PROVIDENCE — It’s been a year since lawmakers gave the state’s climate council it’s inaugural operating budget; so where did the money go?

The Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) is Rhode Island’s designated lead agency on climate change response. The council, made up of 13 different state agencies and offices all with a stake in climate issues, has existed in its current form since 2014, but lacked additional funds outside of agency budgets to pursue climate projects.

Lawmakers last year awarded the EC4 a one-time transfer of $3 million from leftover Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) auction proceeds via a last-minute floor amendment.

The one-time transfer was just seed money. Lawmakers also allocated a maximum of $1.5 million in all future RGGI auction proceeds going forward.

RGGI is a multistate cap-and-trade program that charges the participating states’ biggest polluters strict allowances for the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) they are allowed to emit annually. Auctions are held for all states once per quarter, with states receiving money for green initiatives once the sales are final.

The EC4 passed its first spending plan last September, and since then results for the fiscal year have been mixed. Some agencies reported spending all of the money allocated for their proposed projects, others punted the money to the following fiscal year.

Here is what ecoRI News found out about the spending so far:

The Office of Energy Resources (OER) told ecoRI News it spent almost everything allocated on the agency’s electric vehicle and electric bike programs. The EC4 awarded $1.1 million to OER to fund the perennial popular rebate programs last year, and a spokesperson for OER said the agency had spent $1,076,857 in those programs so far.

“The full allocation was not used because the e-bike program was suspended to prevent exceeding the $1.1 limit,” said Robert Beadle, OER’s chief public affairs officer.

Beadle said the EC4, at a meeting last month, voted to infuse the E-Bike incentive program with another $150,000, this time from the municipal participation program.

The state Department of Environmental Management told ecoRI News the agency hasn’t spent any of the money for either initiative funded by the EC4.

“DEM has not yet expended any of the FY24 EC4 funding allocated for DEM’s Urban Forestry program or the Chief Resilience Officer,” Evan LaCross, a public affairs officer at DEM, wrote in an email. “The funding is being rolled over into FY 25.”

LaCross said DEM’s new chief resilience officer, Kim Korioth, only assumed her role in January, and her initial priorities were focused on supporting a regional resiliency grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, helping to implement the Ocean State Climate Adaptation and Resilience (OSCAR) program, the municipal resilience program, and the Climate Resiliency Fund, and conducting municipal outreach. The EC4 originally allocated $100,000 for the chief resilience officer’s programmatic work.

Money from the urban forestry program, said LaCross, is planned to be spent in the fall when the new program, technical assistance grants for urban and community forests, rolls out. The EC4 originally allocated $120,000 to invest in urban tree cover and improving growing sites.

The Executive Office of Commerce said it received $200,000 in EC4 money in April, to be used, according to the EC4’s spending plan, on hiring contractual support for direct outreach to the business community to navigate the incentive programs and practices to achieve GHG reductions and resilience measures.

Commerce spokesperson Matt Touchette told ecoRI News, “We are currently working closely with our partners across the state to develop a plan on how best to utilize those funds.”

The state Department of Labor and Training (DLT) received $150,000 for a small grant program to focus on environmental education, professional development, and youth programs.

“The awarded funds were allocated to two youth-focused programs,” said Edwine Paul, DLT’s chief public affairs officer. “One is career exploration, and the other is career readiness. The first is focused on STEM exploration specifically around robotics, with a focus on applications for clean energy resilience and sustainability; the second is pre-pre-apprenticeship career readiness geared towards a career path in a clean energy-related apprenticeship.”

The STEM program, called NE First, in its first year will impact up to 200 students in communities, including Providence, Central Falls, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, and Newport, by focusing on elementary and middle school students to expose them to careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Paul said the program will include 10 elementary school-level teams of students, and another five teams for middle school students.

DLT’s second program, Building Green Futures, will prepare young adults with the skills and knowledge to succeed in green and plant-based industries.

The state Department of Health was allocated $80,000 to develop geographic information system (GIS) tools in the Environmental Health Risk Assessment Program that will integrate cancer incidence, historic site use, and flood risk data.

DOH spokesperson Joseph Wendelken told ecoRI News the department received its share of EC4 money in December, and began work on the projects in February. Wendelken said the agency hasn’t yet begun developing the GIS tools.

“The Environmental Health Risk Assessment team and the Climate and Health Program at RIDOH have been working with other state and municipal agencies to better understand preexisting practices and plans surrounding chemical releases during flood events, as well as flash flooding,” Wendelken said. “We are also examining flood risks to understand the current and historical use, storage, and disposal of chemicals within river flood plains. This will all inform our mapping tools.”

The state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was allocated $150,000 to contract new staff on the agency’s policy team to work on dockets related to climate issues, although that work wasn’t specified in the state budget. PUC chair Ron Gerwatowski indicated to lawmakers in March the money was spent on a new financial analyst position.

Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously reported the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) was allocated dedicated funding from excess underground storage tanks (UST). Lawmakers did transfer $2 million from the UST fund, but none of it is going toward the EC4 budget.