States like California face sobering budget shortfalls, and their governors and legislatures are grappling with how and where to make cuts. These debates cast a spotlight on the critical importance of state budgets to an equitable clean energy future.
State funding is one of the most important tools governments have to respond to the climate crisis. Legislative funding decisions, along with agency program design decisions, determine which climate and energy programs to fund, and how. They are essential to ensuring that historically marginalized and under-resourced communities have access to the essential building blocks of a decarbonized society: energy-efficient electrified homes, fossil-fuel free mobility options, more accessible affordable housing, and clean electricity and storage.
In a recently published issue brief, Climate Justice Funding Lessons from California: Program Design and Engagement Opportunities, we outline the major determinants of funding program resources and design and spell out how advocates can influence them — beginning with the budget process. Active engagement in the state budgeting process will be essential to defend vital programs from budget cuts and influence future allocations.
However, opportunities to influence investments and shape funding programs do not start or end there. The issue brief also illuminates agency investment plans, which determine how agencies plan to spend discretionary funds. Lastly, the issue brief discusses how agencies develop the detailed program guidelines that determine key parameters, like eligibility, permissible projects, and project management requirements. Advocates’ participation in all of these decisions is essential to ensure that the programs meet the needs of their intended recipients.
California’s Budget Crisis and its Implications for Climate Justice Funding
Consider the current budget woes in California. Lower-than-expected tax revenues this year have led to a $27.6 billion budget shortfall. On May 10, the governor’s office unveiled the revised budget for the 2024–2025 fiscal year, which details how the governor will address this year’s shortfall and next year’s projected deficit of $28.4 billion. The budget proposes significant cuts to clean transportation and equity programs and building decarbonization programs that are intended to address the state's largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. The governor's proposal to balance the budget includes shifts or delays in funds from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which holds the funds from the state’s cap-and-trade allowance auctions. These reductions and delays could seriously undermine the state’s climate and pollution reduction goals.
Legislative committees will continue to deliberate on the budget until voting to send a final budget back to the Governor by June 15. Until then, there is time to influence these critical budget decisions. Our issue brief provides an overview of the budget process and how to participate.
Beyond the Budget: Agency Funding Decisions and Program Design
While the budget is, of course, critical to the fate of essential funding programs, climate justice advocates should also have their eyes on additional decision points that shape funding and program design. As our issue brief describes, the legislature sometimes gives agencies a degree of discretion over their funding. Agency investment plans determine how to allocate these funds. By participating in agencies’ investment planning processes, advocates can influence the emergence of new programs and the flow of the funds to existing programs. Our issue brief provides a number of California examples and explains the differing opportunities for participation offered by a variety of agencies.
As any applicant for funding knows, agency requirements are often long and complex. Another critical intervention goes back to the source: program guidelines and handbooks. While many factors are determined by statutory requirements, advocates can nonetheless influence key parameters, including eligibility, acceptable projects and activities, and a wide range of other elements. Our issue brief describes the kinds of requirements determined in program guidelines and highlights several examples demonstrating opportunities for participation in their development.
Additional Resources on Climate Justice Funding Programs
CPR’s Climate Justice Program has conducted in-depth research on California’s climate justice funding programs, research intended to not only strengthen California’s programs, but provide lessons for other states as well as the federal government. Additional resources include:
Upcoming budget cycles, investment planning, and program development and design processes in California and other states are critical opportunities for advocates and the public to defend and shape climate justice programs. Our issue brief offers detailed guidance as to where, when, and how concerned citizens can make their presence felt in state-level decision-making. Their participation will be essential to a clean and equitable clean energy transition.
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Alice Kaswan, Catalina Gonzalez | May 21, 2024
States like California face sobering budget shortfalls, and their governors and legislatures are grappling with how and where to make cuts. These debates cast a spotlight on the critical importance of state budgets to an equitable clean energy future.
Daniel Farber | May 2, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether to overrule the Chevron doctrine. Chevron requires courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. We should know by the end of next month whether the current conservative super-majority on the Court will overrule Chevron. In the meantime, it’s illuminating to put the current dispute in the context of the last 80 years of judicial doctrine regarding deference to agencies on issues of law. As this timeline shows, the Supreme Court’s engagement with this issue has been long and complex.
Federico Holm | May 1, 2024
Since the passage of landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law during the Biden administration, we’ve repeatedly heard that we’re at a critical junction: There is a need to expand and accelerate environmental, climate, and clean energy policy implementation and opportunities to do so, but the pathway toward this goal will be plagued by significant delays. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has become a common scapegoat in this fight, with critics charging that the sometimes lengthy and complicated environmental review process NEPA requires is the main thing holding up decarbonization and the clean energy transition. This has led to calls from across the political spectrum for “reforming” the statute. This assumption, however, misrepresents what happens on the ground.
Daniel Farber | April 29, 2024
The bad news is that we’re not yet on track to avoid dangerous climate change. But there’s also good news: We’ve taken important steps that will ease further progress. We should resist the allure of easy optimism, given the scale of the challenges. Neither should we wallow in despair. There’s a good basis for hope.
Daniel Farber | April 25, 2024
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a cluster of new rules designed to limit carbon emissions from power generators. Once upon a time, the presumption would have been that the rules would quietly go into effect, until someday a court rules on their validity. These days, we can expect a lot of action to begin almost right away.
Daniel Farber | March 28, 2024
In West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The heart of the ruling was that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had engaged in a power grab, basing an unprecedented expansion of its regulatory authority on an obscure provision of the statute. Conservative groups have claimed since then that virtually every government regulation raises a major question. But the doctrine cannot be read that broadly. In particular, the doctrine does not apply to the emission standards for cars that EPA issued last week. As EPA explains in its prologue to the rule, the car standard is very different from the Clean Power Plan.
Sophie Loeb | March 27, 2024
Today, the Center for Progressive Reform is publishing a new policy brief. Missing the Mark: How North Carolina’s Decarbonization Efforts Fall Short and How to Fix Them examines the pitfalls of North Carolina’s decarbonization plan (known as the Carbon Plan and developed by Duke Energy) and alternative models to address those shortcomings.
Daniel Farber | March 26, 2024
The Chevron doctrine requires judges to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute if that interpretation is reasonable. The State Farm case, which is much less widely known, requires courts to defer to an agency’s expert judgment unless its reasoning has ignored contrary evidence or has a logical hole. As you probably already know, two cases now before the Court will probably result in abandoning or revamping Chevron. But the “abortion pill” case that will be argued today will test the Court’s adherence to State Farm. Will the conservative Justices stand by State Farm even when doing so expands access to abortion?
Federico Holm | March 25, 2024
My colleagues at the Center for Progressive Reform and I recently published a report and interactive map examining how local ordinances that restrict clean energy development can impose major obstacles in our efforts toward a just clean energy transition. Among the many important findings in our report, we highlighted the high degree of variability that exists between states in the way large-scale clean energy generation is regulated. In some cases, like Illinois and Michigan, governments have empowered state authorities to override local siting measures; other states have given local governments more decision-making powers to decide if and how renewable infrastructure can be built. Among the latter is Ohio.