The Baker administration plans to ramp up efforts to combat climate change in the next two years in a push that aims to see widespread adoption of passive-house building techniques and green HVAC technologies.
The plans were revealed in a pair of “roadmap” documents released last week for how the state will reduce its carbon emissions dramatically 10 years, and reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Negotiators from the state House of Representatives and Senate reached a deal Sunday on a major bill that would write even stricter emissions targets into law.
The bill (S.2995) would establish in state law a “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions limit for 2050 and establish statewide emissions limits every five years over the next three decades. Within that plan, the bill creates mandatory emissions sublimits for six sectors of the economy: electric power, transportation, commercial and industrial heating and cooling, residential heating and cooling, industrial processes, and natural gas distribution and service.
And within the 2050 “net zero” target, the bill says gross emissions by 2050 must fall at least 85 percent below 1990 levels. The statewide emissions limit for 2030 shall be at least 50 percent below the 1990 level, according to the bill, and the limit for 2040 must be at least 75 percent below the 1990 level. The state’s emissions are currently 22.7 percent below 1990 levels thanks to significant reductions in the electricity generation sector since the state’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act was passed in 2008.
The six-member conference committee’s report will be put before the House and Senate for up-or-down votes during the final two days of sessions for the current sitting of the General Court. All six conferees – four Democrats and two Republicans – signed off on the deal, which arrives just days before a new Legislature will be sworn in and all bills start from scratch.
Baker’s Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides had warned before the agreement was announced that aiming for anything more than a 45 percent reduction in emissions by 2030 could be prohibitively expensive and economically disruptive.
Commercial buildings and homes together account for 27 percent of the state’s carbon emissions on its own, according to state figures. Cars and trucks – both private and business-owned – make up 42 percent, with electricity generation making up 17 percent and industrial uses 5 percent. A wide variety of other, small sources make up the final 9 percent.
“While other sectors in this report are presented with an emissions range, representing both uncertainty and a greater level of program optionality, driving the most aggressive pace possible in the building sector represents a key element to position the Commonwealth to achieve Net Zero by 2050 given the slow pace of
building equipment turnover,” the 2030 roadmap says.
To meet even the Baker administration’s less aggressive goal of a 45 percent emissions reduction by 2030 will require developers of new buildings and builders of new homes to quickly adopt heating and air conditioning solutions that are not powered by heating oil or natural gas, the 2030 and 2050 roadmap documents say, thanks to the long lifespans of nearly all such equipment.
This will be especially challenging for buildings with large heating and cooling requirements, where electrically- or geothermally-driven equipment is typically more expensive than natural gas-driven equipment. When Brookline and other municipalities floated local natural gas hookup bans in late 2019, commercial real estate trade group NAIOP-MA pushed back aggressively, warning such bans would cripple development.
To achieve emissions reduction targets by 2030, the Baker administration has proposed a three-pronged strategy:
“Stretch” green building codes: These will be released this year for cities and towns to adopt on a piecemeal basis between 2022 and 2028, when they will go into effect statewide. This would encourage highly efficient “passive house” construction, reducing the energy needed to heat and cool up to half of the roughly 1 billion square feet of new commercial and residential construction expected by 2030. Downtown Boston’s Winthrop Center skyscraper uses “passive house” construction.
Incentivizing the use of heat pumps in new construction and retrofits: Similar to an air conditioner that runs in reverse, electrically-powered heat pumps would be encouraged to replace gas- and oil-fired boilers in 1 million homes and 300 million to 400 million square feet of commercial real estate as they reach the ends of their lives. The state would also look to eliminate incentives for new natural gas-powered HVAC systems in its Mass Save residential energy efficiency loan program.
Capping heating fuel emissions: The roadmaps also propose the creation of a commission that would devise a way to cap the total emissions that can be created by heating fuel, and slowly decrease that cap over time. A similar cap has worked in conjunction with pollution credit trading plans to reduce power plant carbon pollution, and Baker is eying a similar scheme to reduce transportation emissions. The commission would also look into ways to create carbon emission performance standards for commercial buildings and new financing tools to help the adoption of cleaner HVAC technologies.
Outside of the commercial and residential sectors, the most notable strategy embraced by the Baker administration in its two roadmap reports are a requirement that all new cars and passenger trucks sold in Massachusetts be zero-emission vehicles starting in 2035 and scaling up offshore wind generation by more than 15 times from the 1,600 megawatts already under contract to 25 gigawatts by 2050.
Peter Rothstein, president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, welcomed the administration’s reports and said his organization looks forward to “helping to translate these plans into policies and programs” in the new year.
“These reports detail considerable analysis and thoughtful planning undertaken by the Baker-Polito administration, and we applaud Governor Baker and Secretary Theoharides for taking these important steps to lay the foundation for how Massachusetts will achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and interim goals by 2030,” he said. “With today’s announcement of a new target of 45 percent emission reductions by 2030, the administration is taking an aggressive leadership position for the commonwealth and the Northeast.”
State House News Service contributed to this report.
