Environment North Carolina’s 2025 Program Agenda

Environment North Carolina’s program priorities for 2025 include establishing more safe passage for wildlife across roadways, protecting our waterways from plastic waste, investing in more clean, renewable energy, and more.

Shute Cove - North Carolina

Environment North Carolina is a policy and action group with one mission: to restore and protect the natural world. Our staff works for clean air, clean water, clean energy, wildlife, open spaces, and a livable climate. Our members across the state put grassroots support behind our research and advocacy. Environment North Carolina is part of Environment America, a national network of 30 state environmental groups. Here are our priorities for 2025:

Wildlife and Wild Places: 

From the mountains to the coastline, North Carolina is home to an array of priceless green spaces, waterways, and wildlife. And yet, pollution and development threaten even our most pristine places which wildlife call home. We support: 

  • The funding and establishment of more wildlife corridors and safe passage for wildlife across roadways, which could include open space, bridges or underpasses to allow creatures to move throughout their natural habitat. 
  • The protection of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales off of our coast 
  • The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, which would give money to the states each year to protect vulnerable species in our state, like the red wolf, the leatherback turtle, the magnificent ramshorn snail, and the peregrine falcon. 
  • The protection of mature and old growth trees and forests from logging and other destructive activities.
  • The creation and expansion of more parks, forests, reserves, refuges and recreation areas, both for nature’s sake and for the enjoyment of the public. 
  • Special efforts to protect pollinators, which have a unique role to play in protecting biodiversity. We’re working to establish and expand bee habitats through tools like roadside pollinator strips and stop the use of bee-killing pesticides.

Less Waste:

Every day people throw away tons of single-use cups, containers and other items made from plastic. Nothing we use for a few minutes should be allowed to pollute our oceans and rivers and threaten wildlife for centuries. We’re also working to extend the life of myriad other products to reduce waste and save consumers money. We support: 

  • The Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act in Congress, which would “prohibit the discharge of plastic pellets and other pre-production plastic into waterways from facilities and sources that make, use, package, or transport pellets.”
  • Strong producer responsibility laws to hold companies responsible for the waste their products create and incentivize less and better packaging design in the first place.
  • Right to repair laws for products ranging from consumer electronics to farm equipment to wheelchairs to medical technology.
  • Repair scores to help consumers identify which products are easiest to fix.
Plastic pellets washed ashore with other plastic debris
Soren Funk | Unsplash.com
Plastic pellets washed ashore

Clean, Green, Renewable Energy: 

It’s time for our country to conserve more energy, use the energy we do have more efficiently, and rely on sources of energy that are clean, renewable and leave less environmental damage in their wake. And, North Carolina is an important part of our country’s transition to clean renewable energy. We support: 

  • Policies that expand the use of solar energy by more homes, houses of worship, and businesses, by ensuring solar panel users are paid fairly for the solar energy they send back into the grid and lifting caps on solar leasing
  • The continued commitment in North Carolina to achieve 70 percent carbon emissions reductions from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, put in motion by the bipartisan legislation, House Bill 951
  • Appliance efficiency standards and building codes and standards that incentivize conservation, efficiency, and clean electricity over gas consumption.
  • A plan for new wind farms, both onshore and offshore. Wind power is a key component in our energy future.
  • Building out electric battery energy storage in combination with solar and wind, to allow us to reap more renewable energy, while also building a more resilient and reliable grid that delivers clean power when and where we need it most.
  • Ending subsidies and setting energy efficiency and on-site clean energy generation requirements for data centers and bitcoin mines
Photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program with aerial support by Southwings | Used by permission
Solar panels cover the roof of an Ikea warehouse in Perryville, Md., on Nov. 9, 2021.

Clean Water:

If we want a greener, healthier world we need to protect our rivers, lakes, streams and coast. Clean water is vital to ecosystems, to our health, and our quality of life. But too many of our rivers, lakes, streams and coastal areas are vulnerable to pollution. This pollution, along with outdated infrastructure – like lead pipes in our schools – puts our health at risk. We need to work together to protect our waters. We support: 

  • Funding for schools and child care centers to replace fountains with lead-filtering water bottle stations, and install filters certified to remove lead at all other taps used for cooking and drinking
  • Limiting the use of PFAS in consumer products, barring companies from dumping PFAS into our rivers, cleaning up PFAS contamination in our water and communities, and holding industry accountable for damage they have caused.
  • Make our beaches and other waters safer for swimming by funding projects to prevent sewage overflows and runoff pollution.
  • Stronger protections in the states for wetlands and streams – including stricter permitting, applying conservation funding, and expanding waters with protective designations.   
Cavan Image | Adobe Stock
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