The Dirty Truth About Utility Climate Pledges

While the climate crisis is thankfully front and center for the new Biden administration, most utilities have only given it lip service over the last four years, and there have been few people in positions of power to hold them accountable to the long-term consequences of their failure to take meaningful steps to curb their carbon pollution. Instead of acting, utilities have been hiding behind carbon neutrality pledges, which are intentionally vague and nonbinding, and allow them to delay acting on climate change for decades. 

We aim to change that with the Sierra Club’s new The Dirty Truth About Utility Climate Pledges report, which shows the public that the vast majority of utilities are not retiring their coal and gas plants fast enough to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Our research shows that most utilities are just “greenwashing” the problem, so our report grades their climate actions based on climate science, instead of the quality of their PR campaigns.  

The infuriating truth is that many utilities are not only protecting their coal plants from retirement, but are also planning to build climate-destabilizing gas plants -- ignoring climate science, delaying their embrace of renewables, and pushing us further into the crisis. Maintaining the status quo is worsening the climate crisis that already disproportionately harms low-income communities and communities of color. But taking meaningful action to eliminate carbon emissions would create millions of jobs, save thousands of lives, and create new dynamic industries that will revitalize entire regions of the United States. 

Here are the toplines from the report:

• The average score was 20 out of 100 for utilities with a net-zero climate pledge and 14 out of 100 for utilities without such a pledge, showing that the pledges have not led to any appreciable amount of near-term ambition or action.

• Fifty utilities own 68 percent of remaining coal generation but have committed to retire just 25 percent of their coal generation by 2030.

• The top 20 remaining coal owners have only committed to retire 11 percent of their remaining coal generation by 2030. 

• Thirty-two of the operating companies included in this study are planning to build new gas plants—totaling over 36 gigawatts (GW) through 2030. That is over 40 percent of the total gas plants slated to be built across the US through 2030.

• Fifty utilities plan to add 250 million megawatt hours (MWh) of new wind and solar energy to the grid between 2020 and 2030, equivalent to only 19 percent of their current coal and gas generation. That’s wholly inadequate to bring about a swift transition to a zero-carbon grid.

• This lack of utility ambition leaves a gap of 81 percent (1,070 million MWh) of coal and gas generation with no planned clean energy replacement. In other words, between 2020 and 2030, utilities have plans to replace just 19 percent of their current coal and gas generation with clean energy -- not enough to actually meet the decarbonization we need to stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis. 

To help the public further dig into these shocking stats, the Sierra Club also launched an interactive website with a digital dashboard. Users can look up detailed information on each utility’s power plant portfolio and immediately take action through our AddUp tool. 

Despite the mountain of evidence we released, utilities’ reactions to the report and dashboard were predictably defensive. Instead of acknowledging their shortcomings and immediately taking action, many utilities equivocated, made excuses, or hid from the press hoping it would blow over. 

We will not let it.  

The report’s findings are straightforward: Climate science demands that every utility retire all of their coal plants by 2030, immediately cease building new gas plants, and aggressively build out clean energy resources to meet electricity demand. This is the only way to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis.

We need serious climate commitments, and we need them now. We need concrete plans, complete with timetables, to phase out dirty fuels and transition to 100 percent clean energy -- not vague promises that leave our communities breathing polluted air and our planet overheating.  

Our report rollout is just the beginning. We must continue to hold utilities accountable for their actions and their failures to act, and enlist their customers, regulators, and investors to push them to do what is right. 

Want to help? Take action here.