“They have made it more difficult, but we are still pressing ahead,” said Katherine Antos, state undersecretary for decarbonization and resilience. “We still remain absolutely committed to our climate action.”
The climate movement suffered a major blow on Thursday after President Trump announced he had eliminated the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding, ending the federal government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions — a decision that experts said could send the United States’ emissions soaring.
Climate advocates praised the progress state officials made despite the federal challenges. Massachusetts has lost nearly $200 million in funding for energy and environment initiatives under the Trump administration, according to a state tracker. The federal government’s attacks on offshore wind have slowed new development, stymying a crucial source of clean energy for the region.
Julie Wormser, the chief climate officer for Cambridge, compared Massachusetts’ progress to skier Lindsey Vonn, who crashed at the Winter Olympics after tearing a ligament in her knee.
“She had a big headwind to success, and she didn’t make it,” Wormser said. “There is nobody who is saying, ‘I can’t believe she didn’t make it.’ The response was, ‘Wow, you gave it your all.’”
Massachusetts is required by law to halve its emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero — where the amount of greenhouse gases released is equal to the amount removed — by 2050. To achieve this, the state set an interim target of reducing emissions by 33 percent by 2025 and determined benchmarks, such as the number of electric vehicles that should be on the road and megawatts of solar installed.
According to the climate report card, some of the areas of greatest progress were heat pump adoption and land conservation.
Massachusetts exceeded its goal of installing heat pumps in at least 100,000 homes between 2020 and 2025. It put these systems in over 130,000 households, with more than a quarter fully replacing fossil-fuel-based heating.
The state also met its aim of conserving 28 percent of natural and working lands — totaling over 1.4 million acres — bringing it closer to permanently protecting 30 percent by 2030, a target known as “30 by 30.”
“This shows that states can do a lot,” said Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs at the Environmental League of Massachusetts. “There was still substantial progress, just not at the clip that we had anticipated.”
But the state is lagging on other fronts, in particular those that are reliant on federal approvals and funding.
The state set a benchmark of having 200,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2025, and it fell short by about 34,000. Transportation is the largest single source of emissions in Massachusetts, and transitioning to electric vehicles is one of the main strategies for reducing them.
Antos, the state undersecretary, said there was a big drop in electric vehicle sales after September, when federal tax credits worth up to $7,500 ended.
There is a bright spot for transit: Antos said that Massachusetts has the highest density of chargers among the states. It’s a factor that reduces worry among drivers that their vehicles won’t make it to their destination, a hurdle to adoption. (That said, the state was still short about 1,600 public charging station ports of its goal by the end of 2025.)
Massachusetts has also faced barriers to bringing new clean energy projects online. In addition to the Trump administration’s push to rescind offshore wind permits, it has rolled back tax credits for wind and solar energy development.
The state had 105 megawatts of in-state wind capacity by the end of 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. The state’s modeling estimates that Massachusetts needed 3,650 megawatts of onshore and offshore wind capacity in 2025.
The numbers for solar in 2024 were closer to the 2025 target. There were nearly 4,000 megawatts of alternating current solar capacity by the end of that year, and the state estimates 4,470 megawatts were needed by 2025.
Antos noted that the report does not reflect the contributions of Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind project nearing completion off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, and the new transmission line bringing Canadian hydropower to New England. Those projects will provide a huge boost, meeting about a quarter of Massachusetts’ energy consumption, she said.
Though it is too soon to tell whether the state is on track to meet its 2030 goals, some climate experts said that getting there will be difficult.
“Do I think we should turn back on those goals?” asked Lindsey Butler, the executive director of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission. “Absolutely not. But do I think the reality is that meeting them will be incredibly challenging? Yes.”
In the state Legislature, Representative Mark Cusack, a Democrat, introduced a controversial proposal that would give Massachusetts an out from the 2030 climate mandate if it was determined that the state didn’t reach the targets because of the federal government.
Still, climate advocates said Massachusetts officials had laid the groundwork to make progress toward the emissions reduction targets in ways that were not reflected in the report card.
Among those were Governor Maura Healey’s energy affordability bill and a raft of reforms coming this year to the state’s clean energy siting and permitting processes.
David O’Neill, the president of Mass Audubon, said, “It’s resilience in the face of headwinds.”
Sabrina Shankman contributed reporting.
Kate Selig can be reached at kate.selig@globe.com. Follow her on X @kate_selig.
