NO AGENCY SUBMITTED reports to comply with a 2017 rule requiring cuts to the emissions produced by state-owned vehicles — and environmental regulators didn’t aggressively enforce the rule, either, according to new court documents filed last week.
Massachusetts agencies that own or lease at least 30 passenger vehicles, from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to the Department of Transportation, are compelled to reduce the pollution stemming from that vehicle fleet each year by specific amounts and submit reports to the Department of Environmental Protection in order to show compliance.
But MassDEP has no records of these reports and didn’t follow up with the relevant agencies to receive that data for each year going back to 2019, when the reports were first due, according to the court documents that are in connection to a lawsuit the state brought against oil giant Exxon Mobil.
The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, which oversees MassDEP, declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
The rule was issued under Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and followed a landmark court ruling that found the state needed to issue more specific and stringent regulations in order to meet the 2050 climate commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent compared to 1990 levels. That 2016 ruling prompted an executive order from Baker directing DEP to issue additional regulations to help Massachusetts achieve those emissions reductions.
A suite of six regulations emerged, one of which was the state passenger vehicle emissions reduction rule. But that regulation appears to have been ignored since it took effect in the wake of the 2016 litigation that was spurred by groups like the Conservation Law Foundation.
DEP made the admission, ironically, in a court proceeding tied to a lawsuit the state filed against Exxon, accusing the company of deceiving the public and investors about the risks of climate change and its role in contributing to it. That litigation, initiated in 2019 by then-Attorney General Maura Healey, has now raised questions about the state’s own efforts to reduce emissions.
After a judge denied Exxon’s attempt to obtain data and documents pertaining to Massachusetts’s vehicle fleet rule via discovery, the company pivoted to seek the information through a public records request in January. And when the state denied that record request, Exxon sued this past March — ultimately producing some relevant documents, including agency communications related to the rule and one request from EEA in 2019 for a modification of its vehicle’s emissions limit.
But Exxon, believing that the state was withholding additional information, pressed the state for more. That’s when, in defense of the state’s motion to dismiss the records case, DEP admitted last week that “no agencies had submitted reports under the fleets regulation.”
Conservation Law Foundation, whose lawsuit gave rise to this regulation requiring emissions reductions from state-owned vehicles, said the court documents are concerning.
“CLF is still reviewing the record, but we fought for these [Global Warming Solutions Act] regulations to ensure real climate action,” said Seth Gadbois, staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. “All levels of government are bound to follow them. When they’re ignored, it’s a step backward for the climate goals Massachusetts is legally required to meet.”
The state passenger vehicle regulation is, of course, just one piece of Massachusetts’s broader efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector — which account for the largest share of pollution in the Bay State at 38 percent.
Baker, in 2021, went significantly further in cracking down on the emissions tied to state vehicles by requiring through executive order that the state’s fleet be 100 percent zero-emission in 2050.
Since then, the Healey administration has allocated tens of millions of dollars for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, including for public entities and the state fleet, along with school bus electrification — though Massachusetts would still need to triple its annual rate of new charging deployments through 2030 to achieve its climate commitment of cutting pollution in half compared to 1990 levels.
Still, the lack of compliance with and enforcement of an emissions-reduction regulation that was the direct result of a major legal victory for environmental activists is likely to raise scrutiny of state climate efforts. The revelation from the Exxon Mobil lawsuit comes as the Trump administration’s push to squash clean energy further jeopardizes Massachusetts’s ability to meet those 2030 goals.
The regulation states that when MassDEP believes an agency has exceeded its emissions limit “or violated any other condition” of the rule, DEP “may require” an agency to perform audits on its carbon dioxide emissions and deliver periodic reports “to assure continuous compliance.” The regulation also grants MassDEP the ability to “verify compliance” by conducting inspections and requesting additional information.
None of the records made public through the lawsuit show DEP taking any such steps. Sharon Weber, deputy division director for air and climate programs at DEP, confirmed in a deposition last month that DEP has no documents showing any instances of “compliance verification” or other enforcement actions in spite of the fact that no agency appears to have filed reports detailing the emissions of its vehicle fleet.