Janine Weisman: States can grow their economies AND cut emissions

How New England’s six states have done in reducing climate emissions and growing the economy, according to data from a recent World Resources Institute report.
— Janine Weisman/ecoRI News

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

All the New England states have cut their energy-related carbon emissions while growing their economies in the past two decades, according to a new analysis that offers proof that climate action can actually be a good return on investment.

For years, the narrative about low-carbon technologies such as wind and solar power was that their high costs and subsidies couldn’t compete with fossil fuels. But renewable-energy storage technologies have improved and dropped precipitously in price while jobs in this sector have been growing at a faster pace than overall employment. That has made low-carbon technologies competitive with conventional fossil fuels, which are heavily subsidized, and also good for the economy, according to the 66-page white paper released in July by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

“There’s a lot of myths that are out there about climate change and we wanted to debunk some of those myths,” said the paper’s co-author Joel Jaeger, a research associate in WRI’s Climate Program.

The rapid deployment of wind and solar power, a shift from coal to natural gas in the power sector, and progress in vehicle-emissions standards helped drive a 12 percent drop in U.S. carbon emissions from 2005 to 2018, during which the nation’s Gross domestic product (GDP) increased 25 percent, according to the organization’s research.

“This is not just a year here or there — this is sustained transformation of the world’s largest economy,” according to the report.

The Washington, D.C.-based global research nonprofit ranked 41 states and the District of Columbia that have decoupled their emissions from economic growth during the 12 years studied. The list covers states both large and small in all major geographical regions. Nine other states, however, saw their emissions grow over that period of time, though much slower than state GDP in most cases.

Rhode Island cut carbon emissions by 10 percent between 2005 and 2017 at the same time its GDP increased 1 percent, according to the report’s data.

Rhode Island ranked 37th, trailing the other five New England states. New Hampshire, which cut carbon emissions by 37 percent while growing its GDP 15 percent, led the region and ranked second in the nation after Maryland, according to the report.

Massachusetts ranked 12th nationwide with a 25 percent emissions decrease and a 26 percent increase in GDP. Connecticut in 16th place saw a 24 percent emissions decrease and a 0.5 percent increase in GDP.

“Rhode Island is in many ways one of the leaders on climate action, even though it doesn’t appear that way on this decoupling metric,” Jaeger said. He noted that the smallest state has the lowest per capita energy consumption.

“Decoupling is measuring progress,” he said. “Rhode Island, it’s actually harder for it to make progress because it was already on the leading edge of having lower emissions.”

Rhode Island is among the 25 states that joined the U.S. Climate Alliance to uphold the Paris Agreement goals of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Participating states have grown their GDP per capita twice as fast and have reduced their emissions per capita faster than the rest of the country, according to the alliance’s 2019 annual report. Every New England state except New Hampshire is an alliance member.

If the WRI analysis had studied the decade from 2004 to 2014, Rhode Island would have been in the top 10, said Kenneth Payne, an energy and regional planning policy expert who served as head of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources from 2010 to 2011.

In 2004, the General Assembly enacted a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) initially set to achieve 16 percent renewable energy by 2019 and later updated in 2016 with a statewide target of 38.5 percent renewable energy by 2035. Then, in 2014, the Resilient Rhode Island Act set an aspirational goal of reducing the state’s climate emissions by 45 percent by 2035.

But the political mood has changed along with federal support, according to Payne.

“Maybe I would describe it as, ’Well we’ve done enough for now. Let’s see how it works,’” he said. “And that’s putting it generously.”

With its less carbon-intensive service economy and low manufacturing output, Rhode Island already has low emissions per capita, making it challenging to continue achieving significant reductions, according to University of Rhode Island assistant professor in environmental and natural resource economics Simona Trandafir. Other states with energy-intensive heavy industry have higher baseline emissions and significantly more decarbonization opportunities, she noted.

“Those states have begun to take the lowest hanging fruit and they’re making huge emissions reductions because they switched from coal to natural gas, which we’ve been free of coal for several years,” Trandafir said. “For us it’s really hard right now, because we’re already the best.”

There are, however, two significant areas where Rhode Island could improve when it comes to reducing climate emissions. The transportation sector accounts for about 40 percent of the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Heating homes and businesses generates about 30 percent of Rhode Island's carbon emissions. Getting individual motorists out of their vehicles by improving public transit and switching from high-polluting oil- and natural gas-fired furnaces and hot-water systems to heat pumps and carbon-neutral replacement fuels would go a long way to further curbing the state’s climate-changing emissions.

WRI cited Rhode Island and Massachusetts along with Illinois and Washington, D.C., for providing incentives for low- and moderate-income households to access community solar programs.

Janine Weisman is an EcoRI News contributor.