ONLINE | Mandatory Emissions Reductions: Centering Environmental Justice in Climate Policy

Across the United States, fossil fuel infrastructure emits toxic air pollution and planet-warming greenhouse gases that drive climate change. Low-income communities and communities of color bear the brunt of both, living on the front lines of impacts from climate change as well as suffering the harms of localized co-pollutants, like particular matter and nitrous oxides, emitted by nearby facilities. A just and equitable climate mitigation policy for the power sector must make the elimination of the sector’s outsized impact on these environmental justice (EJ) communities an explicit goal.

A new joint report by Dr. Nicky Sheats of the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research (Kean University) and members of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, lays out a framework for a policy to require mandatory emissions reductions (MER) of power sector pollution in EJ communities, and applies it to three state case studies: New Jersey, Minnesota, and Delaware.

We invite you to join us to celebrate the launch of this report and talk with state EJ leaders about the importance of the findings and the role of MER policy in advancing environmental justice.

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