Tough Road Ahead as R.I. Prepares to Update its Climate Action Strategy

Trump is wiping out funding and programs to fight climate change

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

When state environmental officials dug into working on the state’s climate roadmap in 2024, they were feeling pretty optimistic about Rhode Island’s climate goals, for good reason.

The Biden administration was dolling out billions and billions in federal dollars, via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) for environmental and other sustainable projects they had never done before, and the previous year’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory revealed Rhode Island cleared its 2020 carbon reduction goal without breaking a sweat.

But in the 12 months since state officials began work on Rhode Island’s 2025 climate action strategy, the world looks much different. Since the second Trump administration took power last year, the federal government has rescinded or withdrawn much of the money it was handing out to Rhode Island’s government, nonprofits, and other entities, and rolled back many environmental protections or powers given to the states.

“The whole federal landscape has changed 180 degrees since the Trump administration,” said Terry Gray, director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and chair of the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4), the state’s lead agency on climate response. “It’s creating huge challenges at the state level. Housing, environment, energy, food, everything that the states do not have the resources to fill in the gaps created by the federal government.

“We’re working with a coalition of other states that are all in the same boat, and we’re looking at different alternatives, different ways to still move forward and meet our climate goals.”

The hostile new federal administration, as well as the region’s persistently high energy costs, temper much of the 142-page climate action document released by the EC4 last year. The plan was part of a mandate from the Act on Climate law: lower the state’s carbon emissions and provide scenarios of how the state can do it.

But transitioning away from fossil fuels — adopting electric vehicles, switching to heat pumps and renewable sources for electricity — come at growing cost for Rhode Islanders, especially without the kind of federal incentives environment agencies got used to under former President Biden.

While utility costs have slightly declined since their 2022 high, the year state regulators approved a 47% rate hike from Rhode Island Energy, energy prices have not come down to pre-2022 levels. The average utility bill using 500 kilowatt-hours in 2017 cost around $100 a month. In 2025, that same utility bill will exceed $150.

“Customers are going to have to be comfortable with transitioning everything to electricity, and that prices are stable, and that they’re affordable or they’re not going to [accept] heat pumps or EVs or anything else,” Gray said.

The state’s new strategy primarily lays out two different scenarios. The first is one where Rhode Island continues the current programs it has to spur EV adoption, heat pumps, and other carbon-neutral technology to homes and businesses.

If everything remains the same, Rhode Island’s emissions will continue to go down, that’s the good news, but not fast enough to meet the net-zero by 2050 mandates required by the Act on Climate law. By 2050 under the current policy scenario, Rhode Island will only succeed at reducing its emissions 71% below the 1990 base levels used to measure greenhouse gas reductions.

That amount is enough to get Rhode Island to meet its 2030 benchmark goals, but none of the other benchmark targets in the Act on Climate.

“If you look at the programs we put in place in Rhode Island from 2021 to 2024, we were clearly on a path that would have resulted in us meeting the mandate we need to by the end of this decade,” Gray said. “All the pieces are there.”

The second scenario lays out a pathway to reduce emissions to net-zero by 2050, and it’s a steep climb. Carbon fuels are deeply embedded into the state’s economy, as reflected in the annual greenhouse gas emissions inventories produced by DEM. Electricity is mostly squared away via the state’s renewable energy standard, which mandates by 2033 100% of electricity sold in the state must come from renewable sources.

Transportation and buildings account for two-thirds of all emissions. Transportation emissions account for 37% of all greenhouse gas emissions produced in Rhode Island, according to DEM’s latest greenhouse gas inventory released in November. Residential, commercial, and industrial buildings account for another 32.6%.

For transportation, that means personal vehicles. Rhode Island would have to register 13,000 new passenger EVs this year alone, a tall task given that the federal government is ending the tax incentives for purchasing an EV.

In 2027, the state would have to register another 23,000 EVs to keep on track for its net-zero climate goals. In 2028, the number will increase to 27,000. By 2030 the state needs to be registering 36,000 new EVs to meet the goals of the Act on Climate, at a time when most basic EVs start out at much higher prices than gasoline-powered cars.

“The cost of an electric vehicle is higher than the cost of an internal combustion vehicle,” Gray said. “There’s a differential there that has to be absorbed by the customer. Some of that could be offset by tax credits or incentives, but there’s still a cost differential there.”

EVs, in particular, are going to be tricky. DEM passed new regulatory rules, Advanced Clean Cars II and Advanced Clean Trucks, in 2024, phasing out sales of new gas-powered cars starting in 2035. Rhode Island piggybacked off California, a state that for decades has had a special waiver from the federal government to have its own, stricter emission standards for cars.

But Congress last year voted to rescind California’s, and by extension, Rhode Island’s and other states’ stricter emission standards. Gray said Rhode Island is litigating the case, but for now has started working with auto dealers in Rhode Island directly to come up with a replacement approach.

Exponential heat pump installations and sales is another area in which the state will have to break records annually to meet the Act on Climate mandates. Last year the state sold 3,064 heat pumps, according to data from the Clean Heat Rhode Island program, which provides financial incentives to homeowners and businesses to install heat pumps in buildings.

This year, the state will have to see at least 5,600 heat pump sales. Next year it will have to increase to 8,900, and that number will have to double by 2030, to 15,000 heat pump sales a year to meet the Act on Climate mandates.

The plan identifies more than two dozen recommendations and next steps the state government can take in the years ahead. The actions include continued investments into energy efficiency programs, heat pump incentives, and codifying Gov. Dan McKee’s executive order on leading by example for state agencies.

Gray said the EC4 will be busy in the coming months and years to implement the plan. The agency is currently close to finalizing its coastal resilience plan, as mandated by the Act on Coasts, and expects to move that up for a vote in February after a public comment period this month. After that, said Gray, he wants to hone in on the public comments received on the climate action strategy, focusing on some of the policy ideas and implementation areas.

As DEM director, Gray said he wants the department to start working toward some of the lead-by-example actions taken by other agencies, installing LED lighting, performing energy audits, and the weatherization of office buildings around the state.

And there’s always a new climate action strategy to look forward to, as it’s required to be updated every five years, with progress reports due annually.

“We’re not going to be sitting back and coasting off the plan for five years,” Gray said. “There’s a lot we want to get done.”