Transportation & Climate Change Overview
November 13, 2017
When we focus on Boston’s transportation needs, it’s often in the context of congestion or delays on the T. However, as we passed the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy and watched large portions of the East & Gulf Coasts and Caribbean experience a devastating year of storms, the impacts of climate change loom large over a sea-level coastal metropolis like Boston.
In 2008, the Massachusetts’ legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), which set statewide Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets of 25% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 (over a 1990 baseline). Last year, the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth ruled that those targets are legal mandates, further underscoring the need for widespread action.
Over the past decade, Massachusetts has worked aggressively to address emissions from the energy sector—what was then the single-largest source of our state’s emissions. The Commonwealth helped to launch the nation’s first mandatory market-based program to reduce climate pollution from power plants across 13 states, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and established a suite of incentives and standards that has led our state to be ranked the most energy efficient state in the country for seven consecutive years.
Due in large part to our participation in the RGGI cap-and-invest program, emissions in the electricity sector have dropped by almost 50% since 2008. Proceeds from that program are invested in programs including energy efficiency, clean and renewable energy, greenhouse gas abatement, and direct bill assistance to further drive down emissions. As of 2017, the transportation sector now represents the lion share of our state’s carbon pollution, and tackling that with the same vigor and ingenuity as we did the power sector needs to be a crucial focus of the Baker Administration. In order to stay on track to meet our GWSA goals, we must cut our statewide emissions by 45% by 2030 and the transportation sector may provide the next low-hanging fruit.
Unfortunately, we have not been nearly as effective in reducing emissions from the transportation sector as we have in the electric power sector. In fact, we still emit about the same amount of carbon from vehicles that we did in 1990. And, because of our success in reducing power plant emissions, pollution from cars and trucks now makes up almost 50% of all of our current emissions.
The benefits from reducing GHG emissions are many; in Massachusetts alone, pollution reduction as a result of implementing RGGI has already saved as much as $798 million in avoided health costs (and counting).
The state is taking notice and Governor Baker has tasked his administration with addressing the challenge of reducing GHG emissions from the transportation sector. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) have commenced a series of Climate and the Transportation Sector Listening Sessions to help them identify the best state and regional strategies aimed at:
- Reducing transportation sector emissions;
- Increasing deployment of zero emission vehicles;
- Increasing the resilience of our transportation infrastructure in the face of a changing climate;
- Designing solutions with environmental justice communities in mind.
Massachusetts has also joined 12 other Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states in the Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI), a collaboration working to identify regional policies that advance the transition to a clean, efficient transportation system. Initial analysis conducted for TCI shows that a regional carbon pricing policy, like a cap-and-invest program similar to RGGI but for the transportation sector, could add billions of dollars to the regional economy, and produce revenue that could be used for electric vehicle incentives, improvements to the T and expanding access to clean, efficient mobility options in underserved communities.
A Better City serves on the Implementation Advisory Committee of the GWSA and is working alongside the Baker Administration to help determine the best solutions for our region and our businesses. We are confident that our innovative region has the tools to mitigate the damaging transportation emissions effects and provide a healthier, more equitable and efficient mobility system for the challenges that lay ahead.
Authored by: Kathryn Carlson, Director of Transportation
kcarlson@abettercity.org
