Connecticut will team up with eight other states and Washington, D.C. to design policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions from cars, trucks and other transport vehicles, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced.
The Transportation Climate Initiative, of which Connecticut has been a member since 2012, will work over the next year to develop a proposal that could be implemented across the region, which could include a cap-and-invest or other pricing program for carbon, officials said. The proceeds could be invested in low-carbon and resilient transportation infrastructure.
Other states that have joined the Transportation Climate Initiative include Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.
Goals, according to the group, include “reducing climate changing pollution, creating economic opportunity, and improving transportation equity for currently underserved and overburdened populations.”
“Do not be fooled by the climate change deniers in Washington, climate change is real and if we do not take significant action now to reduce carbon emissions the harm to our economy, communities, and the planet will be irrevocable,” Malloy said in a statement.
Connecticut has enshrined its carbon commitments into law, including a 2008 requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 2001 levels by 2050. Earlier this year, at the behest of the Governor’s Council on Climate Change (which Malloy created in 2015), state lawmakers committed to a mid-term reduction target, of 45 percent below 2001 levels by 2030.
To meet those ambitious targets, the transportation sector — which is the single largest source of emissions in the state — will be key.
“Dropping 0.3 percent since 1990 and 13 percent since 2001, further transportation emission reductions are critical to meeting the state’s targets,” the climate change council said in a newly released final report this week.
The council’s report calls for various strategies that would lower emissions in the transportation, power plant, and building sectors, including implementing an economy-wide price on carbon.
The full report can be viewed here.
Connecticut’s largest reduction in emissions, 24.7 percent from 2001 to 2016, has occurred in the power plant sector.
Part of that drop has been due to a cap-and-invest program called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which includes Connecticut and many of the same states now preparing to develop a potentially similar program for transportation emissions.
