State and local governments hold the key to the nation’s low-carbon future, using $1 trillion in federal investments under the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to lead innovative and data-driven climate initiatives.
The success of the U.S. federal government’s $1 trillion investment to combat climate change through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) rests significantly on the effective spending by state and local governments. This assertion was recently made in a commentary published in the journal Nature.
Local jurisdictions bear much responsibility for executing this legislation. The authors emphasize an attitude of experimentation and evaluation among these governments to achieve U.S. climate goals under the Paris Agreement.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape our energy landscape,” co-author Gordon McCord, an associate teaching professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, said in a news release. “By committing to learning what works through experimentation and evaluation, state and local governments can lead the way in achieving the U.S.’ climate goals under the Paris Agreement.”
The historic federal investments are designed to catalyze the nation’s shift toward a low-carbon economy by introducing attractive incentives for renewable energy utilization, electric vehicle adoption and other sustainable practices.
“For example, states can implement programs overseeing rebates for energy efficiency and electrification of housing and appliances, courtesy of the $4.3-billion Home Owner Managing Energy Savings (HOMES) Program and the $4.5-billion High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program,” as noted in the paper.
Furthermore, building codes and land-use policies fall under the purview of numerous local governments nationwide. The authors advocate treating these policies as experiments, embedding evaluation from the onset.
“There is a lot of learning that needs to be done in terms of understanding what works and what doesn’t to change people’s behavior in ways necessary for decarbonization,” coauthor Teevrat Garg, an associate professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, said in the news release. “Decarbonization is a complex and ongoing process that partially hinges on our ability to design policies and incentives that enable broad-based and cost-effective participation from all sectors of society,” added Garg.
The commentary underscores the essence of collaboration with researchers for evaluating program outcomes, independent analysis and harmonizing data collection across different jurisdictions.
The authors are part of the JPAL North America working group on the economics of decarbonization, providing training to state and local governments on implementing field experiments to ascertain the cost-effectiveness of various climate policies.
San Diego County is one of the initial jurisdictions selected for this innovative approach. There, the scholars are partnering with the county’s Office of Evaluation, Performance and Analytics (OEPA) to create impact evaluations.
“We are very excited to support OEPA in measuring cost effectiveness of climate actions and to help San Diego County show other jurisdictions by example how impact evaluations are key to continuously improving climate policies in the coming decades,” McCord added.
This collaboration could set San Diego County as a trailblazer, showcasing how empirical evaluations of climate initiatives can guide other jurisdictions in their decarbonization efforts.