MELISSA HOFFER TOOK OFFICE with big plans.

Hoffer, the state’s climate chief, was appointed to the Cabinet-level post – the first such position in the nation – on Gov. Maura Healey’s first full day on the job on January 6, 2023. She was given a mandate: amass the powers of state government and coordinate across agencies to wage an assault against climate change, which threatens the livelihoods and economic well-being of Bay Staters.

Hoffer laid out her sweeping policy vision in October of that year. The 86-page blueprint she released touched on everything from potential property insurance reforms, a plan to cut aviation emissions, and support for climate education curriculum to establishing a statewide biodiversity goal.

But her No. 1 agenda item was to conduct an ambitious economic analysis of Massachusetts’s commitment to generate no net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to identify the financing and investment options the state might pursue – and to complete it by the end of 2024.

The goal set out was simple in principle but anything but in practice. Essentially, the task was to put a price tag on the state’s net-zero climate commitment and develop a menu of options for how to pay for it – something that the state “lacks,” Hoffer wrote at the time.

That price is still not yet known. More than a year after that report was due, it’s not clear if that analysis has been done at all.

Karissa Hand, a spokesperson for Healey, confirmed to CommonWealth Beacon that the report “has not been filed,” but didn’t respond to additional questions about the cause of the delay or where it is in its process. She declined to make Hoffer available for an interview.

Hand did share two reports published in the last year that are responsive in part to Hoffer’s recommendations, but neither offers a cost estimate for the state’s net-zero commitment and what funding options Massachusetts might pursue to reach it.

One, a climate action plan submitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency in December, is a document that Hoffer predicted in 2023 “could directly support” the larger economic analysis that is still missing. The second is a report detailing an estimated $90 billion to $130 billion that will be needed in resilience investments in the state through 2050, which does appear to fulfill a different recommendation that Hoffer laid out in 2023 to assess those costs and funding options.

Hoffer, when asked at a speaking engagement last week directly about the report that she selected as one of her office’s top priorities, indicated that she’s clearly developed ideas on how to pay for the costs associated with the net-zero transition. She mentioned the prospects of credits generated by carbon sequestration in state forests and expanding the climate bank’s lending capabilities and financing structure as two mechanisms of producing more revenue to fund decarbonization initiatives.

“Obviously, with what people have experienced this winter and last winter, you can’t have a situation where it’s all stuck on the ratepayers. That is not working,” Hoffer said, referencing soaring utility bills that are driven mostly by supply and delivery charges but also include costs for programs to promote energy efficiency and to fund assistance for low-income ratepayers and seniors.

Hoffer added that the report on resilience funding strategies that was completed has helped inform Healey’s proposed environmental bond bill, which would spend $3 billion to strengthen infrastructure, improve flood mitigation, and minimize damages from extreme weather events.

An economic analysis of the magnitude and scope that Hoffer outlined would surely involve a host of complicated and even shaky forecasts on future economic conditions, inflation, and political will. President Trump’s moves to undercut clean energy development nationwide have even further scrambled the timeline, scale, and costs of what the Bay State can achieve with its climate commitments.

But the analysis could shed some light on how to possibly pay for and what it might cost to electrify and expand public transit, transition heating of homes and buildings off gas pipes and propane tanks to electric heat pumps or geothermal energy, and deploy a large amount of new solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power to replace fossil fuel sources while meeting rising demand.

Globally, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 would require trillions of dollars in additional spending each year. Still, the costs of inaction, from leaky gas pipes to volatile fossil fuel prices to stranded assets to flooded homes and increased health care needs associated with pollution, would likely far exceed that.

Plus, a 2023 analysis from the International Monetary Fund found that the global economy could fare significantly better from accelerated decarbonization.

The fact that the economic report was seemingly never conducted is rattling officials and advocates across the political spectrum in Massachusetts.

Evan Horowitz, executive director of the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, said that studying the economic impact of the net-zero commitment “risks highlighting real costs for the state and for residents,” which is “not something a climate chief wants to emphasize.”

But the case of the missing report, he said, also underscores a broader issue he sees with the way Hoffer’s responsibilities are structured.

“If the goal is to combat climate risks, the best thing is to appoint agency heads who share those priorities,” Horowitz said. “Compared to that, creating a new climate chief with limited staff and weak powers gets you favorable headlines but little impact.”

Even some environmental advocates are worried about the consequences of this report not being completed.

“The implications of this is that we are not being pushed to look for other sources of funds, and if we don’t do that, we’re going to even get further behind than we already are,” said Roger Luckman, who serves on the leadership team for the Massachusetts chapter of the Elders Climate Action group, an environmental advocacy organization. “It’s clear we’ve reached the breaking point on ratepayers. We’re going to fall further behind our climate targets if we don’t understand what we really need to bring to the table and make sure we invest wisely and invest in the amounts that are required to make this happen.”

It’s not about Hoffer’s economic analysis nailing down an exact dollar figure per se, said David Melly, senior policy director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts. It’s about having a reference point when weighing the inevitable tradeoffs around how best to fight climate change.

“Everyone can acknowledge that we are in a different political environment with different considerations than we were a few years ago,” Melly said. “But what remains important is knowing that we have to meet our decarbonization goals on the pace that both the science and the law tells us we have to, and that we need to come up with a plan for that.”

Hoffer’s 2023 recommendations also spelled out a number of initial accomplishments of the administration, which at the time was less than a year old, including the launch of a new program granting high school students opportunities in the clean energy sector and establishing the climate bank. But Healey has also delayed a clean heat standard due to kick in this year, pushed back electric vehicle sales mandates, and followed the Baker administration in not complying with or enforcing a 2017 rule to cut emissions from state-owned vehicles.

Rep. Brad Jones, the Republican House leader, suggested that this report is being handled with politics in mind “given where we are on the election calendar” as Healey seeks a second term this year.

“The reality is, the numbers are probably large if not staggering,” Jones said, adding that “we’re just ignoring what it’s going to cost” to meet the climate commitments in the absence of the report.