Carbon Emissions and the Courts: The Impacts of the Supreme Court's Decision in West Virginia v. EPA

Chart: Emily Barone. Source: EIA. Retreived from https://time.com/6192800/supreme-court-epa-emissions-ruling/

On June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court delivered a ruling that had long been awaited by climate advocates, policymakers, and industry. The Court voted 6-3 in favor of West Virginia in the case West Virginia v. EPA, effectively ending the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants through the Clean Air Act.

The ruling significantly impedes the Biden Administration’s goal of reducing carbon emissions by approximately 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, the effects of climate change are increasingly evident: storms are becoming stronger and more intense, droughts are exacerbated by climate-driven weather pattern changes, and scorching heatwaves are becoming more common even in summer months.

Following the COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020, national greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise (see graph above) after years of trending downward, and the Supreme Court’s ruling poses yet another hurdle to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The confluence of increasingly frequent climate change-driven weather events, increasing carbon emissions, and the reduced ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants will disproportionately impact underserved and under-resourced communities. A 2021 EPA report found that predominantly Black communities are at the highest risk of experiencing the most negative health and environmental threats posed by climate change, and it also found that predominantly Hispanic and Latinx communities are more likely to be exposed to increasingly frequent extreme temperatures and coastal flooding. The window of opportunity to mitigate the worst effects of climate change is rapidly closing, and there is not a minute to waste.

Levi Bevis

Communications Assistant

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

Formerly Redlined Communities: A Legacy of Harm

Public policy can lead to profoundly positive or negative consequences that carry on for decades, and one primary example of a policy’s lasting impacts is the continuing environmental and public health harm experienced by formerly redlined communities. Redlining began in 1934, as the newly formed Federal Housing Administration (FHA) evaluated mortgage risks for lenders. FHA loan officers followed a grading system developed by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in which neighborhoods were rated from A (lowest mortgage risk) to D (highest mortgage risk).

HOLC used race as one of the guiding factors in assigning grades to neighborhoods, as neighborhoods with minority residents were often given the lowest rating and neighborhoods with white residents were given the highest. Minority neighborhoods, particularly Black neighborhoods, were frequently marked in red, representing a D rating. The red markups led to this exclusionary policy’s name: redlining.

Black mortgage applicants were largely denied mortgage loans and lines of credit due to their perceived high risk for defaulting on loans. The blatant racism embodied by this policy led to increasing racial segregation in cities across the country. Since they could not receive loans to move other neighborhoods, especially if it was a highly ranked and/or predominantly white neighborhood, people of color were largely pushed into neighborhoods with low ratings. The policy remained in effect until it was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. However, the damage had already been done.

Eighty years later, many formerly redlined neighborhoods continue to experience a disproportionate share of environmental. Among these communities, 74 percent are predominately low to moderate income communities, and 64 percent are predominantly communities of color. Research indicates that the surface temperatures in formerly redlined neighborhoods are warmer than other communities, and they are exposed to higher levels of air pollution than those in neighborhoods previously given high ratings. Economic disparities also negatively impact these communities, as they tend to have lower home values, older housing stock, and lower rents in absolute terms than other neighborhoods. These neighborhoods tend to be located closer to industrial facilities and refineries, exposing them to higher levels of dangerous air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter. New polluting projects, such as highways, were often placed close to, or even ran through, formerly redlined neighborhoods since land in the area was cheap.

The public health risks extend beyond respiratory conditions. Residents of formerly redlined neighborhoods tend to have shorter life spans, higher rates of diabetes, higher rates of hypertension, higher rates of kidney disease, higher rates of poverty than formerly high-rank neighborhoods. Residents are also twice as likely to visit an emergency room for asthma than those in other neighborhoods. One 2020 study found increased rates of premature births in New York City’s formerly redlined communities. Another team of researchers in Massachusetts found that living in formerly redlined neighborhoods posed a heightened risk of being diagnosed with late-stage lung and breast cancer than other neighborhoods and that formerly redlined neighborhood residents experienced a higher risk of late stage diagnoses overall regardless of age, sex, gender, race, or ethnicity.

