Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware is on the frontline of climate change impacts, boasting the nation’s lowest mean elevation in a global hotspot for accelerating rates of sea level rise. Despite a federal retreat from climate change adaptation and resiliency planning, state leaders continue to aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for a hotter Delaware that is expected to bear even more extreme weather and risks in the decades to come.
Even as the federal government dismantles national climate change policies, Delaware policy-makers are pushing forward to incorporate climate impact planning into everything from buildings and transportation to waste, land use and industry.
On Wednesday, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) published its latest 2025 Climate Action Plan, described by DNREC Secretary Gregory Patterson as the “state’s playbook” of climate action strategies to “make Delaware a better place to live.”
“Climate change is real, and it is affecting Delaware and Delawareans in serious ways,” Patterson said during a press briefing to unveil the new plan.
The report estimates that climate change will cost the state upward of $1 billion if nothing is done to address potential threats to public health from heat-related disease and death, flooding and water quality impacts.
The 288-page plan breaks down hazards and solutions, and includes a new chapter on land use that explores how local land use decisions can play a role in mitigating climate change by, for example, creating more walkable communities with less emission-producing traffic or protecting wetlands to sequester carbon and store floodwaters.
“We are talking about strategies for cleaner air, for more dense, walkable, bikeable communities with more transit, less flooding, more trees and forests, productive farmland, more and better quality wetlands,” Patterson said. “These things that are good on their own are also the tools and things that we need to combat climate change and adapt to it.”
The Nature Conservancy, an environmental advocacy and conservation organization, applauded the new report for its focus on conservation of wetlands and forests while also prioritizing marsh migration and habitat connectivity, the nonprofit’s spokeswoman Emily Knearl said.
”The role of conservation and thoughtful land use policy is critical to building a more resilient Delaware,” she said in a statement.
Climate change in Delaware
In Delaware, some of the greatest risks associated with climate change impacts are related to the state taking on too much water, both from sea level rise and extreme weather-related flooding, as well as increased temperatures.
“Climate change is not only an environmental challenge – it is a public health emergency,” Mid-Atlantic Alliance on Climate and Health Vice President Shweta Arya said in a press release. “Intensifying heat waves and flooding put Delawareans at risk, especially our most vulnerable residents: children, older adults, outdoor and agricultural workers, and people with chronic health conditions.”
The First State has already seen sea level rise more than 1 foot in the past century, with another 9 to 23 inches expected by 2050.
Along with rising sea levels, Delaware is also experiencing long-term land subsidence, or sinking, and is already known to have the lowest mean elevation in the nation. This combination means Delaware is in a sea-level rise hotspot.
As for rising temperatures, experts project the number of days reaching more than 95 degrees to double over the next two decades, rising from an average of five to 10 days.
“These impacts are caused by us, by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels,” explained DNREC’s Climate and Sustainability Section Administrator Susan Love.
Greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels create a heat-trapping blanket in the atmosphere that drives up global air and water temperatures. That change in the climate leads to warmer oceans, which provide fuel for stronger hurricanes and more extreme storms, melts Arctic sea ice which exacerbates rising sea levels and leads to droughts and extreme heat that can cause wildfires and significant public health risks.
Love said most of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions are produced by vehicles, industrial processes and electricity generation. Delaware imports most of its power, and as the second-smallest state, consumes some 70 times more energy than it produces, according to the state.
How to create more power in state in the cleanest way possible, including wind, solar or even nuclear, has become a major topic of debate in the last year.
The 2025 update
The 2025 Climate Action Plan is arguably more ambitious than its predecessor, Love said, in large part because it includes specific emissions reduction goals. Delaware’s Climate Change Solutions Act of 2023 requires statewide emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2050.
And the state is already working toward those reductions. By 2021, greenhouse gas emissions had decreased by nearly 24% from 2005 levels, according to state data.
If all the strategies outlined in this new report are implemented, the state could reduce its emissions from those 2005 levels by some 96.4% by 2050.
“We’re doing pretty well,” Love said, noting that emissions reductions already seen in the state have largely been due to a shift away from coal for energy production to cleaner natural gas and completely green renewable energy sources like solar.
“We’re making great progress, but we must do more,” she said.
Those emissions targets call on agencies like DNREC to develop regulations and consider climate impacts in planning and purchasing decisions in order to meet those reductions. But some renewable energy efforts, like procuring power from offshore wind farms, have also been stalled due to changes at the federal level, legal challenges and local pushback.
Transportation also plays a key role in Delaware’s climate action goals, like improving public transit, designing walkable and bikeable communities, and incentivizing larger vehicles like school buses and heavy-duty trucks to go electric as ways to reduce emissions from vehicles. Transportation accounted for almost 30% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, according to the report.
“We can’t EV our way out of transportation emissions,” Love cautioned, after noting the increase in the number of electric vehicle owners in Delaware. “A lot of work needs to be done as well to reduce the amount that we drive vehicles, by good land-use choices, mass transit, and making it easier for people to walk, bike and roll to their destinations.”
The 2025 plan also includes a new section on emerging hazards like invasive species and the spread of diseases from pests like mosquitoes as areas become warmer, as well as droughts, wildfires, ocean acidification and other extreme weather events.
“[These are] things that are going to become more important to pay attention to in the future based on what we know about climate change and what those changes will do in our environment,” said Jesse Hayden, DNREC’s coastal programs administrator. “It also makes economic sense to invest in resilience and mitigation rather than waiting until disasters happen.”
Challenges ahead
While industrial processes like oil refining and other chemical manufacturing account for about one-third of the state’s emissions, it’s unlikely that any major reductions will be seen among those private industries before 2030, Love said. The shorter-term advances will likely come from emissions reductions in the transportation and energy sectors.
The slow movement for industry and manufacturing would likely largely be due to the availability of technology and the time it will take industrial users or manufacturers to adopt energy-saving measures, she said.
“It is widely recognized to be the most difficult sector to decarbonize or reduce emissions from,” Love said.
A rollback at the federal level of emissions standards may make the task of reducing emissions from private industry even more difficult. In 2025, the Trump administration directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider — or rescind — a slew of regulatory rules addressing climate change, including those aimed at reducing industrial emissions.
A retreat on the federal level from anything climate related also leaves Delaware slightly siloed when it comes to funding to support programs and initiatives outlined in the plan.
“I think there is no doubt that the reduced funding in a lot of these areas from the federal government makes these goals and strategies harder to implement,” Patterson said. “That is just the unfortunate reality.”
Maddy Lauria is an independent journalist based in central Delaware who covers local and national stories on the environment, business and much more. See more of her work at maddylauria.com.