Climate & Clean Energy

Back in 2014, WEC worked alongside others in the environmental community, with environmental justice leaders, and labor leaders to build the Climate Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy to push for collaborative climate action that met the needs of diverse interests across multiple sectors. Specifically, we came together to put a price on carbon and in 2018 together we launched and managed the I-1631 campaign to pass a carbon fee. Unfortunately, that initiative lost at the ballot but WEC and our partners persisted in collaboration and passed the 100% clean electricity law (SB 5116) in 2019, updated our state’s greenhouse gas emission targets in 2020 (HB 2311) along with continuing to deepen and learn how to center environmental justice for climate action. 

Our work now is to learn lessons from the past, invest in relationships with Tribal Nations, black-led coalitions and organizations, frontline community and environmental justice organizations, labor unions and just transition advocates to build a more just and equitable climate movement for change. 

Through our work in coalition, we are going up against the fossil fuel industry and charting the course to change decades of land use, transportation, industrial and utility policies that reinforce an extractive and polluting system.