Sweeping climate bill still unresolved

» Almost a month after Gov. Charlie Baker returned sweeping climate legislation to lawmakers with a series of recommended amendments, House Speaker Ronald Mariano said he’s willing to work with the governor on some technical changes but will “not back down on our ambitious emissions reduction targets.”

The bill — which the House and Senate passed for the second time in January after Baker rejected a version sent to him in the final days of the last legislative session — proposes to lock the state into its goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, set interim emission reduction targets, establish appliance energy efficiency standards, authorize additional purchases of offshore wind power and codify protections for environmental justice communities, among other measures.

Baker’s amendments, which have been before the Senate Committee on Bills in the Third Reading since Feb. 8, address topics including the creation of an opt-in municipal stretch energy code, the 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, and the sector-specific emission reduction sublimits proposed by the Legislature.

“Nothing substantive will change in this bill,” Mariano said Thursday on WBUR’s Radio Boston.

The bill was hammered out in a conference committee chaired by Rep. Thomas Golden, of Lowell, and Sen. Michael Barrett, of Lexington, whose district includes Chelmsford and other Greater Lowell communities.

Mariano, a Quincy Democrat who became speaker in December, said that issues around the COVID-19 vaccine and its distribution are of primary importance to the state right now.

He said the state’s COVID-19 response can be divided into two periods.

The closures and other decisions Baker made at the beginning of the pandemic last year “were right on” but now, in the vaccine rollout, there have been “a number of missteps and a number of things that probably could have been done differently,” Mariano said.