State and Regional Climate Strategies – Environmental and Energy Law Program

From electric buses and micro-mobility to building energy codes and clean heat, state and city governments have valuable opportunities to design and implement programs that drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Local governments have operated as climate policy laboratories as they faced a lack of federal climate change action and active efforts to undo existing climate policies under the Trump administration.

Even with President Biden making climate one of his top priorities, states and cities will remain at the center of climate and clean energy policy in the US. They will be the first to engage constituents around the public health, quality of life, and economic benefits that clean energy policies can deliver — especially to historically overburdened and underserved communities — and the first to counter opposition strategies. Local governments will continue to advance their own policies and also have primary responsibility for implementing federal climate policy and investing federal dollars wisely. To be successful, they will need to tailor that implementation and investment to address local technical, economic, and political conditions.

To encourage continued progress mitigating climate change, we offer policymakers legal analysis of high-impact opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and advance a just, equitable and orderly transition to a clean energy economy. Our work supports shared learning across regions and states to align smart climate and energy policy at every level of government.

Dale Bryk, senior attorney and director of our State & Regional Climate Policies work, has over two decades’ experience developing and implementing climate, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean transportation policies. She helps states and cities craft policies to deliver a just and equitable transition to a clean energy economy.

EELP is a member of the Conveners Network, a group of organizations with a long history of working with states to accelerate the development and adoption of sound energy policy. Each organization has a core competency in a particular region of the country while often doing work that is inter-regional or national in scope.

Watch Dale in a session hosted by the Massachusetts Attorney General on Gas Utility Regulation During a Transition to Net-Zero Emissions.

Learn more about the IRA provisions that must or could be used to advance building decarbonization, including all of the relevant EJ-supporting language.

Featured Work

EELP Expert

Dale Bryk

State & Regional Climate Strategies