Our Communications Manager, Jamie Garuti, and Climate XChange’s Marc Breslow authored an opinion piece in Commonwealth Magazine on the newly strengthened Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, asserting that we still need carbon pricing. Here’s a sneak peek:
“Many find hope for climate progress in the recently released proposal by nine Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states to strengthen the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which has contributed to a 40 percent reduction in the region’s electricity-sector emissions since it began in 2009. The new proposal calls for cutting emissions an additional 30 percent between 2020 and 2030.
While this is an important step forward, most carbon emissions in Massachusetts come from the transportation and heating sectors, which are outside of RGGI’s scope. In order to be on track to reach the emissions reduction mandate established in the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) – an 80 percent cut by 2050 – we must reduce emissions across the entire economy approximately 20 percent between 2020 and 2030. The electricity sector reductions from RGGI will get us less than one-third of the way there, leaving other economic sectors to achieve the other two-thirds.”
