In June of this year, Louisiana enacted a law governing the gathering of air pollution data by community-based organizations. Similar legislation has been introduced (but not adopted) in West Virginia and may be proposed in other states. While proponents argue they are simply ensuring only the best data is used, the Louisiana law undermines valid community efforts to understand an
For more than three years, ELI has worked with Kazakhstan’s Department of Climate Policy and Green Technologies, amending the national Environmental Code to incorporate climate change adaptation.
The project falls under the U.S. Agency for International Development’s C5+1 National Adaptation Planning Program, which expands the capacities of Central Asian countries to engage in planning under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Although Kazakhstan faces a number of related environmental challenges — including increased aridity, desertification, and extreme weather events — the country has not yet accounted for adapting to climate change in its legal framework.
In 2019, ELI collaborated with climate specialists from Abt Associates to help the Kazakhstani government develop a draft chapter for its code, titled Public Administration in the Field of Adaptation to Climate Change.
The revisions, which set forth climate change adaptation norms and processes, as well as new competencies of governmental bodies, are currently under review by the national parliament. The lower house has already adopted the revisions. ELI also assisted in developing draft rules for implementing the proposed provisions and helped write methodological guidance on implementing the adaptation processes set forth in the law.
Once the proposed climate change adaptation provisions are adopted, Kazakhstani government staff will need to implement the law. Recognizing a need to build familiarity with the new provisions, ELI hosted an online training course to build the capacity of government staff. Held over 10 days last summer, the class was organized in collaboration with the national climate deparment, with financial support from USAID.
The objective of the course was to familiarize supervisors, experts, and staff with adaptation-related provisions of the code. The training also explained related rules and methodological guidance. Attendees received an overview of climate change impacts in Kazakhstan and the country’s international obligations under the Paris Agreement related to climate adaptation.
Lectures explored experiences in climate adaptation from other countries, as well as approaches — such as conducting vulnerability assessments — that can be used at various stages of the adaptation process.
Participants consisted primarily of government staff working in sectors relevant to adaptation, such as agriculture, water resources, forestry, and protection of citizens. Other participants represented NGOs, science institutes, and other stakeholders. A total of 166 participants attended the course, and 93 successfully passed the final test and received certificates of completion.
Originally intended as an in-person training course, the program transitioned to an online format over Zoom due to the pandemic. All the course lectures were recorded (either in Russian or recorded in English and dubbed into Russian), and recordings were made available to all the training participants, providing them flexibility in when to view the videos. Near the end of the course, the Institute also held a live discussion with the lecturers to provide training participants an opportunity to ask questions about the course materials.
The training session received enthusiastic feedback, both for its structure and content, and represented one of many ways ELI has innovated approaches to online events during the Covid-19 pandemic.
ELI’s work in Kazakhstan is a continuation of over a decade of work supporting climate change adaptation law, including projects on adaptation in coastal areas and managing biodiversity in a changing climate.
ELI’s Gulf of Mexico team works to advance the recovery, restoration, and ecological resilience of the region following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Institute increases public participation in multiple restoration planning processes, including by supporting local and regional organizations, tracking and reporting on restoration funding, and helping communities understand how to participate in public comment processes.
Recently, ELI has helped local partners engage citizens in processes related to the proposed Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, for which a draft environmental impact statement and draft restoration plan were released in March.
Sediment diversions are designed to reintroduce natural delta processes and build landmass. Due in part to decades of building levees and flood control structures on the Mississippi River, the delta and Louisiana coastline have lost thousands of square miles of land. Through gated structures in the levee system, sediment diversions reintroduce fresh water and minerals to nearby basins, rebuilding wetlands in the process.
Project proponents say that the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion would create or save from erosion as much as 47 square miles of land in the fifty years following construction. Anticipated benefits include improved soil density, wildlife habitat, increased hurricane resilience, and a boon to the economy through job creation and a rise in business sales. However, concerns remain about mitigating potential impacts on the region’s oyster and fishing businesses and on nearby dolphin populations, among other changes to the ecosystem.
ELI has assisted local partners by researching the legal landscape around the proposed project and releasing a fact sheet on public participation opportunities. The fact sheet explains how citizens can participate in public comment processes for two laws governing environmental reviews for the project: the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires development of an environmental impact statement, and the Oil Pollution Act, under which the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment is proceeding.
The Institute will also co-host a series of online community conversations, joining panelists from Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, to complement formal public meetings.
For the past 13 years, ELI has conducted annual training workshops for state, tribal, territorial, and EPA staff regarding the Clean Water Act Section 303(d) Program, which identifies waters that do not meet standards and implements plans to restore and protect them. These workshops, supported by EPA, have prompted a wide variety of endeavors to further assist the program.
One of those endeavors has been a five-year cooperative agreement between ELI and EPA to develop a series of compendia of practices across the country for implementing various aspects of the 303(d) program. These resources facilitate knowledge-sharing across jurisdictions and generate more innovation.
Since 2016, ELI has published the “Compendium of Water Quality Restoration Approaches” and the “Compendium of State Approaches to Protection.”
In February 2021, ELI released its third installment, Approaches to Clean Water Communication, a collection of methods for communicating about water quality with the public and other less-technical audiences. The compendium helps programs strengthen engagement with the public, a key goal of water quality improvement programs.
With the assistance of a planning group composed of state, tribal, and EPA staff, ELI collected examples of communication methods through a questionnaire completed by water quality program staff from 44 states, 9 tribes, 4 territories, and the District of Columbia. This information was then distilled into a user-friendly website hosted by ELI.
The resource covers a wide range of communication methods, including websites, maps, social media, and videos. One section of the compendium assembles a library of “Story Maps” and “dashboards,” which are interactive digital tools used by water quality programs to display multimedia elements such as pictures and maps alongside text. The site organizes different types of communication methods in the most easily accessible fashion. For example, visual products such as signs and posters are on an easy-to-read Story Map page.
The compendium also provides summaries for key aspects of effective communication, such as presentations for public comment processes, ways to collect metrics and tools for measuring success, and translating products into multiple languages. As a free database, the compendium may be especially useful to smaller jurisdictions or programs with limited resources dedicated to communications.
Helping Kazakhstan Craft Its Environmental Code.
COVID-19 was initially seen as an equal opportunity problem — with a dangerous virus spreading, all of us were at risk. But we weren’t really: those engaged in low-wage essential work, living in overcrowded housing, and already suffering from inadequate health care were most vulnerable. The ethnic disparities in case and death rates that emerged in the United States should have been no surprise; they stem from a preexisting system of racialized costs and benefits.
