LAST MONTH, Gov. Charlie Baker signed landmark climate change legislation. Press coverage that focused on the sparring between the governor and the Legislature over the details obscured the bigger story, which is that both the Legislature and the Baker administration are aligned on the need for Massachusetts to set – and meet – a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In December, the Baker administration released its 2050 Decarbonization Roadmap. The plan is a rigorous analysis of how to reach net zero across all sectors of the Massachusetts economy. Its sister report, the Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2030, goes into further detail on the actions the Commonwealth needs to take over the next decade to stay on track.

The good news is that Massachusetts is already off to a good start: overall, even as the state’s population and teconomy have grown significantly, emissions have declined more than 20 percent below 1990 levels, driven by a 50 percent reduction in emissions from the electricity sector. But with lots of electricity sector emissions left to tackle, and little decarbonization progress so far in the transportation and building sectors, net zero remains a long way off.

That’s why we’re concerned that the 2030 Climate Plan charts a course that is harder and more uncertain than it needs to be. And, most importantly, given the urgency of the climate crisis, a course that is longer than it needs to be.

As a package, the legislation, the 2050 roadmap, and the 2030 plan signal a significant new phase in this administration’s battle against the climate crisis, and a very welcome one. Paired with the Biden administration’s aggressive leadership on climate, we now have powerful, aligned signals at the federal and state level. What’s odd, however, about this recent burst of state policy-making, is that it describes a slowing pace on the renewable resources that have been the most successful so far—proven technologies with mature markets that are viable today and ready to scale: solar generation and energy storage.

The 2050 roadmap shows an annual build rate of solar so small it’s barely visible on the chart between now and 2035, before ramping up to 1,300 megawatts per year from 2040 onward. Massachusetts added 571 megawatts of solar in 2017, our peak year, before retreating to 237 megawatts in 2019. Solar is already cheap and readily available; what are we waiting for?

Our best guess is that there are two main issues at play.

The first reason the administration’s plan may have put off solar deployment is the difficult question of where to put it. Even with the 2050 roadmap’s heavy reliance on offshore wind and imported hydropower from Canada, the plan estimates that we’ll need at least 60,000 acres of additional ground-mounted solar in Massachusetts, about 1 percent of the Commonwealth’s land.

As the 2050 roadmap also acknowledges, all forms of renewable generation and transmission face siting challenges (let’s not forget what happened recently to Eversource’s Northern Pass transmission project in New Hampshire or the Cape Wind project off of Cape Cod), but solar has run into more siting roadblocks because solar has been more broadly adopted so far in Massachusetts.

Second, the distributed solar projects that have made up the bulk of the solar buildout in Massachusetts so far have been facing increasingly difficult—and costly—challenges to interconnection with the distribution grid. As more and more distributed generation has been built, a system that was built to deliver power in one direction from a few large power plants to customers is being asked to accommodate an increasing number of small generators sending power in many directions—something the grid was never designed to handle. Here again, all forms of renewable energy, and all pathways to net zero, will change the way we use the grid, and it will take planning and investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure to make that transition go smoothly. The Department of Public Utilities  is actively pursuing changes to the way the power grid is planned and the way upgrade costs are shared, but in the short term grid interconnection is a major drag on decarbonization.

 These are real challenges and understandable reasons why Massachusetts might look to new ideas and new technologies. But new ideas and new technologies won’t solve these problems, just put them off. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, delaying dealing with roadblocks to decarbonization isn’t something we can afford to do. On the contrary, we need to figure out how to frontload decarbonization as much as possible, because the extent of the disastrous consequences we face from climate change are determined by the cumulative amount of excess greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, not the amount we are emitting at any point in time. It matters very little whether we emit new carbon dioxide on Jan. 1, 2050; what matters is the total amount we add to the already warming atmosphere between now and 2050.

Yet the climate plan still projects 4 million megatons of emissions from the electricity sector in 2030 because it relies on strategies that are still commercializing and under-invests in strategies that are already working. The plan assumes an enormous role for offshore wind and Canadian hydroelectric generation, which are surely essential to a decarbonized future. But because of long timelines and serious challenges on the horizon for those resources, we should not have all our eggs in those baskets.

We can and should confront the challenges of siting and interconnecting solar and energy storage head on. The 60,000-acre benchmark for ground-mounted solar provides a useful foundation for the constructive conversation that is needed. We can shift the conversation from where solar shouldn’t go to where it should, and then figure out how to fine-tune incentive programs or direct additional investment in the grid in order to facilitate solar development in the “right” locations. A bill introduced this session by Rep. Carolyn Dykema of Holliston would seek to do just that by establishing “solar opportunity zones” to minimize land use conflict and coordinate utility upgrades.

