Reflecting on New Mexico’s 2025 Legislative Session

New Mexico’s 2025 legislative session has come to a close, with state leaders passing several key environmental wins. The deadline for Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham to sign bills was April 11, 2025, at which point all unsigned bills will undergo a pocket veto and fail to become state law.

As a part of the Clear Horizons New Mexico coalition—a group of more than 30 organizations and businesses supporting important environmental policies for the state—NRDC worked with state legislators and community partners to pass important environmental bills. The bills we prioritized for the 2025 session focused on distribution planning, codifying executive orders to achieve net zero by 2040, funding for state agencies, and community funding for communities that are earliest and most directly impacted by climate change.

Below, please find more details on the bills we worked on or monitored over this session:

• Community Benefit Fund Senate Bill 48 (Senator Mimi Stewart) invests a historic $340 million in various projects to diversify the state's economy, modernize its energy infrastructure, and ensure healthy, thriving communities across New Mexico. These projects include increasing the state's energy efficiency, fortifying is energy grid, advancing clean energy technologies, diversifying transportation options, and protecting New Mexico's natural spaces. The funds allocated toward clean energy initiatives, in particular, complement state climate goals and will increase grid capacity, resilience, and reliability as demand grows. This bill was signed into law on April 10, 2025.

• Innovation in State Government Fund SB 83 (Senator Stewart) strengthens state capacity by equipping agencies with $10 million in funding and greater expertise to advance clean energy initiatives and protect communities from the worsening impacts of climate change. SB 83 allocates funds for professional training and development to help workers transition from extractive energy industries to clean energy alternatives, promoting economic and job growth in the clean energy sector, reducing New Mexico's overall reliance on fossil fuels, and helping to stabilize our economy. Additionally, the bill supports infrastructure projects that will move the state toward more efficient, environmentally friendly built environments. This bill was signed into law on April 7, 2025.

• NRDC also supported two bills that will not become law following this year’s legislative session. The Clear Horizons & Greenhouse Gas Emissions SB 04 (Senator Stewart) would have codified emissions targets established in Governor Grisham’s 2019 executive order to reach net zero by 2050, required annual reports on state emissions, and prioritized clean energy investments in communities that are hit the earliest and hardest by climate change. 

  HB 13, known as the Power Up New Mexico Act (Representative Dayan Hochman-Vigil), would have required utilities to propose distribution system plans to prepare the state’s electricity grid for the load growth aligned with state climate and air quality laws and standards.

Moving toward a cleaner, healthier, more resilient New Mexico will take a village.

Strategic climate initiatives like those supported by the Community Benefit Fund and the Innovation in State Government Fund will prepare New Mexico to thrive in our changing world. As the 2025 legislative session comes to an end, it is imperative that NRDC, our community partners, and important state agencies maintain this momentum to ensure healthy communities, protected ecosystems, and a stable climate for the generations to come.