It is evident that redlining policies implemented almost a century ago continue to impact millions of lives today through exposure to higher levels of pollutants and an increased risk of developing adverse health conditions. The harm caused by high levels of pollutants, and the risk of future harm, falls disproportionately on communities of color and low-income communities in cities around the nation. As the consequences of redlining continue to unfold, policymakers should carefully consider the short-term and long-term impacts on the environment and public health when reviewing existing policies or proposing new ones. Otherwise, policies implemented today risk further harming future generations.

Levi Bevis

Communications Assistant

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

Appalachia Ahead: How Renewable Energy Can Change Coal Country

Communities across the United States are in the midst of an energy transformation. While regions such as the East Coast and California are already planning and implementing a switch from fossil fuels to clean energy production, Appalachia faces a different challenge: how to quickly and effectively transition from coal-powered electricity to zero-emission renewables.

Appalachia spans 13 states, including all of West Virginia and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The region is known for its extensive coal reserves and mining industry. However, as the number of coal mining jobs dwindles, Appalachia faces high unemployment, exceptionally high poverty rates, and a diminishing tax base as thousands of people move away to find work. The availability of jobs in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky is especially impacted; extensive networks of local coal mines and a heavy reliance on coal mining present a special challenge to the local economy in a clean energy transition. At the same time, Appalachia is rich in energy infrastructure such as electric transmission lines and generation stations, powered by coal and often exporting electricity to areas outside of the region. The existence of such infrastructure combined with central Appalachia’s proximity to numerous large electric markets has caught the attention of clean energy companies looking to site new solar and wind generation to meet rising demand for carbon-free energy.

Climate advocacy groups are also taking notice of opportunities for renewable development in Appalachia. For example, in West Virginia the Nature Conservancy met with community members and other stakeholders in December 2021 to address the idea of placing solar infrastructure on top of former mines. The potential to use former coalfields as renewable energy sites is especially strong in central Appalachia, as hundreds of abandoned mines and coalfields provide thousands of acres of land for redevelopment and clean energy production.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains a list of Superfund sites across the country—contaminated properties not likely to be used for commercial or residential development that could be cleaned up, repurposed, and redeveloped. The Agency prefers that developers utilize sites such as former mines or abandoned industrial sites for clean energy developments, and some developers in Appalachia are working to do just that. One company, Edelen Renewables, will use Superfund sites for six of its 18 planned clean energy projects, repurposing former mines in central Appalachia into solar farms. Superfund sites provide a major opportunity for renewable energy growth, meaning more jobs and less dependency on coal to meet energy needs.

Changing to new forms of energy production and use can be costly and disruptive, but clean energy also presents significant opportunities for communities to reimagine and redevelop local lands and infrastructure. Appalachia is taking note. Coal country is ready for a transformation into a hub for renewable energy production.

Levi Bevis

Communications Assistant

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

Climate Change and the Forced Relocation of Native American Nations

Once again, many Native Americans find themselves facing the loss of land and home. In 1889, President Grover Cleveland issued an executive order that set the stage for an almost impossible situation facing a Native American community in Washington State today. President Cleveland’s order confined the Quileute Nation to one-square mile of land on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. The Quileute traditionally used this portion of their land as a fishing community for part of the year due to its tendency to flood. Confined to this tiny patch of land, the Quileute community faced frequent flooding. Today, due to rising sea levels and intensifying storms caused by climate change, the Tribe increasingly experiences power outages, flooding, and storm damage, which prevent them from using the one road that connects the community with the rest of the world. Nations like the Quileute face a difficult choice: remain on their home land and suffer from the effects of climate change, or leave their ancestral land to find refuge further inland. Unfortunately, the Quileute Nation is not the only Native Nation in this position.

