Why states are walking back their own climate and energy laws, and what they could do instead

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By ANDRES CLARENS

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Virginia

During the first Trump administration, states and cities, tired of waiting for the federal government to deal with energy and climate challenges, started writing their own laws.

New York passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019, setting mandatory renewable energy and emissions reduction targets. Virginia passed the Clean Economy Act in 2020, setting a schedule to retire fossil fuel power plants. Colorado set greenhouse gas reduction targets. Boston and Seattle revised their building codes to make buildings more energy efficient and their public transportation fleets cleaner.

In fact, close to half of all Americans live somewhere that made a legally binding commitment to cleaner energy in the early 2020s.

Those laws were written at the start of the energy transition, with the information available at the time. Six years later, several governments are backing away from their commitments.

New York became the first state in the country to roll back its signature climate law in May 2026, trading a binding 2030 target to reduce emissions by 40% for a fuzzier 2040 goal. Gov. Kathy Hochul blamed high energy costs, though the move also conveniently killed a lawsuit she had just lost, in which a judge ruled her administration had ignored the law’s deadline. She admitted the rollback wouldn’t lower anyone’s bills right away.

In Virginia, where I live and work, the largest utility says it can’t both meet demand and retire its gas power plants on the law’s schedule, so it wants a new gas peaker plant – a plant that runs only when needed to meet high demand – to keep the state’s booming data centers running.

Hawaii’s governor signed a tax cut package for low-income workers in May that also phased out a renewable energy tax credit that has fueled the state’s adoption of rooftop solar power.

Even California, long the global pacesetter in addressing climate change, in 2026 handed oil refineries and other big polluters billions of dollars worth of pollution permits they would otherwise have had to buy. The state caps emissions and makes polluters pay for them to push industry to clean up over time. The Air Resources Board said the giveaway would ease gas prices that had spiked during the war in Iran. However, the result is pollution in the neighborhoods near those refineries and lost revenue that would have supported public transit.

Energy costs, vanishing federal subsidies and an administration in Washington hostile to clean energy are giving officials reasons to retreat from efforts to deal with climate change and the political cover to do so.

I understand the pressure these officials are under. I spent time working on energy policy in the Biden White House. But even though the politics have changed, the world’s climate problems aren’t going away. If states want to protect their citizens from energy price inflation, abandoning the energy transition is not the answer, but they do need an updated playbook.

Why meeting climate goals feels tougher today

Every state starts with different resources and a different mix of industries and emissions sources. A sunny state, a state with offshore wind, a state covered in forest and farmland, and a state full of steel and cement factories all have very different paths to reducing emissions. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions. When my colleagues and I modeled the cheapest paths to zero emissions for all 50 of them, some states had an easier path, and all took different routes.

But all states are also running into what some researchers call the “mid-transition,” the awkward stretch where both the clean energy system and the fossil energy system are needed to meet power demand. A gas power plant might run only when demand spikes, but residents are still paying for it. Transmission lines can take a long time to build. Utilities keep paying to patch up plants that would have been retired and replaced with much cheaper and cleaner renewables.

Despite the friction of the mid-transition, wind, solar and batteries remain the cheapest ways to generate electricity, and they will continue to capture the market for new power capacity simply because they make the most financial sense. In 2025, wind and solar technologies produced a record 17% of America’s electricity. In 2026 almost all of the new capacity planned for the grid is solar, wind or batteries.

Energy-saving technologies at home help reduce emissions as well. Trade an old electric-resistance heater for a heat pump and a typical home keeps about $1,530 a year while lowering emissions. These retrofits have upfront costs, but many governments have been subsidizing them because they save money for everyone in the long run.

Historically, federal subsidies smoothed over these adoption costs. But Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act took an eraser to the 2022 U.S. Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives for electric-vehicle tax credits, rebates for heat pumps, and money for interstate transmission improvements.

How to keep cutting emissions

States can still take steps to navigate this moment and continue cutting emissions. Here are four ways: Use data centers and AI to accelerate electrification: All the new power demand from growing numbers of data centers is the best reason in a generation to finally build the energy transmission and storage the U.S. will need in an electrified future powered by renewable energy. Ensuring that companies pay their share for the power supply buildout could speed up electrification for residents, shifting homes and vehicles away from fossil fuels and saving people money.

The artificial intelligence boom can also be used to track energy use and find excess emissions. AI can turn satellite images, utility data and building records into near-realtime maps of emissions, block by block, making emissions cuts easier to target.

Embrace industrial policy: Much about the energy transition remains unresolved, including how it will affect manufacturing, freight, aviation and construction. During periods of technological change, governments often rely on industrial policy to tilt the market toward industries that matter for security and competitiveness: the last administration used grants; this administration is using tariffs. China has played this game the hardest, growing a breathtaking number of companies that now dominate the supply chains for EVs, batteries, solar panels and rare earth metals.

At the state level, industrial policy usually boils down to luring industries that can bring jobs. I believe state agencies can also do more by tapping into public university expertise to solve problems related to the energy transition and train the next generation of workers these industries will need.

Build more urban housing: The country is short millions of homes, which is a reason rent and mortgages are so high. Buildings are also one of the largest sources of climate- changing pollution. Building the right size housing in the right places – close to where residents work or near transit – can be the cheapest way to cut a household’s overall energy needs and their costs. Smaller places are cheaper to heat, and homes close to transit mean occupants have to drive a lot less. California, Oregon and Montana have all overridden local objections to expand urban housing.

Support carbon removal techniques that boost rural areas: Carbon removal projects can have multiple benefits. For example, restoring a coastal marsh stores carbon and rebuilds the storm buffer fishing towns depend on. Biochar or crushed silicate worked into the right farm soils helps retain water and improve yields. Better forest management cuts fire risk. Done right, this is rural development that also cleans up pollution.

The world has shifted its energy foundation before: from wood and biomass to coal in the 1800s, from coal to oil and gas in the last century, and now to a fully electrified, affordable and clean economy. Each time, the nation came out better off.

As an engineering professor, I am a technology optimist. The fossil- fueled past that some leaders say they miss was never as cheap as they remember it. What’s coming is better, and state and local officials can help the U.S. get there.