Indy Environment: Is Lombardo’s revised climate plan a ‘missed opportunity?

Editor’s Note: This newsletter is running one week late in order to accommodate an interview with members of Gov. Joe Lombardo’s administration who were involved in the development of the plan.

Good morning, and welcome to the Indy Environment newsletter. I'm Amy Alonzo, the environment reporter for The Indy .

Despite unanimous scientific consensus, climate change remains a politically polarizing issue. Though we are largely past the days of blanket climate denialism , reporting on climate change can be a Sisyphean effort.

Trying to find expert sources to break down Nevada’s new climate plan highlighted that.

Elected Democrats and environmental justice groups on social media called the plan everything from “ AI-generated ” to “ utterly inaccurate ,” while proponents of the plan touted it as “ INCREDIBLE .”

Climate change and its effects are issues that transcend party lines, and I wanted to see what scientists and climate experts had to say about the plan. But state officials were hard to pin down for comment, while policy and research organizations, climate centers and those affiliated with the state’s old plan were also silent or declined to speak on the record.

The sheer volume of people uninterested in discussing it perhaps speaks louder than the plan itself.

As always, I want to hear from readers. Let me know what you’re seeing on the ground and how policies are affecting you. Email tips to me at amy@thenvindy.com.

To get this newsletter in your inbox, subscribe here .

When Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo took the state’s climate plan offline in early 2023, there was no longer a publicly available plan for Nevada, an emerging leader in the critical mineral and renewable energy industries, and no clues as to when a new document would be available.

Drafted by Democratic former Gov. Steve Sisolak’s administration, the state’s 2020 plan served as a blueprint outlining, among other things, steps for the state to curb its carbon emissions.

A year later, it was still offline with no replacement. Lombardo deflected questions from The Nevada Independent Editor Jon Ralston at an event earlier this year about the plan before acknowledging it still wasn’t complete.

“I can’t put it on the website if it isn’t written,” Lombardo said at the time.

Finally, earlier this month, the governor’s office published the new plan , issuing a press release several days later.

The 33-page document highlights collaboration and the need to maintain affordable energy for Nevadans. It emphasizes the state’s ability to position itself as a key player for relocating energy production back to the U.S.

But it functionally ignores carbon emissions, even though the state is not on pace to meet its reduction goals . It neglects to include policies to deal with extreme heat, although the number of people who died from it rose nearly fourfold between 2015 and 2021 in Southern Nevada.

Environment and political reporter Daniel Rothberg, who previously worked at The Nevada Independent , said at times the plan conflates climate and environmental policies, confusing issues of environmental matters — cleaning up abandoned mines, providing safe drinking water — with those of climate change and adaptation.

“It’s a missed opportunity,” Rothberg told The Indy . “There’s a lot of people working on this on both sides of the aisle in both urban and rural Nevada.”

After two weeks of repeated requests for interviews, officials from the Governor’s Office of Energy (GOE) and Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources — the departments that drafted the plan — agreed to field questions about the plan from The Indy.

James Settelmeyer, director of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said efforts were made to focus on “clean and green” concepts when drafting the plan.

“We have to try to make sure that for future generations, they have an environment safe to be in,” Settelmeyer said.

Other agencies stayed mum — a spokesperson for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP), an agency cited heavily in the plan, kicked requests for comment back to the governor’s office.

Also silent were Kristen Averyt, Sisolak’s senior climate adviser, and Jennifer Taylor, the former deputy director for intergovernmental relations for the Governor’s Office of Energy.

Other than the governor’s office, only a handful of Democrats and environmentalists unaffiliated with the plan were willing to speak about it.

“You wouldn’t know Nevada has set a net-zero (emissions) goal by 2050 and is at the nexus of clean energy development,” said Alexandra Phillips, an assistant professor in environmental communication at University of California, Santa Barbara who, prior to teaching, worked on climate and energy policy for a federal lawmaker. “They (Nevada) have a great landscape in the clean energy transition, and this is not a document produced by a state leading this transition.”

No strategy for reducing carbon emissions

Only about half of the nation’s states have established economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions targets . Slightly more than a dozen have goals of reaching net carbon neutrality by 2050 or earlier.

One of those states is Nevada.

In 2019, state lawmakers passed legislation directing the state to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Using a baseline of 2005, the state’s highest year of emissions, the goal is to reduce them by 45 percent by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050.

The state is behind its target, and the new climate plan “doesn’t convince me we’re going to get there,” Phillips said.

At its current trajectory, Nevada will have reduced emissions by about 28 percent by 2030 and 48 percent by 2050.

Governor’s Office of Energy Director Dwayne McClinton says the timelines drafted for reducing carbon emissions don’t set the state up for success.

