Commercial, GHG Emissions, Sourcing Renewables  -  March 13, 2020

East Coast companies urge lawmakers to prioritize carbonizing transportation

A group of more than 100 investors, companies, trade associations, institutions and organizations in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, including Akamai, DSM, Eversource Energy, Novartis and State Street, sent a letter to the region’s governor’s advocating for the decarbonization of their transportation systems.

The group, organized as the Transportation and Climate Initiative, urged region leaders to take advantage of a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize and decarbonize our region’s transportation system”. The goals outlined by the initiative include reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, investing in public transit, making the region more economically competitive and generating a revenue stream to fund transportation improvements.

“Legislation like the Transportation and Climate Initiative is a critical piece in achieving the scale and rate of change needed to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change,“ James Goudreau, head of climate at Novartis, said in a statement. “Novartis recognizes its responsibility to achieve impactful change and collaborate with others to accelerate changes beyond our sector. In building trust with society we aim to: hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards, tackle complex global health challenges and be a responsible corporate citizen. This legislation supports our environmental sustainability strategy including our aspiration to become carbon neutral in our own operations by 2025, reduce our overall carbon footprint including supply chain by 50% by 2030, and to become plastic and water neutral by 2030.”

Twelve jurisdictions are collaborating with TCI to create a Memorandum of Understanding outlining policy for updating the transportation system, which is expected to be finished in spring 2020.

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