States are “moving the needle” on climate change but must continue to challenge the federal government and each other, members of the U.S. Climate Alliance said Thursday.

“Local communities — states, provinces, cities, counties — we have the ability to be more ambitious than our federal … partners. Across the globe, we have the ability to act more quickly. We have the ability to be more innovative,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee during a discussion with New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Hawaii Gov. David Ige.

The governors lead three of the 25 states in the alliance, which was created in response to former President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Alliance members commit to taking actions to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“We are moving the needle big time,” Inslee said during the session, part of the Climate Week NYC events. “We just need … to develop these relationships to encourage other governors, mayors and the like to join us … with specific commitments and actual things that can be implemented rather than vague, amorphous long-range kind of statements of intent.”

Inslee said the states in the alliance are engaged in “friendly competition.”

Clockwise from top left: Taryn Finnessey, U.S. Climate Alliance; New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham; Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Hawaii Gov. David Ige. | U.S. Climate Alliance

“We want people to be inspired by us. When Michelle does something great in New Mexico that inspires me to up our game in Washington. When I do something here, it might inspire Gov. Ige.”

“We think this is going to bode well in Glasgow [the site of the COP 26 United Nations climate meeting]. We’re looking forward to it. This is the moment we don’t intend to waste.”

“We want to demonstrate what’s working in our states,” Lujan Grisham said. “We’re decarbonizing the utility sector. We’re working with the federal government and other states to decarbonize the transportation sector. We’ve got measures in place to decarbonize the agricultural sector. … Without the work by the other governors … I don’t have a platform to take to my legislature to implement. I can show that it works because it’s working in other states.”

Ige said his state’s ambition is beyond net-zero emissions, with a goal of being carbon negative by 2045. “We know that we need to sequester more than we put into the air if we’re going to ensure to keep the world from heating up beyond 1.5 degrees.”

Lujan Grisham predicted New Mexico’s geology and access to oil and natural gas will make it a “hydrogen hub,” using the fuel to decarbonize transportation.

“It’s quite likely that New Mexico is the first place in the country that converts a [fossil fuel] power plant to a hydrogen plant,” she said. “And as we do that, we will be doing carbon sequestration.

“I think those innovations will lend themselves to replication worldwide,” she added. “And I think we’re actually, potentially competing on that front with the [United Kingdom]. And that’s exactly how that should look. Those best practices will replicate themselves. And every time they do, they’ll be a little bit better, state to state, country to country, region to region.”

For his part, Inslee cited a Washington company that invented a silicon anode that it says could extend electric vehicle batteries’ capacity by 50% and another that has nearly completed the world’s first all-electric commuter airplane. “There are … hundreds of jobs in my state because of this,” he said.

“I know we’re concerned about how fast climate change is going, but we ought to be thrilled at the pace of job creation going on,” he added. “Look, the states in this Climate Alliance are the states with the fastest economic growth. And that’s not a coincidence; it is a cause of our economic growth.”