Posted on November 16, 2012 by Stephen Leonard
Massachusetts’ ambitious plan to address greenhouse gas emissions on a state-wide basis attracted private money last month to measure its success and costs. Boston-based Barr Foundation’s grant of $230,000 will establish a “performance management tool” to track and measure the success of initiatives undertaken under Massachusetts’ Global Warming Solutions Act (“GWSA”). Supporters expect it to “serve as a national and regional model that other states can adopt to analyze” their own greenhouse gas reduction efforts. The GWSA, enacted in 2008, requires extremely ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions within Massachusetts in the coming decades: an 80% emissions reduction goal by 2050 and 10-25% by 2020 from a 1990 emissions baseline The act directed the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs to set the 2020 reductions and adopt a plan for achieving them.
The planning and regulatory documents issued since enactment recognize that the success of a single state’s effort to address the causes of climate change cannot be measured by the impact of its own reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in effecting changes in the global climate. The effect will simply be too small to measure. Instead,the state’s plan touts the beneficial effects of spurring economic development through the encouragement of green energy and other high tech businesses, the reduction of localized pollution, and the stabilization of energy prices. The success of the program in “bending the curve” of rising greenhouse gas emissions, however, rests entirely on its ability to serve as an example to other political entities – states mainly but, ultimately, geopolitical entities through broader global participation.
In December 2010, the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs released the Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2020 setting the reduction target at 25% below 1990 baseline. The Executive Summary summarizes reductions anticipated from existing and expected programs (table at page 6). Policies relating to Buildings (9.8% or more than one third of the 25% reduction), Electricity (7.7%) and Transportation (7.6%) account for the vast majority of the reductions. Within each sector, reductions are characterized as either “Existing Policy” (e.g., Federal and California vehicle efficiency and GHC standards – 2.6% reduction), “Expanded Policy” (e.g., advanced building energy codes – 1.6% reduction), or “New Policy” (e.g., Green DOT, the Massachusetts’ transportation agencies fulfillment of their sustainability commitment – 1.2% reduction). The Barr Foundation’s grant will help create the “dashboard” that presumably will take into account the likelihood of adoption of new programs or the expansion of existing ones and the ultimate efficacy of any of the programs, as it tracks the progress of the Massachusetts program.
Efforts to track the success of the Massachusetts program will build on the work done by MassINC, a Boston-based “independent think tank” that earlier this year released a book-length report titled “Rising to the Challenge/Assessing the Massachusetts Response to Climate Change.” This very thoughtful work looks specifically at Massachusetts’ progress to date and likely future success in emission reductions in various sectors; it provides useful capsule descriptions of other state’s programs and of regional and foreign initiatives. And it discusses the crucial issue of the economic costs and benefits of the program, as that will be a prime determinant of the program’s ability to be a role model for other jurisdictions.
The MassINC report recognizes that data on the subject of economic costs and benefits are subject to extremely complex and differing interpretations. The report notes there is general agreement in Massachusetts that “it is desirable to reduce greenhouse gases and develop clean energy [,] it is more difficult to reach consensus when the subject turns to the cost of addressing climate change ….” Id. at 75. Nonetheless, a convincing explanation of the specific costs and benefits of various courses of action is a necessary component of any successful program because the ultimate effectiveness of a state’s program rests on its attractiveness as a model for other jurisdictions – including those with different views of the appropriate tradeoffs between environmental protection and economic development.
Tags: Massachusetts, GWSA, Barr Foundation, climate change, Regulation, Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)
Air | Climate | Emissions | Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) | Regulation | State