Climate work carries on amid federal shifts
Despite ongoing uncertainty of federal funding for climate projects, cities such as San Mateo are making progress on sustainability goals, issuing a record number of rebates and experiencing an increase in electric charging ports.
During a City Council meeting May 19, staff noted a roughly 45% increase in private-use electric vehicle charging ports since the end of 2023.
“We continue to see tremendous growth in EV charging networks every year,” Sustainability Analyst Andrea Chow said.
The city also adopted an updated reach code — building mandates that go beyond state requirements — and it issued a record number of electric leaf blower rebates last year.
More residents are also taking advantage of other rebates from Peninsula Clean Energy, the county’s public electricity provider, on appliances such as heat pump water heaters.
But the Trump administration has cast doubt on the trajectory of federally-funded climate-related infrastructure projects, many spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act.
In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, titled Unleashing American Energy, that, in part, paused some IRA funds, largely focused on grant and loan programs. While the first round of funds are in the process of being dispersed, it’s unclear whether the second round of one of the programs, the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Act funds will be affected. San Mateo has planned to use $155,000 in IRA funds to install 12 new EV charging ports at City Hall.
The U.S. House of Representatives also passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Thursday, May 22, which Rafael Reyes, director of Energy Programs at PCE, said could jeopardize some of the investment tax credits.
“If these changes were adopted as is it would have material impacts on clean energy projects. Much of that would be on the supply side, such as clean energy projects where we have large-scale utility projects underway or prospectively,” Reyes said. “From a local standpoint, the most material impact that we see is that currently, we have about 36 solar storage projects installing systems for local governments.”
The initiative includes work with the San Mateo County Wellness Center and Office of Education.
According to the current bill, such projects would have to start construction within 60 days of the bill’s adoption to receive the IRA investment tax credit, which the federal legislation plans to phase out.
“We will be looking at how we can accelerate the construction timeline of some of those projects,” Reyes said.
But there is still a lot cities and counties can do to bolster decarbonization efforts. The state’s new building code will include a voluntary element for jurisdictions to adopt an A/C-to-heat-pump rule, which stipulates that when property owners install air conditioning, it should be a heat pump, since it is bidirectional and only requires one unit for the heating and cooling of a home.
“That could be made required by cities, even though it’s voluntary in the state code,” Reyes said. “That is an extremely low-cost measure.”
San Mateo had a version of the A/C-to-heat-pump rule but had to update it after a Ninth Circuit ruling that changed how cities and states could structure their building codes.