When we got around to developing vaccines, the equality-equity distinction became clear. In most states, everyone in an age bracket or occupational category had an equal shot at a shot — provided they had a computer, high-speed internet, flexible employment, and a car to make their way to a mega-site. Those on the wrong side of the digital divide, of employment quality, and of transit independence were left behind. The result of this inequity was racial gaps in vaccination rates.
So I’m in agreement when anyone makes the point that systems can have unintended discriminatory impacts. But let’s go one step further: not anticipating those impacts and correcting for them — which we could have easily done for both the virus and vaccines — is intentional.
So how do we recognize this and do better in the broader environmental realm?
Consider the debates about cap-and-trade systems as a way to curtail greenhouse gases. Environmental justice proponents worry that trading — in which a company decides to keep polluting and pay another company to reduce instead — can result in uneven local reductions in associated co-pollutants. Market proponents dismiss these concerns, since it is not the intention of the system to be racially discriminatory but rather to be efficient.
But such efficient systems are inherently unequal — trading means having pollution loads decrease more in some places than others. The only question is who gets the short end of cap-and-trade stick — and since there is some risk that such a system could worsen pollution levels in disadvantaged communities, how hard would it be to declare some overburdened areas “no-trade zones” or create a premium for reductions that generate the most pay-off on the co-pollutant side?
You can make a decision not to consider those issues — but that’s a decision. So what do we need to do to center and not sideline equity?
One key step is to take into account time. Most equity analysts work statically — measuring at a particular moment who gains and who loses from a particular policy. But centering equity means correcting for the errors of the past, creating full participation in decisions today, and safeguarding against unequal outcomes going forward.
In environmental policy, that means prioritizing relief for neighborhoods that have long suffered the most and creating new employment opportunities for those communities. California has tried to get part of this right by insisting that a healthy share of the revenues created by cap-and-trade go to disadvantaged communities as defined by a tool called CalEnvironScreen.
It means repairing informational inequalities that limit the full participation of disadvantaged groups in regulatory processes, including funding community-based, participatory research and accessible data like that provided by CalEnviroScreen. It also means developing new methods of local engagement that move us from staged conflicts to sustained dialogues.
And it also involves stressing precaution so that “unintended” consequences become, as much as possible, anticipated outcomes that we seek to consciously achieve or avoid. That requires understanding how environmental policy interacts with all other existing systems of exclusion and inclusion — a hard job but worthwhile.
In this last year, we saw that systems that are supposed to secure the common good — like public health and community safety — can produce and reinforce significant racial inequalities. Environmental policymakers have a chance to break that mold, showing how putting equity first can improve outcomes for everyone.
With renewed government focus on environmental justice, it may be time to consider opportunities to advance EJ by leveraging private governance to complement these public efforts.
Many companies have strong environment, health, and safety programs that collectively promote EJ. For instance, by applying science to assess — and, if needed, avoid — potential impacts of their own and suppliers’ operations on nearby communities, and actively engaging as good neighbors.
When combined with increases in citizen science, and the rising focus on equity across the Biden administration, the need for robust corporate EJ programs is even more important. However, in the absence of common program frameworks, approaches used by companies may be disparate, and in many cases may not be transparent to the community or other stakeholders.
Emerging in tandem with the focus on EJ is an increase in corporate environmental-social-governance disclosure and in the standards supporting such disclosures. There may be an opportunity to leverage ESG reporting to drive greater transparency and address equity ills where most needed. The objective of incorporating EJ into an ESG framework would be to drive positive performance by businesses where gaps exist in the protection of public health and safety afforded by environmental laws.
For companies that operate in various jurisdictions around the world, differences in laws might result in pollution above safe levels even when the firm has a robust compliance program. For example, in countries with generally strong environmental laws, certain regulations may fail to consider the cumulative effect of pollutants on a given community when applied to permit issuance decisions. In countries with less-developed environmental laws, releases to air and water and waste handling practices may not be regulated at all. A voluntary standard and disclosure framework might fill these gaps while regulators work to close them.
There are pros and cons to this idea. On the positive side, a standard voluntary framework to measure EJ impact and engagement might drive positive outcomes for underserved communities more quickly. And likewise, companies effecting positive changes may be rewarded with enforcement discretion from regulators, improved reputation both locally and with other stakeholders, and
increased investment.
On the other side of the ledger, companies evaluating adoption of a voluntary standard EJ framework might be fearful of exploring and disclosing potential impacts of their operations beyond what the law requires, as they may expose themselves to reputational harm or liability. In addition, companies might have concerns regarding suppliers’ impacts on EJ communities when they lack direct control and ability to reduce impacts.
How might we determine whether there is merit to implementing a voluntary standard EJ framework? The answer may help companies assess whether the potential upside of such a framework outweighs the downside.
First, research could help determine whether ESG priority assessments and metrics have a positive effect in reducing environmental impacts. Do companies that routinely disclose carbon emissions, toxic air and water releases, and waste have reduced environmental impact compared to their competitors? If so, there may be a case for developing the right standard of performance and metrics to assess and measure EJ performance.
Second, reach an industry consensus regarding the standard, the metrics, and verification methods to legitimately and accurately measure corporate EJ performance. These metrics may include the impact of a company’s direct operations and the operations of its suppliers relative to air and water toxics, particulate matter, water extraction and discharge, waste management, corporate engagement with neighboring communities, and perhaps even the impact of climate change on health and well-being.
Procedurally, the standards and metrics could be developed in a manner similar to other public standard-setting processes — convening stakeholders to develop a draft approach and enabling a period of public comment and consultation. The objective would be that the standard could then be incorporated into existing ESG reporting frameworks, such as SASB, GRI, CDP, or the new World Economic Forum framework, to drive positive performance where gaps exist in the protection of public health and safety afforded by environmental laws.
Finally, have companies disclose against the standard in their ESG reports, thus driving increased awareness and transparency, which are precursors to improved performance.
A voluntary EJ standard and associated metrics could serve as a complement to the actions being taken by lawmakers to improve equity in environmental protection. It is a concept worth exploring to reduce impacts in already at-risk communities.
ESG Standard on Environmental Justice Can Drive Greater Progress.
The Environmental Law Institute’s annual award ceremony was held virtually on October 15, live-streamed to our members and distinguished guests for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The event convenes law, management, and policy professionals to honor outstanding achievements in environmental protection. Proceeds support ELI’s research and education programs and publications.
