Task Force Seeks Input on NC’s Climate Plan

Article published January 11, 2019 by Antionette Kerr with Public News Service NC regarding NC Interfaith Power & Light’s efforts to increase community engagement with North Carolina’s Clean Energy Plan.

RALEIGH, N.C. – With a charge to take immediate action from the governor, the North Carolina Climate Change Interagency Council wants the state’s plans to fight climate change to be a household discussion. 

NC Interfaith Power & Light, a program of the North Carolina Council of Churches, kicks off the new year with a free webinar in partnership with the governor’s office. It’s on Wednesday, from 3 to 4 p.m.

Susannah Tuttle, director of NC Interfaith Power & Light, hopes the webinar will engage those who might not have heard about North Carolina’s Clean Energy Plan.

“Our work is to make sure that regular North Carolinians are participating in the climate conversation,” says Tuttle. “Not everybody follows executive orders signed by the governor.”

Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80 calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state by 40 percent, getting at least 80,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road, and reducing energy consumption in state buildings by 40 percent, all by 2025. 

Register for the webinar on the NC Interfaith Power & Light website, ncipl.org.

In an address to the council, Cooper cited weather-related disasters in the last couple of decades, including three so-called “500-year floods.” Tuttle says she appreciates the governor’s sense of urgency in calling for a climate-change plan that addresses carbon footprints and greenhouse-gas emissions. 

“To the recent hurricanes and flooding, and increased weather events that we all know are not going to cease, but only increase in their magnitude,” says Tuttle. “And putting climate conversations to the front of what a government is responsible for is really exciting.”

Wednesday’s webinar about North Carolina’s Clean Energy Plan will include Jeremy Tarr, the governor’s policy advisor for the environment, energy and transportation; and Sushma Masemore, deputy assistant secretary for environment. They’ll cover the history, plan and timeline for moving the state to a clean-energy economy.