With Trump in the White House, expect the states to take charge on climate progress

Rick Smith is the president of the Canadian Climate Institute.
It’s not like the road to climate-change progress has ever been smooth and well-paved. But there’s no doubt that the recent U.S. election results – and the victory by Republican nominee Donald Trump – has littered the way forward with some extra-large potholes.
We’ll have to wait for the details of the new administration’s plans, but the commitments that Mr. Trump made on the campaign trail alone are certainly cause for concern. They included scaling back the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, reversing regulations on clean power and electric vehicles and scrapping renewable projects.
We’ve been here before, of course. The U.S. government retreated from various climate-change solutions during the first Trump term and in the George W. Bush years.
But one of the reactions to this federal retreat back then was increasing proactivity by state governments to pick up the slack. I expect to see that play out again.
Many of the most durable climate policies that started during those years are still with us today. That includes cap-and-trade systems such as the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and a number of state renewable electricity standards. California and Quebec are part of WCI, and they are now exploring potential linkages with Washington State’s cap-and-trade system. In fact, one of the bright spots of election day was that voters in Washington State roundly rejected a ballot initiative to repeal its carbon pricing system. Currently, 12 states accounting for a third of the U.S. economy and making up more than a quarter of its population have carbon-pricing programs in place.
On clean energy, 25 states and the District of Columbia now have requirements for renewable or clean electricity, even though many of these states are Republican-led. Texas, for example, has quickly become a renewable energy powerhouse – recently beating out California in terms of the number of installations of wind and solar in the second quarter of 2024.
States are also leading on energy efficiency in buildings. New York State will require most new buildings under seven storeys to be all-electric starting in 2026, with larger buildings to follow suit by 2029. And California is ramping up energy efficiency measures in its building code and incentivizing air conditioners to be replaced by heat pumps in all commercial buildings.
And while the Trump administration is likely to cut electric vehicle (EV) supports at a federal level, a substantial number of states outside of California have adopted similar regulations to boost zero-emission vehicles. When you add it all up, 40 per cent of North America’s vehicle market could have similar requirements for EVs by 2027.
All of this subnational action creates significant emissions reduction. A report from 2023 found that 24 states with aggressive emissions reduction plans were on track to cut climate pollution by between 27 to 39 per cent by 2030. California, for example, is the fifth-largest economy in the world, so it really matters if it commits to slashing carbon pollution by 85 per cent by 2045, as it did in 2022. California emissions have already fallen more than 17 per cent since 2000.
So, despite the Trump administration’s climate-change foot-dragging, emissions reduction will continue in the United States. It will just be happening in a more dispersed fashion.
There are implications here for Canada. Most obviously, there are opportunities for provinces to build on existing partnerships. Quebec is already hooked up with California’s cap-and-trade market through the Western Climate Initiative. B.C. and Quebec have long had zero-emission vehicle mandates that are similar to those in U.S. states. These cross-border alignments could be deepened and strengthened, moving ahead.
There will be significant new opportunities, as well. The increasing cost-competitiveness of certain technologies will accelerate their adoption, even with a Trump administration in the White House. Batteries are just one example. Canada has made great strides in creating a new battery supply chain, and we will be able to provide the U.S. market with both manufactured products and raw materials.
Things are certainly going to look different, at least for a time, in the trajectory of the climate-change debate. But progress on reducing emissions in the U.S. – and the commerce it creates – will continue. Over the next few months, Canadians need to map out this new terrain and keep moving forward.