This year’s gathering introduced a few changes due to the virtual format — a networking reception was hosted on the online event platform Remo, and the award ceremony was streamed live on YouTube.
Denis Hayes, principal organizer and founder of Earth Day, received the 2020 ELI Environmental Achievement Award. Hayes serves as president and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation and is the founder of the Earth Day Network. He is widely recognized for expanding Earth Day to 190 nations, making it the most widely observed secular holiday in the world. An environmental thought leader, writer, and speaker, Hayes is also well known for designing and building the Bullitt Center in Seattle, regarded as “the greenest office building in the world” and the first major building to meet the rigorous Living Building Challenge certification standards.
Congratulatory remarks via video were offered to Hayes by Gina McCarthy, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA administrator and former governor of New Jersey, and Diane Keaton, the actor and filmmaker.
Gerald Torres, professor of environmental justice at Yale School of Environment and professor of law at Yale Law School, offered an official introduction for Hayes. “When environmental history is written, Earth Day will figure as a crucial inflection point. . . . It gave us what we regard as the basic infrastructure of regulations that have been so effective. Most people in the United States believe that the current quality of the environment is what it has always been. Of course, they would not have the luxury of that illusion but for people like Denis and the lives that Earth Day changed. Denis’s work is to continue to awaken people of the need for continued vigilance. He’s a champion of the belief that responsible public action is the most straightforward path to the future we want to embrace.”
Hayes’s acceptance of the award was delivered in the form of a celebratory interview with Stacey Halliday, independent consultant for Beveridge & Diamond. The two discussed various aspects of Hayes’s extensive career, including his reasons for expanding Earth Day to the rest of the world, priorities for the Bullitt Foundation, the green building design of the Bullitt Center, and environmental justice.
Despite the challenges of hosting the award ceremony virtually, President Scott Fulton noted some encouraging developments in his introductory speech. As the Institute’s main fundraising event, the ceremony garnered close to the amount of funds historically raised from the live dinner event.
This past year, ELI also successfully pivoted to remote programming, thanks to its experience with running virtual webinars, and achieved record attendance at its seminars and events over this difficult year.
While honoring the events of the past half century, Fulton also acknowledged the extraordinary environmental and public health impacts experienced today, with the pandemic, wildfires, and the racial injustice crisis, declaring that environmental protection remains as important as it was 50 years ago.
The Project on the Energy and Environmental Implications of the Digital Economy, a research program led by ELI in partnership with the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at UC Berkeley and the Yale School of the Environment, published a series of research papers in September exploring the environmental impacts of the digital economy. Developed by seven research teams, the papers examine topics ranging from the use of blockchain technology to manage sustainable supply chains, quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions of ride-hailing platforms, and assessing the climate impacts of a peer-to-peer food-sharing app.
ELI has been involved in the digital and environmental nexus for the past twenty years. Visiting Scholar David Rejeski noted in a 1999 article on e-commerce published in the Forum:
“The Internet is today’s frontier. . . . The traditional tools of environmental policy may not work well in a world like this, if they work at all.” Many of the questions surrounding the digital space remain just as urgent as decades before. As the digital economy continues to expand, so too will our need to understand the environmental impacts of our digital lives and, importantly, develop better data to guide decisions by policymakers, businesses, and consumers.
The project began four years ago with two workshops on the environmental impacts of sharing platforms and artificial intelligence. These meetings convened researchers from various institutions interested in this field, creating an initial overview of the state of the research that eventually led to funding of the project. The initiative includes a project website (digitalenergyenvironment.org), a bibliography of curated research in the digital and environmental space, research papers, and an inventory of environmental applications of blockchain technology. The program has received close to $1 million of support from the Alfred P. Sloan and McGovern foundations.
Moving forward, the project will continue to identify research opportunities and establish an institutional home for its activities, with the goal of creating and nurturing a new field of research with a dedicated focus on understanding the energy and environmental implications of the digital economy.
In September, ELI and its partners released Food Sovereignty and Self-Governance: Inuit Role in Managing Arctic Marine Resources, a report analyzing current Inuit management and co-management of marine food resources and the role of Indigenous self-governance in supporting food security.
The report, a culmination of a four-year-long project, examines how existing laws and policies support Inuit self-governance, and uplifts Inuit voices and expertise in the interpretation of legal frameworks. The project features four case studies from the United States and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of Canada focused on walrus, char, beluga, and salmon to highlight the connections between resource management and food sovereignty.
Aligned with its central purpose to bring together and amplify Inuit voices, the project was co-developed and co-led by Inuit individuals and Inuit-led organizations. In total, the report involved over 90 Inuit authors and an advisory committee of Indigenous knowledge holders. Partners include the Inuvialuit Game Council and the Fisheries Joint Management Committee (in the settlement region) and the Eskimo Walrus Commission, the Association of Village Council Presidents, the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in Alaska, and the Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska, as well as ELI, with ICC Canada serving as advisor.
Efforts were made to give every voice equal weight in order to create ownership and prioritize the knowledge of people experiencing marine resource issues first-hand. David Roche, ELI staff attorney, managed the project, and Cynthia Harris, director of tribal programs and deputy director of state, local, and tribal environmental programs at ELI, served as a legal researcher for the project.
The report represents a continuation of ELI’s projects in the Arctic, which have covered topics such as model Alaska Native consultation procedures, science communication, and government-to-government consultation related to marine subsistence resources in Alaska. In future Arctic policy research, ELI plans to continue applying the report’s principles of co-producing knowledge and building long-term partnerships for more effective project outcomes.
The Institute’s “ELI at 50” program received the 2020 American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy Award. The annual award recognizes individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to improving environmental law and policy and advancing environmental protection and sustainable development in the United States.
In a virtual award ceremony, the ABA noted that ELI offered innovative programming in each month of 2019 and produced significant publications in the past year, facilitating “critical discourse of where environmental law has been, and where we must go next.” President Scott Fulton noted in his acceptance speech that 2019 was a record-breaking year for ELI, both in the number of programs offered as well as the number of practitioners reached through the Institute’s programs.