Since Lombardo took office, more than 2,700 megawatts (MW) of energy resources have been brought online, McClinton said. Nearly half of those have been from geothermal, natural gas and battery storage. By the end of 2027, an additional 2,300 MW of electricity generation are expected to come online, he added.

Ongoing investments in solar, geothermal and other renewable energies and the exploration of hydrogen power will continue to lead to carbon reduction in the state, he said, with the caveat that the state needs to consider costs, infrastructure planning and emerging technologies to guide the timeline for the state to reach its goals.

“Let the technology guide the timeline,” he said.

“A target date can move,” he added. “Why set ourselves up for failure?”

‘We just don’t have the funding’

Transportation is the leading cause of carbon emissions in Nevada, with energy generation trailing just behind.

Earlier this year, the state requested $99 million in grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce emissions. To be able to qualify for the funding the state had to draft a series of plans outlining steps it will take to reduce carbon emissions.

The plans , drafted by NDEP and GOE, culminated in an application proposing 19 specific projects to reduce emissions from transportation, energy systems and buildings. Proposals included transitioning Nevada’s state-owned fleets to zero-emission vehicles, building new solar-powered energy sources and adding bike and pedestrian friendly travel options.

Those efforts and others to reduce emissions, such as a clean truck and bus incentive program being developed by the Nevada Department of Transportation and NDEP, receive only the briefest mention in Lombardo’s new plan.

In a call, Settelmeyer shared that the state was not awarded the requested $99 million.

Without that federal funding, the 19 goals outlined in the grant application could languish, McClinton said.

“We would love to implement [them], we just don’t have the funding,” he said.

Community engagement

In March 2023, Lombardo issued an executive order outlining Nevada’s new energy policy objectives. The order states that the climate strategy should be reviewed and revised through a “broad-based stakeholder effort.”

A wide spectrum of groups and organizations awaited that invitation. It never came.

Leaders at groups as diverse as the Nevada Conservation League and Sierra Club to the Nevada Mining Association and Southwest Gas said they were not consulted about the plan.

Settelmeyer counters that the plan was drafted with input from many Nevadans. Public comments by those who attended meetings to draft the 19 specific projects the state sought federal funding for were used in drafting the innovation plan, he said.

“They had community engagement and went out and talked to different communities,” he said. “That’s where a lot of that input came from.”

As a point of comparison, the same year Lombardo issued his executive order on energy policy, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development commissioned SRI International, a research and development firm, to draft a comprehensive economic development strategy for the state.

SRI collected input from regional development authorities and a broad spectrum of stakeholders to draft an 86-page, five-year strategy. It lists goals and action plans for the state to take while examining the effects on the state’s economy from extraneous forces such as the pandemic.

Lombardo’s new innovation plan similarly keys in on business and development.

Settelmeyer told The Indy that it’s important that Nevada recruit companies with high-paying jobs in the energy sector, and McClinton emphasized the need to reinforce grid infrastructure and projects such as NV Energy’s Greenlink transmission line.

However, the innovation plan doesn’t include information on how those sectors are being affected by climate change, and fails to forecast how the changing climate will shape Nevada’s future economy. Settelmeyer and McClinton did not explain why the report lacked a focus on carbon emissions and other environmental concerns, instead citing NDEP's focus on state greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed water buyback program.

“What struck me is why there wasn’t more analysis and information about the ways that climate change is both impacting Nevada's economy in terms of water issues and extreme heat, but also shaping Nevada's economy for the future,” Rothberg said. “Adapting to climate change and mitigating climate change is going to affect and shape the state’s economy in many different ways.”

A partisan or bipartisan issue?

Nevada isn’t the only state stalling on climate issues.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, rolled back the state’s clean car standards in June and withdrew the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative despite a statute requiring its participation.

But as Rothberg noted , climate policy doesn’t have to be a partisan issue. He cited a 2007 effort by former Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, to create a climate change advisory committee; that committee produced a detailed report outlining known effects of climate change, existing policies and recommendations.

Earlier this year in Vermont, Republican Gov. Phil Scott okayed a bill requiring fossil fuel companies to pay part of the damage caused by climate change.

And in Wyoming, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon commissioned a report examining how decarbonization strategies and technologies can make red and blue Western states become leaders in environmental innovation while reducing the effects of carbon emissions.

Settelmeyer said he hears from people on both sides of the aisle in Nevada when it comes to the state’s climate policies.

“That means we’re right on target,” he said.

Here’s what else I’m reading (and listening to) this week:

Urban sprawl forces a reckoning between housing for humans and habitat for wildlife. More from High Country News .

My coworker Gabby Birenbaum looks at whether permitting reform could turn Nevada into an energy highway.

ProPublica’s Anjeanette Damon dives into how a green tech startup with no climate experience made millions in government contracts in Nevada.

Oregon Capital Chronicle examines the effects drought has wrought on hydropower dams.