Governor Lujan Grisham signed the tax package that will allow us to save money on clean cars, rooftop solar and efficient home heat pumps.
Sierra Club Celebrates Governor’s Signing of Tax Package
We’re in the news! Utility regulators approves PNM’s transportation electrification program
The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission unanimously approved a plan from the state’s largest utilities for increasing adoption of electric vehicles this week.
New Mexico adopts money-saving building codes
The New Mexico Construction Industries Commission voted Wednesday to adopt the most recent international building energy codes, requiring builders to design and construct new buildings with improved performance. Specifically, the state adopted the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code, with additional requirements that new buildings include infrastructure to support charging for electric vehicles in some parking spaces.
2024 Legislative Tracker
See a list of priority bills for the current session that the Rio Grande Chapter is for the 2024 legislative session.
Get active in the 2024 NM legislative session
The 2024 New Mexico legislative session is upon us, and as ever, our air, climate, land, water, wildlife, families and communities require our action. You have been an important grassroots environmental lobbyist and we so appreciate your participation, work and support. Please take some time to fill out the survey to indicate where and how you’d like to participate during the session and the lead up to it.
Albuquerque companies reduce by reusing
The author visited two Albuquerque manufacturing firms: Submaterial, which makes efforts to reuse or recycle their waste byproducts from their interior architectural products, and Soilutions, which takes organic materials that might otherwise end up in a landfill producing methane and turns them into prime topsoil.
ETA credits lighten PNM bills for 2024
If you’re a PNM customer, check the line item on your bill titled “San Juan ETA Settlement Credit” for a credit of around $9. The credits come as compensation for PNM’s delay in issuing Energy Transition bonds to refinance debt customers had been paying for San Juan Generating Station. Instead of issuing the low-interest bonds when the coal plant closed, PNM continued to collect its 10% rate of return on the debt from customers. The Public Regulation Commission in 2022 ordered PNM to credit customers to reflect the savings the bonds would have brought, but PNM appealed and won a stay at the state Supreme Court.
Prescribed burns can meet or defeat forest goals
The devastation left after the northern wildfires last year has changed ways of thinking about what can burn and under what conditions. Scientists at the National Soil Moisture Monitoring Network Conference determined that fire managers must evaluate more factors, particularly the correlation between soil moisture and plant moisture to adequately predict fire risk and conditions of advanced drought. Ideal prescribed burn “windows” will be fewer.
Bears and Cougars lose with new hunting rules
In October, the New Mexico Game Commission unanimously voted to approve new bear and cougar hunting rules that will be in place for the next four years. Cougar-hunting quotas remain unjustifiably high in 16 of 18 cougar zones. Cougar hunting with dogs is already allowed year-round. Cougars and bears that die outside of hunting either, from depredation complaints or as roadkill, will not be counted against the hunting quotas.
New Mexico Adopts Clean Cars
After four days of hearings and dozens of hours of testimony and public comments, New Mexico adopted Clean Cars II standards through 2032, as well as Clean Trucks and Heavy-Duty Omnibus Standards on November 16. Starting in model year 2027, automakers must ensure that 43 percent of the new vehicles they sell in New Mexico are zero-emission vehicles (electric or plug-in hybrid).