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On September 25, 2020, the ELI China Program held a webinar on best practices in environmental enforcement under a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Close to 200 government and legal professionals in China joined the webinar, representing over 20 different provinces. Attendees included officials from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and provincial bureaus of environmental protection, judges, prosecutors, and members of nonprofits, academia, law firms, and businesses. President Scott Fulton, Distinguished Judicial Scholar Merideth Wright, and Visiting Scholar LeRoy Paddock presented on various aspects of compliance and enforcement in the United States. Topics of discussion included monitoring, permitting, citizen suits, penalties, and judicial supervision of remedies. Simultaneous interpretation from English to Chinese was provided via Zoom, enabling a bilingual presentation for attendees.
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Since 1998, with support from EPA, ELI has convened public health officials from across the United States who share the mission of improving indoor environmental quality. In October, ELI convened the 15th Workshop for Indoor Air Quality Officials, a three-day forum attended by representatives from over 30 states, several tribal and local governments, and officials from EPA. The workshop addressed both long-standing indoor air quality topics and current issues implicated by the pandemic, such as ventilation, cleaning and disinfection, and management of Legionella and other plumbing pathogens.
Although the workshop was convened as an online event for the first time, its purpose and approach remained the same: to foster sharing of information among programs to identify new strategies, resources, and opportunities for collaboration to reduce indoor air risks.
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In September, the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, of which ELI serves as secretariat, held the first session of a six-part webinar series on current and potential uses of citizen science to improve environmental monitoring, compliance, and enforcement. The webinar, Citizen Science: Concepts and Applications for Enforcement, featured presentations on the role of citizen science in scientific research and monitoring, regulatory decisions and enforcement, and environmental justice, among other applications. Other webinar topics in the INECE citizen science series include water pollution, air pollution, Indigenous and community monitoring, and emerging government strategies.
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Pesticides have widespread impacts on agriculture, ecosystems, and public health, especially for communities such as farmworkers and children. In October, ELI hosted a webinar titled Pesticides, Farmworkers, Industry, and Environmental Justice, exploring recent changes in federal regulation of pesticides and policy approaches to addressing safety and environmental justice issues.
Speakers included James Aidala, consultant at Bergeson and Campbell; Patti Goldman, managing attorney at Earthjustice; Gretchen Paluch, pesticide bureau chief at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship; and Caleb Pearson, assistant general counsel at CropLife America.
Earth Day founder Denis Hayes wins ELI Award.
In the first half of the administration of Donald J. Trump, the Environmental Law Institute issued two reports describing the significant regulatory reform efforts underway throughout the executive branch. The purpose, consistent with the Institute’s nonpartisan identity, was to bring to the public an understanding of the measures and their relative significance. ELI was supported in this endeavor by the Walton Family Foundation and the Civil Rights and Social Justice section of the American Bar Association,
The reports were popular and well-received. Indeed, in late 2019, research staff at the Institute began hearing from the profession and other members of the ELI community a desire for an update on what they saw as highly important changes coming from many sources in the pollution and conservation arena through rulemakings, executive orders, enforcement decisions, and other means. The result was Environment 2021: What Comes Next?
This report takes stock of the dramatic actions of the Trump administration in the environmental space and is in this sense retrospective, but it is also forward-looking. It asks, What aspects of the administration’s work may prove durable? What aspects are likely to change?
Every October, ELI holds its principal policy event of the year. In 2020, the Policy Forum brought together a handful of the profession’s most respected analysts, including the lead author of the report, ELI Senior Attorney James McElfish, who moderated the discussion. Their goal was to both look backward over the Trump administration’s record and to look forward at policy trends that are going to come to a boil in the next four years.
James McElfish: One of our jumping off points for today’s discussion is ELI’s “Environment 2021” report, which is an attempt to give a bird’s-eye or contextual view for recent developments and what they might portend for the next year or two. In that spirit, we have gathered a small group of experts from diverse sectors to give their own views on recent developments in environmental protection and what the future may bring.
I want to begin with a pair of questions to each panelist, whom I’ll introduce in turn. One of the questions is backward-looking, reflecting our current situation. One of them is as forward-looking as we can be.
Question number one: What is the most significant development in environmental law or change in the administration of environment law in the last year or two that you think will have the greatest influence in the years ahead?
The second question is: What development is anticipated in environmental law next year or the following year that others might not have noticed or that might not be obvious to the practitioner?
I’ll ask Granta Nakayama to respond first. Granta is a partner at King & Spalding LLP. Many of us got to know him in his former role as assistant administrator dealing with enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Granta Nakayama: There have certainly been some important decisions out of the Supreme Court. Clean Water Act jurisdiction, for example. And there have been some policies out of EPA, such as deferring to states on enforcement.
But the issue I want to focus on is the increased interest by the general public in the environment. I sense it. I see it. There is a profound reawakening. We might call it the second green wave. Fifty years ago we had Earth Day, leading to a tremendous amount of legislation — the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act. I sense the same sort of interest from young people today. There is the Green New Deal. People are asking, What can we do on the legislative front? There is interest in new law addressing concerns like PFAS chemicals. This posture reflects a greater understanding by the public of environmental issues. It didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen by magic. There was a lot of hard work by people like Vickie Patton, our fellow panelist here, and many others. Folks now realize that the environment is going to have a tremendous impact on them. Eventually, new law will come out of that.
Let’s take as an example energy transition, the shift away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of power. One area that the general public will be impacted is in transportation, the movement to electric vehicles.
I’m old enough to remember the original Zero Emission Vehicle mandate in California in 1990. Of course the mandate confidently predicted that ZEVs would constitute a significant fraction of the vehicle market by the year 2000. Now we’re three decades in and one can debate why that didn’t happen. But it is finally happening now. That shift in public perception is happening even in the midst of low oil prices.
There is enough oil for many years, but the idea that is capturing people’s attention is that maybe we shouldn’t focus on supply of fossil fuel. That’s not really the issue. Just look at the United States. We have a tremendous amount of oil and gas through fracking. The issue is there may not be enough clean air to burn it in. That is a different way of looking at the sustainability of fossil fuels. It’s not how much is available but, rather, the effects of burning it. That’s where we could see a dramatic shift in the public’s perception of renewable fuels.
The nation has had a love affair with the automobile for a century now. It has shaped our infrastructure, our cities, suburbs, housing, commuting, the pattern of our daily lives. But we are on the cusp of some pretty dramatic changes in the vehicle market, with electric cars that are inexpensive and can drive a long way on a charge. They are going to be cost competitive with their gasoline counterparts. They can be recharged at home — you are no longer required to go to a gas station. For longer trips, many can recharge to 80 percent capacity in 15 minutes.
No, electric vehicles are not going to solve the traffic problem. But they’re going to break the public’s tie between oil and personal autonomy. That strong tie has shaped a lot of our environmental policy and law. It has shaped voter attitudes.
