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6/11/2024
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Senate approves DiMario bill to fund work to reduce climate emissions
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 STATE HOUSE — The Senate today approved legislation sponsored by Sen. Alana M. DiMario to provide a stable and flexible funding source for state agency work to combat climate change.
The bill now heads to the House, where Rep. Terri Cortvriend (D-Dist. 72, Portsmouth, Middletown) has introduced similar legislation (2024-H 7685).
“Since passing the Act on Climate, we as legislators have tasked the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council with doing more and more of the work necessary to meet our climate goals,” said Senator DiMario (D-Dist. 36, Narragansett, North Kingstown, New Shoreham), who chairs the Senate Agriculture and Environment Committee. “The council is funded mostly through federal funds and grants that can only be used for very specific purposes. The council needs more sources of flexible funding to do the work we’ve asked them to do, which this bill provides by using a portion of an under-used existing fund to pay for important climate planning work without implementing any new taxes or fees.”
The legislation (2024-S 2332A) would allocate to the council a portion of the funds generated by a tax on gasoline paid by owners of underground storage tanks that is used to facilitate the clean-up of leaking underground storage tanks. The fund is currently growing in excess of the expenditures needed for underground tank cleanup, and when it reaches $8 million dollars the tax funding it will be, by law, suspended. To use the anticipated excess funds, this bill will allocate a maximum of $2 million in the 2025 fiscal year to the council to reduce emissions and support the Act on Climate, and a maximum of $1 million in future fiscal years.
“The Act on Climate is one of the strongest climate policies in the nation and set the ball in motion for Rhode Island to do its part to address the climate crisis. However, adequate funding for the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) is the missing link between setting ambitious climate goals and actually implementing the programs necessary to meet those goals. We applaud Chairwoman DiMario for finding this additional funding source to ensure the EC4 has the capacity to implement the Act on Climate,” said Amanda Barker, Rhode Island policy advocate at Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
Since it uses funds collected from businesses in the oil and gas industry, this bill also provides a more balanced and equitable funding model for climate change mitigation work.
“By using money that is collected from other sectors that have contributed to climate change, like the fossil fuel industry, this bill also makes sure that our climate planning work is not funded solely by electric ratepayers,” said Senator DiMario.
For more information, contact:
Tristan Grau, Publicist
State House Room B20
Providence, RI 02903
401.222.4935
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