New Mexico environment secretary urges lawmakers to advance outgoing governor’s climate agenda

As Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s final term nears its end, her environment secretary this week asked state lawmakers to spend the upcoming legislative session continuing to advance her administration’s climate goals, particularly those relating to water and air quality.

Lujan Grisham will leave office at the end of the year, after first winning election to the state’s highest office in 2018, and New Mexicans will elect a new governor on Nov. 3. Kenney said he and his staff have already begun preparing environmental legislation for the next administration to consider.

Kenney told lawmakers on the interim Water and Natural Resources Committee during their Monday meeting that he wants to explore creating a fund to finance actions related to the state’s 50-year water action plan; codifying the state’s emission reduction goals in state law; passing a “circular economy” bill to reduce consumer waste; and bolstering the state law to require manufacturers to label consumer products that contain “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.

50-year water action plan

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in 2024 unveiled the state’s 50-year water action plan, which outlines strategies such as conservation and watershed protection to address the state’s water woes.

Kenney credited the plan with NMED’s Leak Tracer program, which uses satellite imagery to identify potential water leaks in small communities across the state. He said he’d like to see the Legislature create a fund that could continue to pay for projects like this and enshrine in law a mechanism to appropriate money into that fund.

“We are putting together some legislation to hand off to those who want to sponsor it, as well as the incoming administration,” he said. “We’re not just wishing this will happen. We are drafting for that outcome.”

Codifying emission reduction goals

A proposal to codify Lujan Grisham’s statewide emission reduction goals into state law failed in this year’s legislative session. Kenney said he’d like to see the effort taken up again, particularly as it would give his department greater power to regulate the growing data center industry.

New Mexico off track for 2030 greenhouse gas goal, environment official says

Senate Bill 18, known as the Clear Horizons Act, would have etched the requirements of a 2019 Lujan Grisham executive order into state law. The executive order called on the state to curb its greenhouse gas emissions by 45% relative to 2005 levels by 2030.

Environmental officials this week told state lawmakers that New Mexico is off track to meet that goal.

Kenney said he thinks the failed bill is still a good starting point for such legislation.

He pointed to Project Jupiter, the controversial hyperscale data center under construction in Doña Ana County, and said such a law would give his employees greater authority to regulate such developments.

“For things like Project Jupiter where they’re planning to emit somewhere between 5 and 8 million tons of carbon dioxide…we don’t have any way at the Environment Department to regulate the CO2 emissions that come from data centers,” he said. “That’s painful, to have been a champion with the governor, and to be an administration that’s championed climate goals and to consider that they could be eliminated with the data centers prospectively looking at New Mexico.”

Officials in Kenney’s department are set to preside over a Dec. 7 public hearing over whether to give Project Jupiter’s developer an air quality permit for its proposed natural gas fuel-cell system.

Reducing consumer waste

Kenney said he wants to see the Legislature adopt measures to create a “circular economy,” in which goods are manufactured to be reused or repaired rather than discarded. 

He said it would be a “next step” for lawmakers to build on House Bill 291, a 2025 law that amended the Recycling and Illegal Dumping Act to promote reuse over one-time consumption.

PFAS labeling

Lujan Grisham in 2025 signed the Per- and Poly-fluoroalkyl Protection Act into law, which required manufacturers to clearly label products containing the “forever chemicals.” 

The chemicals, which are present in everything from carpeting to firefighting foams, have been linked to certain cancers, decreases in fertility and fetal developmental delays.

Last month, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that said New Mexico’s labeling requirement infringed on commercially protected speech after a number of manufacturing organizations sued the New Mexico Environment Department over the rules.

“We thought an icon would be a great way to merely inform the consumer that there is PFAS associated with that product,” Kenney told lawmakers Monday. “I think it goes back to the Legislature now.”