The shift from gasoline to electric power or other alternative fuels will have tremendous impact. In America, we consumed 390 million gallons of gasoline a day in 2019. Every day. But as electrical vehicles impact that market, even at 10 percent penetration, that would represent a dramatic shift in energy demand away from gasoline. It would have a dramatic impact on the market for electricity, which obviously helps those who supply renewable power.
We Americans have long loved the automobile and the personal autonomy associated with it. That has led to staunch support for whatever is required to maintain the status quo. If oil is no longer necessary to drive a vehicle, that will have a big impact on our nation’s foreign policy. It affects people at the local level too. Shifting to electric vehicles is going to necessitate tremendous upgrades to our grid and our electricity supply capability, especially the impact on renewable sources. In the future, being able to choose renewable power for things you want to do in your daily life will make it mainstream.
Let me turn to Jim’s second question, about an unforeseen development in the next few years. One can envision a renewal in nuclear power.
Let me explain why, and how that’s connected to the transportation issue and our vehicle fleet. If electricity and not gasoline is the issue, you might ask the average voter if they prefer power on demand, including from nuclear sources, or the possibility of electric supply issues with renewables that affect your home’s heating and cooling and how far you can drive. Americans like their comfort and their autonomy. Depending on the progress on renewable fuels, you might not have to make that kind of choice.
But since the rise of renewables may not come as quickly as we hope, I believe in the next few years you will see an increased interest in nuclear power. I heard on the BBC the other day a group of scientists who said people do not fully understand the risk to people’s health and the economy that could come with climate change. But the risk they felt was overestimated in people’s minds was nuclear power.
James McElfish: Granta has managed to open up a huge array of environmental law opportunities — international, national, state, local, zoning, transportation, even electric utilities.
Let me turn to Vickie Patton and ask her the same two questions. She is the general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, based in Colorado. Vickie also did her time in EPA’s Office of General Counsel.
Vickie Patton: As we take stock and look over the horizon, the greatest urgency is addressing environmental justice in a way that gets at the root of the injustices and produces solutions that are enduring. One path-breaking example comes from New Jersey. The state recently passed a law that advocates are referring to as the holy grail of environmental justice legislation. Leading legal experts call it a quantum leap in addressing environmental injustices.
One feature provides for greater transparency, and meaningful community-based engagement. Another directs the state environmental agency to deny industrial permits that will create harm when one considers the cumulative impact imposed disproportionately on disadvantaged communities.
As we think about where we go over the horizon, environmental justice is going to be a really crucial issue for all of us. We’re shifting from a moment where environmental justice was seen as one facet of environmental law to environmental justice being woven into the very fabric of environmental law at all levels.
The data that the Harvard School of Public Health gathered highlights the unjust and synergistic impacts on disadvantaged communities and people of color who are experiencing both the dire and disproportionate effects of the coronavirus and air pollution at the same time. That combination creates layers of harm and injustice.
Resources for the Future looked at satellite data and realized that there are millions of people who are not even in the system of our nation’s air quality protections because we are misclassifying areas that are unhealthy due to inadequate monitoring data.
Take also the work that my organization, Environmental Defense Fund, has done in partnership with Google. We have Google Street View cars and other sensors on streetlights and homes in places like Oakland and Houston, creating a massive amount of measurement on a hyperlocal basis. When you look from community to community, neighborhood to neighborhood, block to block, there are pockets with very serious levels of air pollution. They’re not being adequately addressed by our current policies. We environmental lawyers need to make a big step here and integrate environmental justice into every fabric of the law. It’s essential to the legitimacy of environmental law.
I agree with Granta’s comments about transportation electrification, and building public support. One manifestation of the sea change in public opinion and the convergence with the technological possibilities is that there is a new bar for private-sector leadership. That happened this year in a really major way and I think it will continue to happen as we look over the horizon.
Just a couple of examples. We started the year with BlackRock declaring that climate risk is investment risk, and that reverberated. Over the course of 2020, several big companies then made big commitments to climate action. What’s been reset is both the ambition of those commitments and their seriousness. Following through on those commitments, are they real and meaningful? It’s not enough for companies to commit to do their part to mitigate the climate pollution that they are responsible for. The bar has been reset and companies are now responsible for also leading in the policy debate that produces those kinds of commitments.
Along this vein, Microsoft announced this year not only is it going to go to net-zero for all of its operations — and continue to lead and invest in climate action well beyond its own footprint — but it’s going to address all of the climate pollution it has been responsible for since its founding in 1975. That is resetting the bar.
Investors are demanding climate action. Climate action is also being driven by employees who expect their companies to be leaders on social issues. And the overwhelming public sentiment is for climate action. So consumers too are demanding companies be climate leaders. We’re seeing a convergence — the support for action is increasing at the same time as technology opportunities become apparent.
I agree with Granta about transportation electrification. We need to make this shift to save lives. It is one of the biggest sources of harmful air pollution in our country, causing over 20,000 deaths every year. And we need to make this shift to create jobs. There’s an enormous opportunity for a manufacturing renaissance. Ford Motor Company announced that in the Detroit area it is launching a $700 million plant to electrify the F-150 pickup truck, creating hundreds of jobs. Meanwhile, Tesla too is building a new electric vehicle plant.
This is where the world is shifting. We want to be part of the competitive race to advance transportation and to create the jobs that we urgently need as we rebuild in a way that is equitable, sustainable, and inclusive. It’s an opportunity and one that, if we all work together, can happen in a way that creates both economic prosperity and greater justice.
James McElfish: I have even more questions for you, Vickie, on the many things that you said that overlap or dovetail with things that Granta said. But before I do that, let’s hear from Seema Kakade.
Seema is at the University of Maryland’s Carey School of Law, where she both teaches environmental law and leads the clinical practice work. She was an enforcement attorney with EPA and served in the Office of General Counsel with the Department of Energy. We also know her as a coworker at ELI, where she led our acclaimed summer program.
Seema Kakade: In listening to both Granta and Vickie, my perspective too dovetails with theirs. There are trends toward justice and there are real strides in technology. I want to raise some different issues on both of those topics — issues I’ve seen develop in the last couple of years.
On environmental justice, I couldn’t agree more with Vickie. There seems to be a growing recognition by the public. There are other issues as well that I want to point out.
