Most states plan to cut planet-warming pollution from the building sector but have fewer ideas for how to tackle industrial emissions.
Those are some of the takeaways from clean energy advocates and experts who have been combing through the climate plans that 45 states, plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., submitted to EPA under President Joe Biden’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program. The $4.3 billion competition was created in the Inflation Reduction Act to spur local and state climate policy.
EPA offered every state $3 million to create a climate plan, which states can then use as a basis to apply for up to $500 million to implement their ideas. All but five states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, South Dakota and Wyoming — are participating in the competition, and EPA is expected to announce the winners this summer.
Every single climate plan included at least one proposal for the building sector, according to a joint analysis by Evergreen, RMI and Climate XChange, which collectively reviewed about 6,800 pages of state climate plans.
