Every summer now feels like Groundhog Day. More heat records broken. Soon, we’ll have more school days canceled (take Philadelphia for example where nearly 30 percent of city schools recently shut down due to lack of cooling systems). We already have more heat-related deaths (in fact, according to a study, […]
U.S. Climate Policy
21 posts
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the 25 successful applicants for a shared $4.3 billion in implementation funding under the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) program. The grants will enable investments in solar projects, building energy-efficiency upgrades, the buildout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, […]
Cities are often considered a niche focus for those who work in climate policy – a third level of government not directly captured in our country’s federal-state dichotomy, one occasionally commended for “stepping up” or showing “leadership” in the absence of climate action by Congress or in many states. There […]
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is chock-full of tax incentives for climate and clean energy projects. This year, 2023, marks the first tax year in U.S. history during which entities that do not have federal tax liability – including local and state governments and agencies, nonprofit organizations, tribes and municipal […]
Following the 2007 landmark Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has regulated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. These emissions standards were significantly loosened in the last year of the Trump Administration. In 2021 the Biden Administration […]
The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Environmental Defense Fund have just launched IRAtracker.org. This free online resource includes a searchable database that catalogues all of the climate change-related provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), as well as a tracker that records actions taken by federal agencies to […]
This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released preliminary program design details for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) established by Section 60103 of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Specifically, the EPA published two “assistance listings” designed to help potential applicants identify funding opportunities. The publication stops short […]
By Jacob Elkin and Elza Bouhassira Going back to 1978 and through this month, Congress has acknowledged climate change in a total of 87 enactments, as shown by a database just posted by Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. The database collects Congress’s references to climate change, along with […]