Not only is there a disproportionate burden, there is inadequate access to the really good things in the environment. When folks describe how they got interested in environmental law, a lot talk about their childhood experiences in natural spaces. Today there is a push for that kind of interaction in communities that at present do not have those opportunities.
There is also growing recognition of diversity and inclusion within the field of environmental law itself. I have seen tremendous desire among organizations, among corporations, among government agencies to look at their own operations. Who are they including? Are they diverse? Are they diverse on multiple levels? Those questions are being raised for perhaps the first time in the last couple of years. We have to think about diversity and inclusion in the field as a whole, as a driver for the subsequent changes that may continue in the environmental justice realm.
Looking at technology, there are a lot of recent changes. I couldn’t agree more about the opportunities presented by electric vehicles, smart grids, and renewable power. Add to that advances in pollution control over the last ten or so years.
But we also need to recognize the change in information technology. Citizen science is a great example of this. There is an incredible growth in the technological tools that are available to the public, for sampling as a for instance. We even see citizens get out there with drones and do some pretty amazing things in citizen science.
I get called by community groups wanting to know what is coming out of a local smokestack, wanting to know what’s coming out of the discharge pipe from that factory down the street, wanting to know what is in the water that they’ve seen downstream from a plant. The growth in the recent past of citizen science is a huge source of information technology.
We have seen some developments in information technology as a result of the COVID virus. We are able to get on Zoom calls to coordinate our work and GoTo webinars to discuss it with practitioners and the public. In the last couple of years being online has dramatically improved people’s access to information. We know transparency is a problem for communities and for people. And we are realizing that agencies need to do a better job of informing professionals and the public.
For your number two question, looking forward at what might happen, I see the continued push of developments at the state and local level. I’ve seen growth in that dovetail with environmental justice. Localities are pushing on a number of issues. And there is a lot going on in the state legislative space.
I’ll give a few examples. We tend to think a lot about the executive branch agencies and maybe judicial branches, but I do think there’s a lot happening legislatively in the states — Vickie pointed to New Jersey and its environmental justice law as an excellent example. I also see changes in state constitutions, creating environmental rights.
A great example of state action concerns pollution from coal ash produced by power plants. Coal ash dramatically impacts communities. We’ve seen significant strides at the state level in Virginia and North Carolina with new legislation addressing this pollutant.
There is going to be a continued push for that information on state permitting. Due to upgrades in information technology, states are moving online for access to information on permitting. We have been pushing for states to have environmental justice mapping tools. We have tools like EJSCREEN at the federal level, and states can follow the example of California, with its CalEnviroScreen.
We can also look in the legislative space at what cities are doing, with their administrative processes like zoning. It’s a tremendous area where there’s a lot happening at the local level that impacts communities.
James McElfish: I want to follow up on this round to make sure we are able to flag some of the legal issues which, Seema, I think you began to do by referring to things like CalEnviroScreen or the kinds of mapping tools that are available or that Vickie referred to with the recent New Jersey environmental justice law. All of you identified societal trends and business trends and private investment. How can we make these good things happen? What can we do to push these forward? I wonder if each of you could highlight one or two ways in which environmental law can either help or get out of the way.
Granta Nakayama: It has been pressure from the public that has driven a lot of these advancements and changes, and the associated regulations and laws. There didn’t use to be a groundswell of consumers pushing for electric cars, but suddenly drivers are demanding them. It took a lot of work by a lot of groups and a lot of people in government who had basic legal mandates to meet. That triggered development of designs before there was consumer demand. And then once you have public support, you do raise a very good question concerning how you foster that.
I’ll be quite frank. This is coming from a former person at the agency. There are many ways in which environmental law actually slows down some of this progress. One is bureaucratic inertia. It takes years to promulgate some rules. Then, by the time you get some experience with them, you realize they probably weren’t crafted in the best possible way. Take the paint waste rule. It was 20 years from the initial Notice of Proposed Rule Making to when the final rule got issued. The world works at a much faster pace.
Another aspect is many times we get set in our ways. If you’re a bureaucrat, you’re literally the person enforcing a rule. You’re comfortable doing things a certain way, but that may not be the most efficient. Take for example if a business self-reports under EPA’s audit policy, they have an incredibly detailed website you go to. In a way that’s an improvement, but it’s set up in a way that’s not very user friendly. And it falls short of covering all situations.
There are ways to streamline the process. That’s really a nonpartisan issue. Whatever we’re going to do, let’s do it efficiently. For example, in California there’s a rule on renewable fuels that says you can’t store them for more than three quarters. Otherwise, you’ll lose all the credits out there in the low-carbon fuel standard. Well, that doesn’t work for a lot of people who generate renewable fuels through dairy. They work on an annual basis because for farmers, the seasons go in an annual cycle. If you went to a yearly cycle, that would save a lot of time and money and also save heating the biodigesters in cold weather, producing carbon emissions.
There may be a will, but agencies don’t have the money and the personnel to go back and fix a lot of these glitches. But if there was an effort to go after these problem areas, you would get a lot of support across the board for making rules more efficient, easier to implement, and, frankly, easier for the agency to enforce.
Vickie Patton: There’s an impression that the Trump administration’s actions have been focused solely on tearing down President Obama’s leading efforts to protect human health and the environment. But the actions go far beyond that. For some reason, through our national policy we are creating impediments to urgently needed investments in clean energy and hurdles for state and local innovations that are necessary to protect human health and the environment. Just a couple of examples of where we need really poorly designed policy and law to get out of the way.
In December 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission adopted what’s called the Minimum Offer Price Rule. It is designed to increase the cost of renewables in the Mid-Atlantic energy market. It’s designed to harm state innovation, private-sector innovation, and clean energy policy and investments — and to promote fossil fuels. That’s just distorting a market. It means more pollution for millions of people and higher costs.
The Trump administration has pursued a sweeping attack on state and local innovation. One example is a really far-reaching attack on states’ long-standing authority to adopt clean car standards. That is in federal court now. So is an affirmative multi-pronged constitutional challenge against California’s voluntary collaboration with Quebec in reducing climate pollution. California lost that case, which is on appeal.
Trump’s Justice Department has made a claim that would give to the executive branch unlimited power to declare unconstitutional any state or local action that is deemed to be interfering with the foreign policy interest of the country, even at the most nominal level.
One of the big steps we can take was underscored by a landmark report by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission about the risk climate change presents to our financial system, followed by an op-ed in the New York Times by a Trump-appointed official at the Securities and Exchange Commission making similar points. Investors are calling forth to ensure that climate risks are disclosed under securities law.
