The administration’s announcement deeply disappointed some state lawmakers and environmental advocates, who viewed the initiative as a key part of the state’s ability to comply with the landmark climate law that Baker signed earlier this year. The law requires the state to cut is carbon emissions 50 percent below 1990 levels by the end of the decade and effectively eliminate them by 2050.
“This is a serious challenge to our climate planning,” said state Senator Michael Barrett, a Lexington Democrat and one of the climate bill’s lead negotiators. “Plan B needs to be brought along quickly.”
He and others said the state must come up with a new way of curbing transportation pollution, which before the pandemic was responsible for 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions nationally and 40 percent of the region’s emissions.
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