Pennsylvania’s newest road map for slowing and adapting to climate change details, for the first time, a suite of strategies that could achieve the steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions called for by Gov. Tom Wolf and outlined in international climate pacts.
The Climate Action Plan released Wednesday describes 18 changes that would enable Pennsylvania to meet the Democratic governor’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 from 2005 levels.
To get there, Pennsylvania would have to make significant shifts in how it generates electricity, powers its cars, fuels its industry and heats its homes.
The plan is the fifth version of a report required every three years by a 2008 law that established Pennsylvania’s first statewide policy on climate change. It is meant to inform state policy and inspire action by businesses, governments and citizens, but it is not a mandate.
More than a third of the emissions cuts in the plan would come from just one of the strategies — making the state’s electric grid carbon-free by 2050 by phasing out coal and natural gas power plants, sustaining all existing nuclear plants and vastly ramping up solar, wind and battery resources.
Other strategies that would drive down emissions by large margins include energy efficiency upgrades and fuel switching at industrial plants as well as broad adoption of electric vehicles.
The carbon-free grid strategy — considered on its own — would result in the largest decrease in economic activity of all of the measured tactics, shedding about 5,300 average annual jobs and reducing disposable personal income, according to the report’s economic modeling.
Taken together, the 18 modeled strategies would increase employment by an annual average of roughly 42,000 jobs compared to business-as-usual and would continue the state’s current trajectory for economic growth but at a slightly slower rate, according to the modeling. The average annual gross state product is projected to decrease from business-as-usual by 0.01% overall.
The collective strategies would also cost less per ton of emissions reductions than not acting and having to bear the costs of more severe climate-related damage, based on a metric known as the social cost of carbon. The benchmark social cost of carbon for 2020 is $116 per metric ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent.
“As thousands of Pennsylvanians try to recover from historic flooding and tornadoes related to the remnants of Ida this month, the message is clear: We must move now out of a reactive mode on climate change,” Mr. Wolf said.
Pennsylvania is well on its way to meeting the governor’s interim goal of a 26% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions statewide by 2025 just by implementing policies underway, like joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and counting the substantial carbon benefits the state has seen in the past decade as natural gas displaced coal to generate electricity.
The plan assumes that Pennsylvania will join the greenhouse gas initiative in 2022 and remain in it through 2050.
Pennsylvania has already reduced net greenhouse gas emissions 20% between 2005 and 2017, the most recent data available because of a lag in federal figures.
But that progress is expected to plateau well short of the cuts scientists agree will be necessary internationally to limit catastrophic warming.
Under business-as-usual, Pennsylvania emissions are expected to be just 24% below 2005 levels in 2050.
Pennsylvania is a leading producer of coal, natural gas and electricity powered by fossil fuels, which makes the prospect of a clean energy transition especially daunting.
Two members of the state’s climate change advisory committee who work for the industry-backed Marcellus Shale Coalition wrote in their attached comments that the plan contains a “fatal flaw”: a failure to show how these strategies will affect emissions in other states and, more broadly, how they will benefit the climate in Pennsylvania or the world without equal action everywhere.
“When there is a reasonable basis to believe that ‘doing our part’ will make a difference, that is the time to act,” wrote Terry Bossert, general counsel for the natural gas trade group.
Several environmental groups called for the plan to be more aggressive, especially in the short term, and to tackle methane leaks from natural gas systems more directly.
Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell said Pennsylvania is one of the top five greenhouse gas emitters in the country and has an obligation to act now.
“While it’s certainly true Pennsylvania will not solve the climate change crisis on its own, the rest of the world will not solve it without us,” he said.
Laura Legere: llegere@post-gazette.com.
First Published: September 23, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: September 23, 2021, 10:23 a.m.
