PROVIDENCE — In a blow that undermines the state’s efforts to meet its own emission reduction mandates, Gov. Dan McKee on June 24 vetoed a pair of bills that would have required large building owners to begin tracking their emissions.

The veto leaves Rhode Island with no clear pathway to lowering greenhouse gas emissions coming from the state’s buildings sector, which accounts for just under a third of all emissions produced in the Ocean State.

The Act on Climate, signed into law by McKee in 2021, requires the state to reach an increasingly larger number of emissions targets between now and 2050, when Rhode Island is required to reach net-zero emissions. The next goal, a 45% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels, has a deadline of 2030.

In a statement, the sponsors of the benchmarking bills in the House and Senate — Sen. Meghan Kallman, D-Pawtucket, and Rep. Rebecca Kislak, D-Providence — called the vetoes “short-sighted and irresponsible.”

“Rhode Island set ambitious and very necessary commitments to reducing our carbon emissions, but we are giving up on them if we refuse to take even the first steps, such as basic measurement of carbon output from some large sources, as our bill would institute,” Kallman wrote. “It is irresponsible to take so little action toward reducing our carbon output. The governor should be enthusiastically leading the way in our transition to clean energy, not vetoing the first steps toward it.”

“We can’t afford to keep dragging our feet on addressing the emissions coming from our built environment, which represents about one-third of all carbon emissions,” Kislak wrote. “We need bold progress, not fear of even asking big energy users to look at their own energy use. We will keep working to get our large buildings on a path to a more sustainable energy future. This veto is short-sighted and disappointing.”

The legislation championed by Kallman and Kislak only targeted the largest buildings in the state, anything greater than 25,000 square feet. (A typical Providence triple-decker apartment building might clock in around 6,000 square feet or less, for comparison.)

It was heavily based on the already-in-place and successful Building Energy Reporting Ordinance passed by the Providence City Council in 2023. A companion bill that would implement strict emission reduction mandates for large buildings failed to pass the General Assembly this year.

A spokesperson from McKee’s office didn’t return an inquiry from ecoRI News on the reason for the veto. In his letters to the House of Representatives and Senate, McKee wrote the legislation “directly conflicts” with a provision passed in the state budget mandating state buildings participate in a benchmarking program.

“The Act imposes new reporting and compliance obligations on private property owners without providing technical assistance or financial support to facilitate compliance … the Act would create new administrative burdens and potential penalties without the resources to support compliance,” McKee wrote in his veto letters.

Environmental groups strongly oppose the governor’s decision, and called on the General Assembly to override the veto. Climate Action Rhode Island (CARI), a grassroots group that organizes in support of climate action and environmental initiatives, said it was ”deeply disappointed” by the veto.

“Rhode Islanders deserve leadership that puts sound climate policy ahead of politics and continues moving our state toward a cleaner, healthier, and more affordable energy future,” the group wrote in a statement.

CARI also said the veto was “a troubling pattern” from the governor, citing McKee’s efforts to cut renewable energy and energy efficiency programs earlier this year, as well as his proposal to roll back the deadline dates for the 100% Renewable Energy Standard. The group also suggested the veto may have been motivated for political reasons.

CARI also couldn’t ignore the timing of the decision.

“Earlier this month, our organization endorsed Governor McKee’s opponent, Helena Foulkes, in the Democratic primary. While we cannot know the Governor’s motivation for issuing this veto, it is difficult not to question whether politics played a role,” CARI wrote in its statement.

Green Energy Consumers Alliance, another strong backer of the benchmarking legislation, said it was “disappointed” in the governor’s decision, and echoed CARI’s calls to reconvene the General Assembly to override the veto, noting both bills won passage by veto-proof majorities. Rhode Island state policy advocate for the organization, Tina Munter, said the veto would steer the state away from achieving the Act on Climate’s mandates.

“We know that the building sector is the second-largest source of emissions in the state and yet taking steps to track emissions from this sector has consistently been met with opposition by the governor,” Munter said. “It’s frustrating to see an energy usage transparency tool being framed as an energy affordability challenge.”