Environmental Justice in State Climate Planning: Learning from California

Abstract

As states and other regional entities prepare climate action plans under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) program, they face important strategic choices about how to decarbonize and about the legal mechanisms for accomplishing a clean energy transition. To help states meet the CPRG program goals, which require advancing environmental justice and analyzing the environmental justice impacts of chosen strategies, this report draws lessons on incorporating environmental justice voices and goals from California’s most recent scoping plan update, its 2022 Scoping Plan for Achieving Carbon Neutrality (the 2022 Plan or the Plan).

We describe the planning process and review the way environmental justice principles were — and were not — integrated into the final scoping plan. We then assess the degree to which the decision- making process facilitated or impeded integrating environmental justice, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of California’s public participation processes, including the role of the state’s dedicated Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (EJAC). Based on the assessment, we provide recommendations to guide states currently preparing climate action plans, due to EPA in 2025, as well as California’s next planning round.

Keywords: climate change, global warming, state climate action, environmental justice, climate action planning