Despite Trump, State-Level Climate Progress Will Continue — or Even Accelerate

Even before President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House next Monday, California got ahead of things. Anticipating more of the federal meddling they’d seen in the past, like when Trump’s first administration tried to block the state’s vehicle emissions standards, lawmakers met in a special session to start preparing a defense of its progressive civil rights, reproductive freedom, and climate policies.

The incoming president brings renewed threats to climate progress. Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax. During his first term, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and rolled back more than 100 environmental rules. In his second term, Trump has signaled he would attack Joe Biden’s climate policies any way he can, increase fossil fuel production, and stymie the expansion of renewable energy.

Yet he may not be as successful as he hopes, because states will once again take action. Their efforts, often led by California, have among other things pushed utilities to move away from fossil fuels, limited tailpipe emissions, and mandated energy-efficiency rules for buildings. It’s here, at the state level, where climate progress will continue, or even accelerate, in the years ahead.

“The way that our federalism works is, states have quite a lot of power to take action to both reduce carbon pollution and to protect residents from climate impacts,” said Wade Crowfoot, head of California’s Natural Resources Agency. “So regardless of who is president, states like California have been driving forward and will continue to drive forward.”

Such action occurred regularly in Trump’s first term. In 2017, a bipartisan coalition of governors launched the U.S. Climate Alliance to collaborate on policies to address the crisis. That coalition now includes two dozen states that are chasing 10 priorities, including reducing greenhouse gases, setting more efficient building standards, and advancing environmental justice.

“Governors have filled the void left by President Trump before, and are absolutely prepared to do it again,” said Casey Katims, executive director of the alliance. “A change in federal leadership really underscores the importance of state and local action over the next four years.” Governors have a strong mandate, too: A 2017 poll found that 66 percent of Americans think that in the absence of federal climate action, it’s their state’s responsibility to step in.

States have had additional reasons to ramp up their efforts: The Biden administration’s landmark climate legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, provided $369 billion for clean energy tax credits along with other climate and energy programs. It also pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into industries involved in the green economy, like renewable energy.

While Trump has promised to rescind the law’s remaining funding, 85 percent of the investments stemming from the act, and 68 percent of the jobs created, have gone to Republican districts across the country, including in states he won, such as Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada. That legislation is expected to help create over 300,000 jobs in clean energy. Trump has also said he’ll stop the construction of new wind farms, but the top four states for wind generation — Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are solidly red and unlikely to acquiesce.

Even those who voted against the IRA are now seeing green. In August, 18 House Republicans urged Speaker Mike Johnson not to slash the law’s clean energy credits, because of the benefits their constituents are receiving. “Energy tax credits have spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country — including many districts represented by members of our conference,” they wrote in a statement. “A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

Chelsea Henderson of the group republicEn, which strives to engage conservatives on climate change, pointed to states like Tennessee and Alabama welcoming EV manufacturing as evidence that conservatives are already invested. “I think, because there is money to be made on solving climate change through innovation and technology, that it will happen,” she said.

Ultimately, the amount of money available to advance the green economy may be too much for any state to resist. “Those are jobs and those are investments that are going on in communities, whether they’re red or blue or purple,” said Matt Petersen, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. “That’s something that for a governor, a legislature, when push comes to shove, are they really going to want that to go away?”

Beyond his efforts to roll back the IRA, Trump is expected to take aim at electric vehicle mandates and state efforts to restrict tailpipe emissions. California — which would have the world’s fifth largest economy if it were a country — wields particular influence over the automobile market. The state has long regulated tailpipe emissions, but the first Trump administration barred the state from doing so, a move the Biden administration subsequently overturned. Even while Trump was still in office in 2019, BMW, Ford, Honda, and Volkswagen signed a voluntary agreement recognizing the state’s legal authority to set its own standard. In March, Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep, formally committed to accelerate the adoption of zero-emission vehicles even if the state “is unable to enforce its standards as a result of judicial or federal action.”

What happens in California hasn’t stayed there, either; 17 states and the District of Columbia have adopted its tailpipe standards. If automakers agree to follow California’s rules, those cars will be sold nationwide. “It’s this ripple effect,” Petersen said.

Other robust state-level climate policies have advanced in the last year. In Massachusetts, for example, lawmakers approved a climate bill in November that puts guardrails on gas pipelines, streamlines renewables, and allows gas utilities to use geothermal energy — which enjoys bipartisan support, unlike wind and solar. Voters in Washington rejected a challenge to a landmark law that’s raised money to fight climate change. And California voters signed off on $10 billion to fund climate projects.

And despite the incoming Trump administration’s promises to ramp up fossil fuel production, states could spur still more climate action, Jay Inslee, who was governor of Washington until today, said during a press conference at COP29 in November. “I can say this unequivocally,” said Inslee, who leads America Is All In, a coalition of private and governmental leaders fighting climate change. “We know that despite the election of Donald Trump, the incredible momentum, the incredible dynamic growth, the incredible political support that preexisted his previous administration will continue, and will continue unabated.”

States have also provided residents with tax credits and rebates to buy an EV or electrify their homes with ever more efficient appliances. Heat pumps, for example, now outsell gas furnaces. Maine announced in 2023 that it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 of the appliances two years ahead of schedule, thanks in large part to state rebates. Trump could hamper IRA funding for such systems, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop states from picking up the slack. “Maine was doing this in a time period before the federal government was really engaging with more potential ways to fund it,” said Hannah Pingree, co-chair of the Maine Climate Council and director of the state’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future. “We’ve been using lots of creative means to do it.” Maine aims to install another 170,000 heat pumps by 2027.

Even states that have until recently lagged behind climate leaders are getting on board, including Midwestern states once dependent on fuels like coal. Michigan lawmakers, for example, passed sweeping bills in 2023, leveraging narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate to set goals including a 100 percent clean energy standard by 2040.

State Representative Betsy Coffia, a Democrat who represents a district around northern Michigan’s Traverse City and won a tight race for reelection in November, helped pass those bills, which she thinks will survive a hostile White House. “Whatever the Trump administration may try to do with the EPA or some of the federal entities, I think we have a real responsibility to be good stewards of Michigan, and that is what we have purview over,” Coffia said.

Michigan has seen an influx of more than 21,000 clean energy jobs in recent years under the Inflation Reduction Act. That law has also allocated billions of dollars toward nuclear and millions toward a hydrogen plant and expanding rooftop solar.

And despite an acrimonious end to the year, which saw Republicans walk out of session because their priorities were not being met, those like John Roth, a state representative from Interlochen, don’t think all environmental policy must split along party lines. He’s concerned about restricting fossil fuels like natural gas and local control over renewable energy projects, but said they have seen bipartisan support for things like expanding access to community solar.

“We want clean water and clean air up here. And we all live together,” Roth said. “A lot of us hunt and fish, and so I don’t think it’s exclusively toward the Democratic side of the aisle. It’s just a matter of doing good policy that doesn’t harm.”

Regardless of politics, the market has made renewables cheaper to deploy than sticking with fossil fuels. Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1990, now generates more wind and solar energy than any other state. That didn’t happen because deep-red Texas is gung-ho about renewable energy, but because renewables often make better economic sense.

“The transition to a renewable energy future is unstoppable,” said Petersen, of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. “The genie is out of the bottle.”