In an October 2021 article in the journal Science, a team of researchers examined the forced relocation of hundreds of Native American Tribes in the United States by European and American settlers and the continuing impacts of their relocation on the Tribes’ environmental and economic conditions today. More than two-fifths of the 380 Tribes that were forcibly relocated have no federal or state-recognized land base, while Tribes with land bases saw their land size reduced by up to 99 percent after relocation. Furthermore, relocated tribes often were moved to land with less hospitable climates that now expose these Tribes to higher climate change risks, increasingly severe environmental hazards, and disadvantageous economic conditions. These results further confirm the deep interconnection between environmental justice, racial justice, and economic justice.

The increasing frequency and severity of environmental disasters has also amplified economic inequality for Native Nations. According to Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research, approximately one in three Native Americans live in poverty, with a median income of approximately $23,000. The Institute also points out that, even though more Native Americans are receiving a high school and college degree than ever, wage gaps are increasing and employment levels are dropping when compared to white populations in the same areas. The effects of climate change are exacerbating this economic inequality by prompting many to leave their Tribes for cities with more economic opportunities, which means Tribes often face a shrinking tax base. For example, the Yupik of Newtok, Alaska, have been forced to relocate to nearby Mertarvik due to sea level rise, increased flooding from the Ninglick River, and the erosion and shifting buildings caused by melting permafrost. Likewise, two Tribes on Isle de Jean Charles in southern Louisiana, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw and the United Houma Nation, are considered the United States’ first climate refugees as of 2016 when they were awarded a $48 million federal grant to relocate their communities. Isle de Jean Charles is sinking, with flooding becoming more frequent, and nine-tenths of the island’s land mass lost to rising sea levels since 1955.

Centuries of systemic racism and widespread inaction on climate mitigation have left Native Nations vulnerable to the increasingly severe effects of climate change. The existing challenges facing Native Nations have been amplified by the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and intensifying storms. The past is rarely ever left in the past; it continues to shape our present world and inform our future.

Levi Bevis

Communications Assistant

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

Investing in a Clean Energy Future

Universities around the country and the world are making headlines for investing in a greener future for their students and communities. Harvard University joined several other U.S. colleges and universities on September 10 in divesting its nearly $42 billion endowment, the largest of any university in the United States, from the fossil fuel industry. This eye-popping divestment is part of a larger trend among numerous higher education institutions and systems that has gained steam over the past few years.

Some universities, like Rutgers University, George Washington University, and the University of California system, have fully divested their endowments from fossil fuels. Other universities are enacting gradual divestments from fossil fuels. Stanford University, for example, has only divested from coal companies.

Harvard is also not the only university in the Greater Boston metro area to divest its endowment from fossil fuels. The University of Massachusetts Foundation, Boston University, and Tufts University have also approved measures to divest their endowments from coal, tar sands, and/or all fossil fuels. Boston University’s announcement came only a few days after Harvard’s announcement, illustrating the powerful message sent by a university’s decision to divest.

The divestment trend is not unique to the higher education sector, and the broader push for divestment is making waves across the economy. Cities, faith-based organizations, NGOs, and other institutions are divesting funds, all chipping in towards a valuation of just under $15 trillion of worldwide institutional divestment in fossil fuels according to Fossil Free—a fossil fuel divestment data tracking project of the environmental advocacy group 350.org. As more individuals and institutions pull money from direct and fossil fuel-adjacent investments, banks and financial institutions are taking notice. A 2021 study published in the Journal of Economic Geography found that, after analyzing trends in 33 nations, countries with the strongest fossil fuel divestment movements in a given year also saw their oil and gas industries raise less money in that same year compared to historical averages. Given this current economic backdrop, it comes as no surprise that equity funds investing in fossil fuels were among the worst performing funds in 2020.

The power of divesting university endowments is clear, and it has the potential to reshape our economy in the near future. Environmental equity and climate change mitigation will take more than concrete government policies and scientific models to be successful—it will require a conscious shift in our institutions and economy. Universities are leading the way in taking action to benefit students and their communities alike by investing in a clean energy future.

Levi Bevis

Communications Assistant

This is a part of the AEC Blog series