There are both very serious risks publicly traded companies face with respect to climate change — and opportunities as well. All of the technologies, all of the tools that Seema described in such a compelling way, enable us to have greater insight into what those risks and opportunities are. Those need to be disclosed by publicly traded companies under federal securities law in a way that is rigorous, mandatory, comparable, and measures up to the challenge.
Seema Kakade:; When you ask should environmental law get out of the way, it depends on the law. There are certainly laws and regulations that actually do help quite a bit. I don’t want to be down on environmental law. It has an ability to push states and local governments to do more. Environmental law also has the capacity to push corporations to do more.
There are times when it isn’t environmental law that is the driver. We need to discuss whether it was the Clean Power Plan as driver for the push away from coal, or whether it has been market forces.
James McElfish: Thank you for the vote of confidence in environmental law, to which some of us have devoted well over 40 years of our professional lives.
Having started my career at the Interior Department, there is an array of laws and mandates there that operate in interesting and sometimes conflicting ways. Is there anything in the non-EPA law world that we should be paying attention to? Vickie raised the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s MOPR decision, and both of our other panelists emphasized other issues. But at least in the interest of giving time to the other bodies and other agencies, be it the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is there anything else we environmental lawyers ought to keep track of in the near future?
Granta Nakayama: We did not coordinate our answers for this discussion. There are three different perspectives, but we’re all saying the same thing.
I do want to reemphasize that environmental law is important. This is an incredibly fulfilling field. I’ve been blessed to practice in it by blind luck. My first case was an environmental case. There are all these issues with the water you drink, the air you breathe, the ground you stand on. The world is your environment and there are problems with that environment.
Many of the laws are written generally, and lawyers have a lot of room to think creatively. Folks at NGOs think very creatively. I’m always impressed with your filings about how to address problems using the tools we have. And they bring that environmental law mindset to the proceedings of different agencies.
Whatever perspective on an issue, you can bring in your creativity. It’s a relatively new area of law. New issues come up all the time, for instance problems with plastics.
James McElfish: Let me ask Seema and Vickie about something in the non-EPA universe we ought to pay attention to.
Seema Kakade: In my class, we talk about combustion sources, and all the different regulatory agencies that impact the sources. If you look at coal plants, from transmission to market to disposal of waste, there are so many different federal agencies that might regulate. In a lot of other countries, the law is all-encompassing on one particular source category. Here we have not only multimedia within EPA on air, water, waste, and that sort of thing, but we also have so many different federal agencies involved in regulatory processes.
I tell my students to pick any federal agency, you will find environmental law work. We have students go to Housing and Urban Development to do indoor air quality and lead paint issues. We have students go to the Department of Agriculture and be thinking about food justice.
My clinic does a lot of client counseling for communities. They don’t look at environmental issues as being EPA-led. They are looking at a whole variety of issues that do dovetail in housing, and transportation, and infrastructure, and affordability. Like electricity rates, which goes back to the way we run our wholesale markets. The process of thinking more broadly is the direction to go both for Granta’s point on sustainability but also for really addressing some of these overarching topics on environmental justice or climate change. It really does span multiple federal regulatory agencies.
To answer your question on things that people should be watching for, quite honestly it’s hard to at this point really not mention the National Environmental Policy Act, because there is so much happening. Beyond watching the Council on Environmental Quality’s new regulations, there are also the individual NEPA regulations at all of the federal regulatory agencies. Because a lot of my students are surprised to realize that the Department of Transportation has a separate set of NEPA regulations and categorical exclusions.
The other area that is important to watch is what’s happening with respect to FERC’s orders and approval of tariffs. There could be more change in the future with respect to FERC and how the commission operates.
Vickie Patton: I agree with the way that Granta and Seema have described this. The word that Granta used was “imaginative,” and that captures it. We need to be imaginative in addressing the urgent challenges of climate change and justice. That means there are profound opportunities and risks. For lawyers, there is an opportunity to help companies innovate and transition to clean energy. That means being a great corporate lawyer, being on the cutting edge of transactions and working in close partnership, and advising and helping those companies navigate this in a way that is workable.
For tort lawyers, there will be increasing lawsuits in terms of duty of care due to the pollution that companies are responsible for and also due to the reasonably foreseeable need to adapt. So let’s think about duty of care in a world where climate change and justice are front and center.
We need to be imaginative in thinking about securities law and how we make sure we are disclosing the risks and opportunities associated with climate change. Doing imaginative work like Seema’s law clinic, where she is working on the front lines to achieve justice for all. So many ways for us as environmental lawyers to bring a wide variety of imaginative thinking to bear.
James McElfish: Let’s get to audience questions. Our first questioner asks if any of you foresee the possibility for carbon legislation moving forward.
Vickie Patton: There is a real opportunity for climate legislation. The factors include public support and the fundamental shifts in the economics in a world where clean solutions are out-competing the status quo. The opportunity for our country to create jobs and become a global leader is imperative in terms of competitiveness. As we see the catastrophic climate harms impacting communities all across the country, public support for action will only intensify.
James McElfish: There is a question about hydrogen as a fuel. Are we likely to see legislation?
Granta Nakayama: A lot of the push for hydrogen fuels has come from the transportation sector. Hydrogen is a very difficult fuel. It’s the smallest atom, so it is very hard to contain. But hydrogen is ubiquitous. It combines with oxygen to produce water, so it’s a very clean fuel once you have it. There are industrial ways to generate hydrogen and ways that are environmentally friendly, but there is the infrastructure problem. There are going to be opportunities, especially for fleet vehicles.
But as we move to alternative fuels in general or battery-powered vehicles, you’re going to see a greater mix of fuels. Hydrogen will be in there some way. It’s just too common and there are opportunities to generate it from other industrial processes.
James McElfish: We have a question about the role of renewable energy portfolio standards. In your views, have they really done a lot of good? What is their role?
Vickie Patton: They’ve had a huge impact. They have created the pull for advanced clean energy solutions. We’re now seeing a world where major power companies — industrial utilities, municipal power companies, rural electric cooperatives — are pivoting from high-polluting forms of electricity to renewables, utility-scale wind/solar storage, and doing it in a way in some regions of the country where they save their customers money.
Granta Nakayama: I agree. In rural Virginia there are huge solar installations. These were locations that typically were at the end of the distribution line so they had to pay pretty high prices in the past. The regulatory pull, as Vickie says, started the ball rolling and then created the market. Then good things followed.
