Massachusetts Regulations: Climate

 Greenhouse Gasses

This Act amends the state's Global Warming Solutions Act and directs state agencies to set interim economy-wide greenhouse gas emission limits for certain sectors every five years. It codifies the state's long-term emissions limit of net-zero emissions by 2050 and directs the adoption of 2030 and 2040 emissions limits of at least 50% and 75%, respectively, below 1990 levels. The Act also increases Renewable Portfolio Standard requirements, directs the creation of a municipal opt-in energy building code, addresses environmental justice protections, and directs the procurement of an additional 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind by 2027.

 Resiliency and Climate Change Adaptation

This legislation will accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.

 Slow, Stop, and Reverse the Loss of Natural and Working Lands Carbon

Massachusetts's natural and workings lands (NWL) are currently absorbing more carbon than they emit, and their protection from permanent conversion to non-NWL uses is crucial to the administration's climate strategy. Massachusetts is losing several thousand acres of NWL, particularly forests, each year, threatening the essential role of these lands as a net carbon sink and provider of key ecosystem services.