rail station to make the area more walkable.
Gary has begun to “bridge the gap” in the relationship between the city and US partner Nippon Steel, “advocating for a green steelmaking process that is more energy efficient, cleaner, because we know that the steelmaking process is something we need as a nation.”
