Kain v. Department of Environmental Protection

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) to take additional measures to implement the Global Warming Solutions Act, a state law enacted in 2008. Specifically, the court held that the Act required MassDEP to impose volumetric limits on aggregate greenhouse gas emissions from certain types of sources and that these limits were required to decline on an annual basis. The court was not persuaded by MassDEP’s argument that it had complied with the Act’s requirements by implementing several regulatory initiatives, such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative cap-and-trade program and a low emission vehicle program. The court said that these other initiatives were “important to the Commonwealth’s overall scheme of reducing greenhouse gas emissions over time,” but that more must be done to attain the “actual, measurable, and permanent emissions reductions” required by the Act.