On April 14, 2021, Gov. Dan McKee signed the Act on Climate law, which set enforceable greenhouse gas emission reduction mandates. The legislation also requires the state to achieve net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050.

To keep the public apprised of Rhode Island’s efforts to reduce its climate-changing emissions, the act also requires the state to create a climate dashboard.

The law requires the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) to “foster public transparency by developing public metrics and an online public dashboard that shall track both emissions reductions and sources of energy consumed by the state.”

In February 2022, the EC4 requested advice and guidance from its Advisory Board to develop a draft outline of a climate dashboard by Oct. 31, 2022.

The Advisory Board spent much of that year discussing what metrics and data should be tracked on the dashboard. Multiple climate dashboards developed by other states were reviewed as part of the Advisory Board’s work. The 14-member board created a PowerPoint presentation that was given to the EC4 in early November 2022.

So far, Rhode Island has created A Snapshot, which was last updated in October 2021.

ecoRI News recently asked DEM for an update on climate dashboard progress. Agency spokesperson Evan LaCross noted the dashboard will replace the “older and out-of-date” snapshot on the state’s climate website.

He said the dashboard will look familiar to those that already use the DRIVE EV dashboard or the Office of Energy Resources website. The dashboard will be built on Tableau, which is the same platform that was used to create the Clean Heat Rhode Island website, according to LaCross.

When built, the climate dashboard will be focused on metrics related to mitigation and Act on Climate mandates. LaCross said it will present data visually on a variety of issues, including overall state greenhouse gas emissions, electric vehicle adoption, EV charging infrastructure, transit ridership, and green jobs.

“The Climate Dashboard is designing it to be a user friendly educational tool, so the public has easy access to state climate related data, including charts and graphs,” LaCross wrote in an email to ecoRI News. “The dashboard should be considered a ‘living project’ that will be updated and continuously improved as data on certain subjects becomes available and new metrics can be added.”

Funding for the development of the new dashboard will come from an Environmental Protection Agency grant awarded to DEM in August 2023.