In early December, many states and local governments completed a significant milestone of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Program (CPRG) with the submission of their Comprehensive Climate Action Plans (CCAPs). E3 supported, or is currently supporting, many states and jurisdictions across the country – including Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Utah, and the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area – by providing the technical analysis that shaped climate strategies, quantified emissions pathways, and informed the selection of greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction measures.
Authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act and administered by the EPA in 2022, the CPRG program provided $5 billion to help governments across the United States plan and implement strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and harmful air pollution. The program included both planning and implementation grants. The planning phase includes two key components. First, grantees submitted Priority Climate Action Plans (PCAPs), which focused on a short list of near-term, high-impact actions. E3 supported the development of several state PCAPs, including Hawaiʻi, Idaho, and New Mexico, by modeling the priority GHG reduction measures to identify which could deliver near-term reduction impacts.
The second planning milestone is the development of the CCAPs, which build on that foundation with a longer-term, more detailed roadmap that expands the range of strategies, deepens analysis and stakeholder engagement, explores health and workforce impacts, and charts a path for sustained emissions reductions over time.
Shared Insights from State and Regional Climate Plans
While some are still in development, the insights below reflect E3’s hands-on experience supporting many CCAPs to identify several common themes and key takeaways:
- Comprehensive climate plans require action across all sectors of the economy. Across CCAPs, jurisdictions consistently recognize that achieving meaningful emissions reductions requires coordinated action economy-wide. Plans include measures spanning electricity generation, transportation, buildings, industry, agriculture, waste, and natural and working lands. For example, Rhode Island’s CCAP emphasizes a clean electricity transition paired with building and vehicle electrification, energy efficiency, waste diversion strategies, and forest and wetland conservation. Utah’s Beehive Climate Action Plan similarly adopts a multi-sector approach, combining a decarbonized electric grid, electric vehicle (EV) adoption, expanded active transportation infrastructure, building efficiency and electrification, industrial efficiency measures, and increased urban forestry, among other measures.
- Electrification and energy efficiency as cornerstone strategies. Electrification and energy efficiency emerge across CCAPs as foundational strategies for both near-term and long-term emissions reductions. Electrification is consistently identified as a primary pathway for decarbonizing buildings and transportation – and, in some cases, industrial processes – particularly when paired with an increasingly clean electricity grid. CCAPs prioritize accelerating EV adoption, expanding EV charging infrastructure, electrifying space and water heating, and reducing reliance on fossil fuel-based end uses. Energy efficiency is emphasized as a complementary and enabling strategy, lowering overall energy demand, reducing system costs, and helping ensure that electrification delivers net bill savings to customers.
- Emphasis on equity and affordability. Equity and affordability considerations are increasingly central to climate planning. Many CCAPs note that rising energy prices, housing costs, and transportation expenses are placing growing pressure on households, particularly low-income communities. These concerns surfaced repeatedly through stakeholder engagement processes and are reflected in CCAP strategies that prioritize bill savings, targeted incentives, and protections for vulnerable customers. Jurisdictions emphasize the importance of pairing clean energy and electrification investments with efficiency, rate design considerations, and direct financial assistance to avoid exacerbating cost burdens.
- Increased federal headwinds are slowing progress towards climate goals. In 2025, the federal government discontinued many programs and regulations that were central to state and local climate progress. Through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and related actions, the current administration discontinued clean energy incentives for renewable electricity generation and technologies like heat pumps and EVs, reduced federal funding for state and local programs, and rolled back federal emissions standards. While many states are actively litigating these federal actions, they nonetheless present significant headwinds for state and local governments that will continue into 2026. In this context, the CCAPs represent an important step in identifying GHG reduction measures that can help states and local governments to continue to make progress in the face of this federal policy uncertainty.
From Planning to Implementation
Many states and jurisdictions that submitted CCAPs are now transitioning from planning to implementation to meet forthcoming emission reduction goals. This next phase of implementation will be critical – the planning phase established the big picture framework, but states and jurisdictions must now focus on putting concrete programs and policies in place to achieve the emissions reductions outlined in their plans.
For jurisdictions that were awarded a CPRG implementation grant, funding may already be secured for priority measures, but important questions remain around program design and allocation of resources. For other jurisdictions, the path forward will likely require identifying new funding streams while simultaneously developing effective programs in the face of federal headwinds. Many state and local governments are also facing rising electricity costs alongside the growing need to maintain a reliable electric system, especially as decarbonization and electrification efforts expand. Additionally, jurisdictions across the country are grappling with mounting concerns about energy affordability and how to advance clean energy and climate strategies without leaving households and communities behind. As decarbonization efforts and electricity demand grow, a key priority will be ensuring reliable service while minimizing increases in utility bills for customers.
In the face of ongoing funding rollbacks and a rapidly changing federal policy landscape, E3 can support states and local governments in focusing on what they can do next to push climate policy forward while balancing different priorities, such as decarbonization, energy reliability, and customer affordability. As jurisdictions move into implementation, E3’s robust modeling toolkit can evaluate program design options, potential funding approaches, and household affordability impacts. The foundation for the toolkit is the E3 Pathways model, E3’s long-term climate pathways tool that has been used to support several CCAPs and PCAPs. Building on the Pathways model, E3’s complementary modeling tools evaluate key considerations for states and local governments, such as decarbonization impacts on electric and gas systems, implications for rates and customer energy bills, and public health outcomes.
As states decide which measures will be prioritized over the next several years on the path toward 2030, these considerations will be central to decision-making. E3 looks forward to partnering with states and local governments, leveraging our comprehensive modeling capabilities to support the deeper analysis needed as jurisdictions move from planning into implementation.
