LPDD January Newsletter — Model Climate Laws Initiative

IRA Funding Webinar

On January 23rd, LPDD will be co-sponsoring a webinar with the New York State Bar Association, What Municipalities Need to Know to Apply to USEPA's $4.3B Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program was established under Section 60114 of the Inflation Reduction Act, and provides funding to states, local governments, tribes, and territories to develop and implement ambitious plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollution.

Panelists will include:

Lisa Garcia, USEPA Region 2 Regional Administrator
Matthew Laurita, USEPA Region 2, Deputy Director, Air & Radiation
Maureen Leddy, NYSDEC, Director, Office of Climate Change
Peggy Shepard, Executive Director, WE ACT For Environmental Justice/EPA Region 2 Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center

The webinar is aimed at state and local municipal officials at all levels, including cities, towns, villages and counties, and municipal attorneys. While the content is targeted towards New York, relevant lessons will be provided for all jurisdictions.

Registration is free at this link, or via the QR code on this poster.

For more context, LPDD has consolidated past EPA webinars on accessing funds under the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program. Links to these other webinar recordings and materials are available here.

New External Resources

modelclimatelaws.org is being continually updated with new, external legal resources. Below is a selection of recently added resources:

Massachusetts Gas Transition Order: In December, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) issued a sweeping Order to move the state's utilities away from natural gas. The Order prohibits gas utilities from charging customers for new gas infrastructure if there are viable alternatives, and from using ratepayer money to "promote" natural gas. The Order also changes the existing cost recovery process that incentivizes adding new gas customers. Beginning in 2025, gas utilities are required to submit "Climate Compliance" plans every five years to ensure that they're sufficiently working to eliminate emissions and electrify. They are also required to develop “climate compliance performance metrics” in their Performance Based Ratemaking filings. As an initial step on the issue of depreciation of natural gas assets, the Order directs all gas utilities to conduct a forecast of the potential magnitude of stranded investments, and to identify the impacts of accelerated depreciation proposals, as well as potential alternatives to accelerated depreciation.
Seattle's Building Emissions Performance Standard: Under Seattle's new BEPS, signed into law in December, all existing commercial and multifamily residential buildings over 20,000 square feet will need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Compliance starts in 2027 with reporting requirements that quantify building emissions, followed by emissions targets requirements by 2031. Emissions targets will thereafter lower on a five-year basis until hitting net-zero in 2050. Meeting that target will effectively require building owners to replace oil- and gas-powered furnaces, water heaters, stoves and other appliances with electric alternatives like heat pumps and induction stoves. Some commentators have stated that this stringent BEPS provides Seattle a new route to effectively ban gas appliances, after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the nation's first gas ban in Berkeley, CA.
USDA's Proposed Old Growth Forest Protections: In a notice published in theFederal Register in December, the Agriculture Department said it will direct all land management plans for units of the National Forest System to adopt an “adaptive strategy” to protect old-growth forests, which would include new restrictions on timber harvesting and other policies. The proposal does allow cutting of trees in old-growth areas to allow for “proactive stewardship,” or as part of a broader plan to conserve such areas, but prohibits it for "the primary purpose of growing, tending, harvesting or regeneration of trees for economic reasons." Old growth forests are considered an exceptionally important carbon sink. Of the old-growth forest remaining in the U.S., 46 percent is on federal lands, according to a 2023 inventory completed in preparation of this proposal.
New York's "City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality" Initiative: The New York City Council approved its “City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality” Initiative in December, enacting a set of citywide zoning changes making it easier to install a variety of distributed energy resources, perform building retrofits, install EV charging, and more. The Initiative includes 17 policies, including opening up over 8,500 acres of parking lots across the city for the potential installation of solar panels, easing wall height and thickness restrictions that hinder building electrification and retrofit efforts, and more than doubling commercially zoned land where EV charging facilities can be located. Energy storage systems received a sweeping zoning update, and can now be used in residential districts on sites up to 10,000 square feet and without size limits in commercial and manufacturing districts. The zoning changes also allow solar parking canopies up to 15 feet high over all parking areas and allow building owners to add solar energy systems on roofs irrespective of height limitations. A project description and annotated zoning text amendment are available at the LPDD resource listing.
Powering Up Californians Act: Facing challenges with the pace of building out the electric grid, California's recently passed SB 410, requiring the California Public Utilities Commission to set target timelines for utilities to connect and upgrade customers to the grid, report on compliance with those timelines, and set deadlines and penalties for utilities that do not meet them. It also orders the CPUC to include state and local government air quality, transportation and building electrification plans and workforce development needs in those plans. Finally, the law requires utilities to take broader cognizance of climate policies in their system planning, including state transportation and building electrification policies. The legislation is being touted by EV charging advocates as a national model for jurisdictions struggling to expand electric service in a timely manner.
Newest States Adopting Advanced Clean Cars II: In December, New Jersey and Delaware officially adopted California's Advanced Clean Cars II rule. Starting in model year 2027, vehicle manufacturers are required to sell an increasing number of zero-emission vehicles, ramping up to 100 percent of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2035.

In the News

Sometimes, we come across news stories that highlight the value of the resources we already promote at modelclimatelaws.org. Here are a few:

New Mexico recently announced the creation of its first green bank, which will be eligible to receive money from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction fund established under the Inflation Reduction Act. States looking to follow suit can borrow from our model green bank state and local legislation.
A NOAA report from December found that the Arctic experienced its warmest summer on record this year. NOAA’s latest update to its Arctic Report Card found that air temperatures in 2023 overall were the sixth-highest on record, with sea ice levels also sitting at their sixth lowest since 1979. LPDD has published a trio of model laws on Arctic shipping focused largely on reducing black carbon emissions, which contribute to accelerating Arctic melting.
Fortune reports on the lackluster market for used EVs worldwide. LPDD has published federal and state income tax credit legislation to boost the used alternative fuel vehicle market.

Get Involved!

Not sure how to support our work? Check out our Get Involved page to see the many avenues by which lawyers can join us, and get in contact!

This update highlights and summarizes recent additions to the Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization (LPDD) website, which houses actual and model laws addressing the causes of climate change in the United States.

The Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization Model Law Project (LPDD-MLP) is a pro bono effort to draft model laws for use by legislators at the federal, state and local levels to support their efforts to achieve deep reductions in fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. The project is based on recommendations from the groundbreaking book Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States (Michael Gerrard and John C. Dernbach, eds., 2019). The work is supported by Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Widener University Commonwealth Law School’s Environmental Law and Sustainability Center. Dozens of law firms and individual lawyers are contributing to this pro-bono effort as drafters, peer reviewers or in reaching out to policymakers.

Our website, modelclimatelaws.org, contains 80 model laws that are a starting place for discussion and collaboration among elected officials, non-profit groups, and the private sector for enabling the U.S. to address climate change by reducing U.S. GHG emissions to zero by 2050 or earlier. The site includes several Top 10 lists for some of the key categories, like electric vehicles, PUC’s, buildings and other topics as a short-hand introduction. In addition, the site references hundreds of other actions that states and other governmental bodies have taken to move towards decarbonization more rapidly. By providing policymakers the tools to achieve deep decarbonization, the Project will help achieve a restructuring of the energy economy, thus alleviating the worst effects of climate change, which are disproportionately suffered by marginalized communities, while providing such positive benefits as economic security, social equity, and environmental justice (EJ).

Please contact us to talk about getting involved in drafting and peer reviewing legislation, to provide suggestions and feedback on the drafts and to talk about how we can help you support your climate change efforts.