Vickie Patton: People have worked together in a number of communities to introduce renewables in a way that provides a just transition. In my home state of Colorado, we’ve made a number of transitions from coal-based power to utility-scale renewables in a way that’s both creative and saved jobs.
So we have wind turbines that are manufactured in places here like Windsor, Colorado. In Pueblo, we have the benefit of this cleaner energy out-competing more expensive fossil fuel energy. Our major power provider negotiated a long-term contract with a steel manufacturer in Pueblo. It kept that manufacturer in the community. That’s a thousand jobs, saved by shifting to clean energy.
We have farms that are being kept in their families because farmers are hosting wind turbines and receiving lease payments as a result of our transition to clean energy. All of that has been catalyzed by renewable portfolio standards and then people working together to ensure that these transitions are effectuated in a way that creates jobs and ensures shared economic prosperity.
Seema Kakade: I agree largely with Granta and Vickie on this point, but it is sometimes tough to say how much of the driving impacts that we’re seeing are a result of renewable portfolio standards. That’s a great area for additional research.
James McElfish: There’s a question, which we have touched on, dealing with the appetite among states to do additional legislation in the climate area.
Vickie Patton: There’s an enormous amount of activity — innovation, imagination — in the states that will be of increasing importance. It’s also really important that we continue as a country to support the innovation and leadership of state and local governments.
In Pennsylvania, there is an action to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. That is a reflection of the economic opportunities that come with climate action. In Colorado, there is sweeping climate legislation led by prominent African American members of the General Assembly and Speaker of the House K. C. Becker. That included within it both a commitment to science-based climate action in statute and to environmental justice, and protecting disproportionately impacted communities. Having both of those crucial considerations woven into the fabric of Colorado law is a huge step forward.
Take also Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent executive order in California providing for transportation electrification. It also provides for accelerated electrification to achieve zero pollution from equipment and engines in port areas. There is an enormous amount of activity at the level of state and local governments in all parts of the country because of the economic opportunity and the imperative for climate action.
James McElfish: We’ve reached the end of our time together. There is so much happening in the private sector and among the states in the intersection of climate justice and the transition of our energy economy. Following developments at FERC, which was in many respects and for many years a backwater, it is really important because of its role in seeing how these transitions will or will not occur and at what pace.
The area of Environmental Law 2021, whatever the outcome of this year’s political contest, is going to be fertile, rich, and give all of us a great deal to do. TEF
In late 2019, research staff at the Institute began hearing from the profession and other members of the ELI community a desire for an update on what they saw as highly important changes coming from many sources in the pollution and conservation arena through rulemakings, executive orders, enforcement decisions, and other means. The result was Environment 2021: What Comes Next?
Reading the popular press about science in the Trump administration, one cannot help but recall the famous quote about “the nattering nabobs of negativism.” I am thankful to have an insider’s perspective at EPA’s Office of Research and Development, where every day I witness the real, pro-science story of the administration, especially the role of Administrator Scott Pruitt in advancing the White House agenda.
Science and technology have always played a pivotal role in what makes America great, and EPA is constantly advancing this proud tradition by engaging in a continuous, thoughtful conversation about meeting the research needs of the nation. This work has never been more important, as the number of environmental issues facing us is increasing in both scope and complexity.
States need tech solutions that are not only effective and reliable, but also affordable. EPA’s innovative approach is to embrace these challenges, and deliver science and technology in ways that not only provide solutions, but align our common goals of a clean, healthy environment and economic growth and opportunity.
Research must be collaborative. We have recognized that to fully harness the strength of the unmatched collective expertise we possess at EPA, we must break down traditional boundaries and work in truly efficient interdisciplinary teams. In fact, today’s complex environmental problems demand such an approach. We are accelerating the integration of various scientific subject areas, routinely bringing together social scientists, engineers, ecologists, and other experts in ways that match the complexity of the challenges we face.
Satellite imaging, remote sensing, high-throughput screening, and a new generation of small, portable, and inexpensive sensing and monitoring technologies are generating constant streams of data. Putting that proliferation of information to use requires massive amounts of computation, timely analysis, and interpretation.
Here, EPA is leading the way. Agency-produced tools such as the Enviro Atlas (a GIS-based, ecosystem mapping and visualization tool), CANARY (a homeland security water-monitoring tool), the Environmental Quality Index (an index of environmental quality), and the ToxCast Dashboard (seamless access to toxicity data on more than 9,000 chemicals and information from more than 1,000 high-throughput assay endpoint components), and a host of others are lowering costs for timely analysis, and empowering the agency and its partners to make better, more informed decisions.
Speeding up the delivery of research results is also challenged at the other end of the spectrum: too little data. For example, many commercially available chemicals have not been thoroughly evaluated for potential health and environmental risks, and traditional toxicity testing methods are lengthy and expensive. ORD’s National Center for Computational Toxicology is incorporating the latest knowledge and technical tools to study data-poor chemicals, ushering in a new generation of far faster, less expensive screening.
EPA is also finding creative ways to tap the collective spirit of American ingenuity and innovation. Our prize competitions and challenges allow the general public to contribute unique solutions to complex science problems — we can get solutions and technologies from individuals who might not otherwise address environmental problems. EPA’s ToxTesting Challenge — a prize-based competition to find technological solutions to produce health-based chemical assays — is a great example of how we protect human health in new ways.
Researchers can often demonstrate technologies that are promising in the lab, but how do we scale-up those technologies? EPA’s Small Business Innovative Research program supports the development of promising new technologies during the crucial proof-of-concept stage. The program has supported new companies that have brought new technologies to the marketplace and sparked a host of successful businesses, showcasing how environmental challenge can yield economic opportunity and growth.
Finally, EPA has always had a unique partnership with the public. Today, that partnership is growing even stronger through the emergence of citizen science, which has the potential to allow everyone to play an important role in contributing to our understanding of complex environmental challenges. EPA is in the process of developing a citizen science handbook as the first step of making that a reality — an exciting direction that will help agency scientists, empower citizens, and continue to strengthen an enduring partnership.
The above offers but a tiny slice of the exciting pro-science examples we have to offer at EPA. I hope this Sidebar demonstrates how the agency is meeting the environmental challenges of the 21st century with a forward-thinking vision of science.
RESEARCH & POLICY ❧ The public has had an important role in gathering the data needed for environmental protection. Properly designed programs can stimulate further participation in regulatory activities and supplement the work of agency scientists facing limited budgetary resources.
On the challenges and opportunities of citizen science.
