Two weeks ago, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed 11 carbon-pollution slashing bills and rolled out his plan to get the state to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050. The week before that, Maryland and New Jersey each passed laws requiring those states to get half of their electricity from renewables by 2030 while studying a path to get all of its energy from carbon-free sources in the following decades. Meanwhile, Oregon appears to be welding down a carbon cap of its own. And all this comes on the heels of laws passed over the past year in Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, and California to squeeze all the greenhouse gases from their electrical systems.
It’s a remarkable pileup.
“We couldn’t update our maps fast enough,” said Ryan Fitzpatrick deputy director of the clean energy Program at the think tank Third Way. “These states know that net zero emissions by 2050 is the goal, and there’s no time to waste. So they’re taking a minute to celebrate, then asking, ‘what’s next?’”
What’s next? Politicians in New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin are pushing their own bills to wean electricity systems off fossil fuels. And don’t forget the ever-growing list of cities — Orlando, Florida and Pueblo, Colorado, among them — that have vowed to kick their fossil-fuel addiction.
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In addition to all these state commitments, a slew of electricity-producing utilities, like Xcel, Idaho Power, and MidAmerican Energy Company have made pledges to be 100 percent carbon free by 2050. If Southern Company is able to get to “low or no carbon” by 2050 as it has promised, that puts Georgia and Alabama on the map as well.
When the Clean Air Task Force added up all these commitments, it found they cover 40 percent of the electricity produced in the United States.
Read more at Breathe Easier: States Are Passing a Buttload of Clean-Energy Bills
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