One year after a state environmental agency calculated that it would cost Maryland at least $10 billion to meet the government’s ambitious climate mandates, the Maryland Commission on Climate Change took small steps Thursday toward considering how to pay for them. Following intense negotiations Wednesday between officials from Governor Moore’s administration and environmental leaders, the climate commission adopted amendments to original recommendations for generating revenues that instead call for studies on how those proposals could be implemented.
Revenue recommendations: Commission members have been weighing three recommendations from an internal workgroup to generate revenues for the state’s climate plan. One would have created a cap-and-invest program to make the transportation and building sectors pay for carbon emissions; another would have established a fossil fuel transportation fee and mitigation fund; the third would have assessed fines on 40 large fossil fuel companies to compensate the state for historic climate emissions and associated environmental damage. All three measures had been introduced as bills in the last legislative session but stalled.
