The driest state needs a climate plan
The driest state needs a climate plan
A few thoughts.
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Nevada is the nation’s driest state, and it is one of the hottest. Communities across the state are experiencing the effects of warmer temperatures and changes in how water cycles through the environment — how it falls as snow, runs off (when and how much) and recharges aquifers. Las Vegas recorded its hottest day last month, and consecutive days of extreme heat has left many vulnerable, forcing difficult choices and tradeoffs.
These are the stories I hear about in interviews. But I also hear a lot about adaptation.
Where Nevada has been
Compared to other states, Nevada also has done a fair amount to respond to mitigate and respond to a changing climate — and it’s often done so in a bipartisan way. Back in 1997, Nevada was among the first states to adopt a portfolio standards requiring electric utilities to add renewables. It has long led the nation in geothermal, and the deployment of solar. During the past decade, Las Vegas implemented such deep and comprehensive water conservation measures it became a model across the West. In the minutiae of policy on everything from water to state lands, wildlife conservation and air pollution, local and state agencies have taken actions to help move the lever. Two decades later, Nevada would pass a goal of getting to net-zero emissions by 2050.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that planning for climate change is a recent phenomenon. But that is false. In 2007, at the end of the Bush administration, Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) created a climate change advisory committee to brainstorm ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In turn, that committee issued a 70-page report outlining known impacts of climate change, existing policies and recommendations.
About a decade later, in 2020, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) embarked on another journey in planning. This one I covered in considerable depth. And say what you want about the end result, the plan was very comprehensive. More of a toolbox than a plan, it offered a set of potential policy recommendations, and evaluating them on the basis of several criteria, including decreasing emissions, climate justice, economic impact and legal feasibility. It also collected the best-available science to show where and how the state would be impacted by climate change. The 2020 plan was a result of extensive scoping with industry, scientists and advocates. Even when some industry officials disagreed, they told me at the time that the process was notable because they were at least heard.
One of the companies most outspoken about the climate plan was Southwest Gas, a utility that has pushed back against several proposals to move away from natural gas.
Its overall message mirrored the goals set globally at the Paris Agreement and across the U.S. — to put more renewables on the grid and transition from fossil fuels in the next three decades. In 2022, Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) was elected and he took it offline, also pledging to ensure natural gas, a fossil fuel, remained part of the energy mix (the Lombardo administration appointed a former gas lobbyist to lead its energy office).
Where Nevada is going
Lombardo promised to release a revised climate plan, and he finally did so. But you don’t have to read too far to see how different it is from any other state climate plan.
Here are the first few paragraphs of the 2007 Gibbons plan:
Compare that to the first paragraph of the 2024 Lombardo plan:
“The ever-changing patterns of the environment.”
The new plan released by the Lombardo administration feels less a strategy and more of a statement. It does not include specific recommendations or offer proposals that officials could work off of and implement into the future. The administration initially said in rewriting the 2020 report, that it would be “reviewed and revised, as applicable through a broad-based stakeholder effort.” It’s unclear who, if anyone, was consulted outside of state government. Unlike the plans in 2007 and 2020, it cites no scientific documents, industry comments or expert opinions. It mostly links to state websites.
The Lombardo plan bills itself as a Climate Innovation Plan focused primarily on tapping into energy transition minerals and building out its lithium supply chain — something Nevada is already doing and is a part of the climate story. Without many specifics, it talks about mitigation including a “balanced, all-of-the-above” approach with natural gas in the mix. It talks about education and jobs in mining and battery recycling. It talks about using “market-based solutions” over regulatory reform. It talks of community engagement, agricultural innovation and rangeland management.
And the bulk of the report (about 20 of the 30 pages) inventories what various state agencies and boards responsible for environmental management, regulation and health are doing related to climate change. This section has little data or scientific information about if these programs are working, whether they are efficient, etc…
Interestingly, that section notes the administration is moving forward with its climate pollution plan, a comprehensive document approved by the EPA earlier this year.
Here’s the executive summary of that:
Most of all, the new plan left me wanting more: How are you going to tap into energy transition minerals? On what terms? How will you evaluate community engagement? How will you incentivize the build-out of the lithium supply loop? How will reducing regulation help? Which regulations? How will all this be implemented on the ground?
Whether you liked them or not, past plans have looked at these particulars.
Why this all matters
Democrats and environmentalists criticized the new plan in statements to the Nevada Independent. But I’ve never viewed this on partisan terms. To me, if anything, the plan felt like a missed opportunity for a public and transparent process with “broad-based stakeholder” input to actually look at what policies are working and what new policies might be needed. What I hear in my interviews on this topic and others is complexity, and frustration with the leadership of politicians who simplify climate policies and are not honest about what they mean or the tradeoffs involved with the choices today.
I guess my point is these issues are really complicated, and they cut in many different ways in many different communities. And I think the state needs to grapple with that.
Let’s say you were to write a plan focused on climate innovation, and it’s something I’ve reported on extensively. I’d like to know how the state is dealing with permitting more mining projects for energy transition — often known as “critical” — minerals. Or bringing more projects on public land in a way that coheres with other land goals.
The reality is that these projects have benefits in jobs and economic development but also costs to communities. They not only face challenges from nearby residents and environmental groups, but they can be constrained by resource concerns too (around water and land). Some of the opposition cuts across partisan lines. So the questions become: What efforts are going in to planning for those things? What specific policies is the state going to do to achieve these goals? Streamline state permitting? Increase staff to reduce delays? Prioritize low-conflict projects? Instead, this part of the plan criticizes the federal government for not taking domestic “critical mineral production and refinement” more seriously because it withdrew land when it designated the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument near Las Vegas to honor Colorado River tribes (which if anything, was a blow to solar developers who deployed lobbyists on it). The claim that the federal government is not supporting transition metals is a pretty hard one to support when it has given billion-dollar loans to miners and defended them in court.
It takes a real issue for many and one that cuts across partisan lines in unique ways (energy transition minerals) and turns it into a political statement in a climate plan.
And the politics of climate change and the energy transition is more complex than you might think, at first glance. Dealing with that complexity requires data and specifics.
What about extreme heat?
What about water?
What about the cost of A/C and access to it?
The plan is pretty quiet on all of it.
Yet these are all serious issues facing the state and the region. They are issues local and state agencies are taking seriously (and have taken seriously for decades). They require thoughtful policy, policy that — if politicians are being real — will often be imperfect. All the more reason the state should discuss it in a comprehensive way.