Abstract

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s government has already been leading on climate action through a series of activities, including: legislative action; planning, research, and information gathering; and program implementation. This Plan builds on past and ongoing activities to inform future action. More specifically, this 2018 Climate Action Plan Update comprehensively considers the changing climate in Pennsylvania by addressing both the impacts of climate change (“adaptation” to climate impacts) and the causes of climate change (reducing and stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions, or “mitigation”). 

Goals: To ensure the effectiveness of this Plan, overarching adaptation goals and emissions reduction targets are used to frame the strategies. This Plan identifies two adaptation-focused goals, which can be achieved by actions from citizen, businesses, and leaders in the commonwealth: 

• Minimize disruptions to Pennsylvania’s citizens, economy, and environment from climate-related hazards. 
• Increase Pennsylvania’s ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from climate-related disruptions. 

 

Targets: Meanwhile, the mitigation targets used in this Plan for gauging the results of a set of potential GHG reduction strategies are: 

• 26 percent reduction of net GHG emissions by 2025, from 2005 levels 
• 80 percent reduction of net GHG emissions by 2050, from 2005 levels