By Joe Evans Many of us want to see clean energy, energy efficiency, climate resiliency and sustainability take root in communities of color and low-wealth communities. We could get there quickly if the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund invest as much in project readiness as…

By Laurie Mazur Dante Sawyer had a problem. As manager of the Village of Hazel Crest, a working-class suburb south of Chicago, Sawyer suspected that many homes in his village had lead service lines. Those lines could be leaching lead, a potent neurotoxin, into residents’ drinking water. …

By Laurie Mazur It takes money to make money, as the saying goes. The same is true of raising money. Successful fundraising requires resources that are in short supply for many small, community-based nonprofits. That means many groups could miss out on new federal funding that is targeted to front-line, historically marginalized communities. …

By Laurie Mazur For those who care about sustainability and equity, 2022 brought plenty of good news. Notably, the Biden Administration is rolling out its Justice40 initiative, which targets 40 percent of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities. …

By Sandra Lubarsky On a road trip to Friesland in the north of Holland, my friend Ans pulled off the highway to admire the much beloved belted bovines grazing in a field. In this part of the country, the barns are as beautiful as the houses and the cows are prized as much…

By Shelley Robbins The clean energy transition calls us to electrify everything, and to do so equitably. At the same time, we need resilient power to keep refrigerators, lights, and critical medical equipment running during ever-more-frequent power outages. This, too, is an equity issue, since outages are more common in underserved communities. Traditional…

By Jamie Hearn Seattle has long been considered one of the most sustainable cities in the country. But the city’s green reputation obscures a deep legacy of environmental racism. Just a few miles south of Seattle’s iconic downtown and waterfront lies the Duwamish Valley, a polluted stretch of land that is home to…

By Ryan Reft Last year, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg unveiled new efforts to address the problematic racial legacy of interstate highway construction, dedicating $1 billion to “reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated or divided by road projects.” Buttigieg’s efforts were quickly assailed by critics who lamented the “wokefication” of the interstates. But with…

By Patrice Frey and Vincent Martinez Renovations recently outpaced new building construction in the U.S. for the first time — great news for those concerned about climate change. The building construction industry is responsible for a hefty 13% of energy-related emissions. Reusing our existing building stock can help us avoid significant environmentally-costly new emissions, while also…