Delaware has reached a pivotal moment in the fight to ensure a cleaner, more sustainable future, environmental advocates say. A partial list of weapons in this battle includes a range of short- and long-term actions: developing renewable energy sources; imposing new guidelines for considering climate change in local land-use planning; increasing the number of electric vehicles on the road; and making it easier and safer to get around by bicycle.
The need to act is urgent, environmentalists agree. The coastline that makes Delaware an enviable place to live and draws millions of tourists every year also renders the state critically vulnerable to the effects of climate change. With the lowest mean elevation of any state in the nation, our state is especially under threat from flooding, storms, and disruption to the water supply caused by a warming climate.
“If we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is what clean energy is all about, Delaware is going to lose the coast,” says Emily Knearl, Delaware director of government relations and external affairs at The Nature Conservancy. “We are already facing significant sea-level rise. …It’s only going to get worse if we don’t act.”
The Delaware Climate Change Solutions Act of 2023 sets ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state: cutting them 50% by 2030 (compared to the 2005 baseline) and reaching net zero by 2050.
This and other recent developments give environmental advocates like Knearl reasons for optimism. “One of the things that we do know is that now people believe in climate change,” she says. “As recently as five years ago, we just weren’t seeing the kind of numbers of people believing in climate change.” (Those who maintained any doubt might have been convinced more recently by the raging wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles, due to unprecedented conditions created by a warming climate.)
While the goal of reaching net zero emissions enjoys widespread support, the initiatives aimed at reaching this include a mix of uncontroversial and disputed measures.
Paving the Way for Bicyclists
Among the least controversial is boosting the number of people who ride their bike to work. In 2024, Delaware ranked seventh-highest in the nation in the League of American Bicyclists’ annual “Bicycle Friendly State Report Card,” rising from No. 9 the previous two years. Delaware’s “investments in bicycling infrastructure are paying off,” according to the league. In addition to installing bicycle lanes and dedicated trails, the state has enacted laws mandating that motorists safely share the roads with bikes, requiring drivers to change lanes if possible while passing a bicyclist and to avoid honking their horn in a “malicious” way.
Still, only 0.3% of the state’s residents commute to work by bike, putting Delaware in the middle of the pack nationwide. To boost the number of people ditching their car commutes, the league recommends that the state put even more money into bike-related infrastructure and pass a law to encourage lower speed limits.
Revving up Support for EVs
The state is also moving to increase the number of electric vehicles on the road. A law passed last fall requires Delaware to begin phasing out its carbon-emitting cars and light duty vehicles. Under the targets set, 15% of the state’s vehicles will be fueled by renewable energy next year. By 2040, the entire fleet of state-owned vehicles is supposed to be emissions-free (with some exceptions, including school buses and police cars).
A separate law also passed last year aims to make buying and installing EV service equipment more affordable, with low-income households eligible to receive up to 90% of the cost and everyone else able to get up to half of the expense covered.
Helping to defray those costs is a step toward making EVs accessible to all, but it’s not a complete solution, says Dustyn Thompson, director of the Delaware chapter of the Sierra Club.
“We’re working with municipalities, state government, [and] county government on how do we make it so everybody, whether they have a driveway or not, has access to charging near or at their home—a convenient way to charge an EV, whether that’s a plug-in hybrid or a full electric?”
Planning Resilient Communities
For the first time, counties and municipalities forming their comprehensive plans will be required to include strategies to “increase community resiliency and address the impacts of climate change,” due to a law that will go into effect November 2026. The law addresses a wide range of issues, including conserving natural areas such as wetlands and forests and developing alternatives to “auto-centric development patterns.” Walking, biking, and taking mass transit should all become more common under this law.
The law also includes a provision that land-use decisions consider a property’s vulnerability “to sea level rise, changes in rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events.” Bill co-sponsor Sen. Stephanie Hansen says she expects pushback from property owners and local governments but defends the change as a statewide imperative.
“When we have the ability to plan, we shouldn’t plan to build things, plan buildings, plan communities, [and] plan infrastructure in areas that are going to be flooded, that are constantly experiencing storms, that are experiencing a rising water table,” she asserts. “Because all those things mean that we have to invest state resources to build and rebuild roads, bridges, and storm sewers—all that really expensive infrastructure—because of poor land-use decision-making.”
Thompson puts the need for change in even starker terms: “How we are developing in our state right now is 100% unsustainable. And in terms of resiliency, we are dramatically hurting our state in the coming years by how we are developing.”
Dropping Dependence on Fossil Fuels
Underlying many environmental goals is a question: How will the state meet its energy needs without relying on carbon-emitting fuels? Just 6% of the energy powering Delaware came from renewable sources in 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. What’s more, the state consumes almost 80% as much energy as it produces.
Investing in renewable energy sources is essential not only for a cleaner future but also to ensure a reliable supply of power for Delaware, which currently has to compete with other states to buy increasingly expensive energy, says Hansen.
“We are facing a reliability cliff, and I think people need to understand the severity of that,” she says.
Hansen sees promise in four energy sources—offshore wind, solar, green hydrogen, and small modular reactors (a form of nuclear energy). Of the four, offshore wind is currently the chief focus of environmental activists and lawmakers.
Green hydrogen made headlines two years ago when the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub (MACH2), a collaboration between Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, was approved for $750 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs Program. “This is a big deal,” then-Delaware Gov. John Carney said at the time. “Hydrogen is a clean fuel of the future, one of the ways we can pollute less.”
Environmental groups express skepticism about whether the energy production will truly be “green” and are closely watching the details as the technology and plans for infrastructure progress. Regardless, says Hansen, any benefits from green hydrogen are years away.
Meanwhile, legislation signed into law last fall creates a framework for Delaware to solicit and build offshore wind projects along its coastline, a development environmental advocates hail as long overdue and crucial for meeting the goals set by the Delaware Climate Change Solutions Act.
“It’s absolutely integral,” says Peggy Schultz of People for Offshore Wind Energy Resources (POWER). “We don’t have the lovely rolling hills that are required for onshore turbines, which are less expensive. And solar is gradually increasing, but it’s a very slow activity and you can’t count on it to be ready by the deadlines set in the climate solutions bill. We don’t have any raging rivers that we can use for hydro power. So offshore wind is our only option.”
Proponents of offshore wind faced disappointment in December, when Sussex County Council voted 4-1 against approving US Wind’s application to build a substation in Dagsboro to accept power from its wind farms off the Maryland coast. Among those voting no was council member Douglas Hudson, who was quoted in media as saying the project would not benefit Sussex County residents in the long term. US Wind plans to appeal the decision in court.
Hansen calls the Sussex County decision “not a stop sign but a yield sign,” and said work to bring offshore wind energy to Delaware will continue.
Amid the roadblocks and disputes, progress is being made on crucial issues such as renewable energy, sustainable transportation, and the protection of natural spaces, says Jennifer Adkins, executive director of the Delaware Nature Society, who credits a long-standing collaboration between government and private groups.
“There were years of work leading up to this, getting us to this point,” Adkins says. “But I definitely think that we are moving in the right direction.”
Related: What to Do in Dover: A Day Trip Guide to Delaware’s State Capital