Interconnection issues must also be tackled head-on, even more urgently than land use. Better system planning is urgent because many of the grid investments—new substations, upgraded transmission lines—that are necessary for a decarbonized grid, no matter what mix of renewables is powering it, will take years to complete.

The Department of Public Utilities is developing a new protocol for grid planning and cost sharing, and if an interim update is implemented this year, we can avoid losing years of effort and millions of dollars of investment that have gone into the projects currently applying for interconnection. The Legislature also has a role to play, and took an important step in the climate bill by requiring that the DPU take climate change into account in its decision-making.

A bill filed by Rep. Thomas Golden of Lowell would build on that progress and overhaul the interconnection process by capping interconnection costs, setting incentives and penalties to ensure that utilities adhere to reasonable timelines for interconnection, and requiring utilities to proactively upgrade the grid to facilitate decarbonization. These are all necessary measures if we are to achieve our climate goals.

The Legislature and the Baker administration have set the Commonwealth’s sights high with the climate bill and the 2050 roadmap. We can’t afford to waste any time in getting down to business on decarbonization, which is why we shouldn’t slow our pace on solar and energy storage, two resources that are cost-effective and available now. Siting and interconnection aren’t trivial challenges, but they aren’t unique to solar, and they can and should be solved.

Jessica Robertson is director of policy and business development for New England and Dan Berwick is general manager of development at Borrego Solar in Lowell.

THIS SPRING, as flowers and trees begin to bloom in New England, our clean energy industry is also ready to blossom after decades of delays and setbacks.

Last month Gov. Charlie Baker signed one of the strongest climate bills in the nation, committing to reduce emissions 50 percent by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Boston, Massachusetts’ largest city, launched a municipal energy program to expand access to renewable energy for residents, including low-income families, and is considering nation-leading regulations to address carbon emissions from our biggest source – large buildings. Worcester has committed to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.  Even smaller towns across the Commonwealth, like Arlington, Melrose, and Natick, are developing plans for net-zero emissions by 2050.

Our private sector is also stepping up with major hospitals such as Mass General Brigham and Boston Medical Center committing to “do no harm” by setting ambitious carbon neutrality goals.  Even resource-constrained nonprofits like Mass Audubon have been leading by example for years through purchasing green electricity, installing solar on-site, and implementing other initiatives that have cut their carbon emissions by 50 percent since 2003.

All of this adds up to Massachusetts committing to do our part to meet or exceed the goals of the historic Paris climate agreement, which President Biden rejoined earlier this year.

There is much to celebrate this spring, but as any farmer will tell you, spring is when the hard work really starts. And when it comes to tackling climate change, that has never been more true. Globally, pollution levels aren’t falling nearly fast enough to prevent the worst impacts of climate change – extreme storms, droughts, heatwaves, and rising sea levels to name a few. Years of inaction or worse under the previous administration have left us badly behind where we need to be.

That is why it is so important that the Biden administration is moving forward with permitting the Vineyard Wind project off of New England’s shores as a first step toward the goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. These new offshore wind farms will create huge amounts of affordable clean electricity and will be a powerful new tool to achieve our carbon goals. The benefits extend well beyond decarbonization. Developing offshore wind at scale will make our region healthier by replacing polluting power plants that contribute to heart and lung disease with the most cost-effective source of clean energy available in New England.  And ,as an added bonus, economic development will soar through new jobs, new businesses, and new investments to our region which will be brought in in an equitable manner thanks to the new legislation.

This is a tremendous opportunity to make a big positive change for our health, economy, and our environment at a critical time for all three. To take full advantage, it must be done right. That means developing the resource responsibly to protect our vital ocean ecosystems, investing in workforce development to ensure that the economic benefits extend to communities of color that are too often shut out from economic opportunity, and investing in the infrastructure to establish our region as the hub of this new industry.

It also means leveraging the power of private sector actors to drive the growth of offshore wind and the pace of decarbonization. While it is important that our utilities buy into offshore wind, as mandated by the state, we can and must go further. Many businesses and nonprofits in our state already go outside of their utility to source electricity to achieve their financial and environmental goals, and with the rise of municipal aggregations, such as Boston’s Community Choice Energy program, many communities are doing the same. Open access to low-cost offshore wind will help unleash the full power of our businesses, institutions, and communities to achieve our climate goals, and help ensure that everyone can contribute to, and benefit from, the clean energy revolution blooming off our coast.

Winston Vaughan is Massachusetts director of Health Care Without Harm and Heather Takle is CEO of Power Options.