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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U.S. Sen. Ed Markey is headed to the next week of the conference, as is state Sen. Michael Barrett, who has butted heads and negotiated climate compromises with the secretary.

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Advocates and lawmakers repeatedly pointed Tuesday to the climate law that Gov. Charlie Baker signed in March, which commits Massachusetts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and requires interim emissions reduction goals between now and the middle of the century.

“Reaching that goal is going to require us to move buildings onto electric heat and off of gas, which will raise questions about the infrastructure that we have in place to deliver gas,” Sen. Michael Barrett, the Senate co-chair of the TUE Committee, said. “And at the same time, of course, we’re concerned about leaks from that infrastructure and somehow have to balance our weariness about continued investment with the necessity of maintaining public safety. Each year, at least so far, about 14,000 new leaks are detected in this infrastructure.”

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