Gov. Cooper has taken first steps on clean energy. Now, he must do more.

With Earth Day around the corner, solutions for our environment are in the spotlight.

Climate change is the biggest threat to North Carolina’s environment and we’ve already seen the devastating impacts of increased flooding and stronger storm events. We still have time to avoid the worst of climate change, but we need to start making changes now. The solutions, many of which our Gov. Roy Cooper supports, would not only help solve climate change, but also make our lives better.

Earlier this month, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on what needs to be done to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One of the report’s most critical findings has been undersold: “We have options in all sectors [of the economy] to at least halve emissions by 2030.”

We need to accelerate how quickly we adopt these solutions, but the world’s foremost climate change authority has confirmed that we have the capability to drastically reduce emissions fast enough to avoid catastrophic climate change.

North Carolina’s governor has seen the reports and the science and believes that North Carolina can play a role in combating climate change.

Since the beginning of his tenure, Cooper has been working to tackle climate change and build a clean energy economy. In 2018, he enacted Executive Order 80 which “laid out goals for the state to strive to accomplish by 2025 to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions.”

Cooper also created the Climate Change Interagency Council to prioritize climate goals across each of his agencies. Executive Order 80 was an excellent first step and Cooper has worked hard to slash carbon emissions in North Carolina. In 2021, he followed this order with House Bill 951, which was a bipartisan law addressing the Utilities Commission’s requirements to meet the updated statewide goals, and in 2022, Executive Order 246 strengthened the original statewide goal to “a 50% reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050.”

These are science based-targets in line with what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is necessary to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avert catastrophe.

The IPCC report identifies energy as a critical economic sector in need of rapid decarbonization. As a country, and as a state, we have the solutions at our fingertips. We need to stop relying on dirty fossil fuels and we need to make smarter, more sustainable energy choices as we move into the future.

Cooper’s time in office has pushed North Carolina into a position where the state can make those decisions and we are slowly seeing that effort come to fruition with bipartisan legislation becoming law.

Cooper is on the right path, but there is more that needs to be done to reduce North Carolina’s contribution to climate change.

North Carolina has relied on dirty fossil fuels for too long and we need to see action happening now to meet these ambitious climate goals. We have a huge potential in renewable energies and we need to take advantage of those resources to stop climate change in its tracks.

Transitioning to renewable sources of energy, and using less energy altogether, will not only help us reduce climate emissions, but will also help save money and reduce pollution.

The governor has done a lot to ensure a clean future, but at the end of the day, more action needs to happen to reach our goals. He can lock in a cleaner future by ramping up North Carolina’s investment in wind and solar energy today.