Authors: Wei Peng (Princeton University), Susan Anenberg (George Washington University), John Bistline (Electric Power Research Institute), Mark Budolfson (University of Texas at Austin), Sara M. Constantino (Stanford University), Kelly Crawford (U.S. Department of Energy), Kenneth Davis (Penn State University), Peter DeCarlo (Johns Hopkins University), Allen Fawcett (University of Maryland), Hayden Hashimoto (Clear Air Task Force), Casey Helgeson (Penn State University), Xinyuan Huang (Princeton University), Gokul Iyer (University of Maryland), Klaus Keller (Dartmouth College), Harry Kennard (University of Texas at Austin), Kathleen M. Kennedy (University of Maryland), Robert Laumbach (Rutgers University), Vijay Limaye (Natural Resources Defense Council), Erin Mayfield (Dartmouth College), James McFarland (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), Michelle Meyer (International Council on Clean Transportation), Paul Miller (Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management), Andrew Place (Maryland Department of the Environment), Nicholas Roy (Resources for the Future), Christine Schell (New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection), Noah Scovronick (Emory University), Steven J. Smith (University of Maryland), Vivek Srikrishnan (Cornell University), Donna Vorhees (Health Effects Institute), Yuanyu Xie (Princeton University)
Title: Seizing the policy opportunities for health- and equity-improving energy decisions
Journal: One Earth

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) along with other U.S. federal policies enacted during the Biden administration offer an opportunity to promote health and equity goals through clean energy investments, the authors note. Even with the Trump administration likely to make policy changes to IRA implementation, there are many IRA-funded projects underway that have already had and will continue to have an impact, they add.

To understand the policy opportunities and research needs, Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and Princeton SPIA in D.C. convened a workshop with scholars and practitioners from universities, government agencies, think tanks, nonprofits, and funding entities gathered in Washington, D.C., in September 2023. In the upcoming February issue of One Earth, the attendees identify how to maximize health and equity co-benefits through recent energy decisions.

The group identified three key challenges and three priorities to leverage these policy opportunities for the greatest benefit.

Challenges:

1. Tradeoffs: The energy transition will create winners and losers, introducing tradeoffs among economic, health, and equity objectives. For example, reducing fossil fuel dependency may negatively impact communities involved in its production, and ensuring an equitable transition will be important.
2. Coordination: A wide range of stakeholders are impacted by energy decisions, and some hold more political power than others. Ensuring that policy outcomes take them all into consideration, and coordinating the various agencies involved in the process, will require effort. 
3. Timeline: Many of the IRA programs have near-term deadlines, but the scale of impact is long-term. Policymakers need to align near-term decisions with long-term goals through careful deliberation.

Opportunities:

1. Research: There are still gaps in our understanding of how energy policy designs will result in tradeoffs among objectives and stakeholders. The group called for new analytical frameworks to integrate insights from environmental, public health, and social and decision science research. These policy programs present an opportunity for researchers to support decision makers.
2. Mitigation: The group developed a framework to identify strategies that could mitigate tradeoffs as well as the key stakeholders implementing those strategies. It can offer decision makers useful insights to identify who and what to include as they formulate processes.
3. Partnerships: Decision makers need to form partnerships and collaborations so that they can navigate policy tradeoffs by coordinating and sequencing their actions. For example, at the national level, greater collaboration between the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy can help better incorporate air quality and health objectives into energy decisions.

Carefully designed energy strategies can lead societies to a healthier and more equitable future. The IRA and other federal policies create a window of opportunity to empower local communities and initiate partnerships for coordinated action on energy, health and equity goals.

By seizing the opportunity, these low-carbon energy technologies can provide immediate benefits such as reducing air pollution, improving human health, and providing new job opportunities. In the long term, they can have a lasting impact in how we deal with some of the biggest environmental challenges facing people today.