What Voters Need to Know About Climate Policy as the Election Approaches
By Jennifer Monahan
With residents in the southeastern United States still recovering from the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, extreme weather events and the environment are on the minds of many Americans. Climate change is an existential challenge – one that requires not just changes in personal behavior, but large-scale innovation at the policy level.
As election day approaches, we caught up with Karen Clay, the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College and a Senior Fellow at the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon. Clay, who has researched and written extensively on clean air, energy, and climate, discussed the environmental issues on which she believes policymakers – and voters – should focus their attention next.
Climate Issues that Matter Most
The paired problems of air pollution and climate change are among the most pressing issues related to environmental policy in the world today, Clay said. Nearly four in ten people in the U.S. live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to the American Lung Association. Health risks including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and pneumonia are linked to air pollution.
“Air pollution is more about particulate matter, where climate change is more about CO2 emissions,” Clay explained. “But many strategies to attack one of those problems will impact the other.”
Other major challenges are clean drinking water and water pollution. While Americans generally have high quality drinking water, Clay said, that’s not true everywhere. Even in the United States, people are concerned about lead contamination and PFAs in drinking water. For those who rely on well water to drink, contamination from fracking, mining, and agricultural run-off can be an issue as well.
Globally, about three in four people have access to safely managed drinking water that’s local, available when needed, and free from contamination, according to the World Health Organization. That statistic means one in four people do not.
“Around the world, many NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and other organizations are focused on clean drinking water,” Clay said.
Water pollution, likewise, is a threat in the United States and other parts of the world. “We saw at the Paris Olympics how water pollution is an issue,” Clay said, recalling delays in the triathlon events scheduled in the Seine River.Related Resources & Research by Professor Karen Clay
- The Impact of Lead Exposure on Fertility, Infant Mortality, and Infant Birth Outcomes
- Canary in a Coal Mine: Infant Mortality and Tradeoffs Associated with Mid-20th Century Air Pollution
- Energy and the Environment in Economic History
- The Historical Impact of Coal on Cities
- Does LEED certification save energy? Evidence from retrofitted federal buildings
Where Should Policymakers Focus Their Efforts?
Among myriad environmental concerns, elected officials must prioritize where to allocate time, effort, and resources. Balancing what’s realistic and what’s urgent in terms of climate change, Clay said that investments in reducing air pollution and decarbonizing the electricity grid should be among lawmakers’ highest priorities.
“I’m optimistic about things like battery storage for electricity,” Clay said. “Prices need to come down and we’re not there yet, but we’ve made a lot of progress.”
Natural gas and gasoline consumption are likely to decline and be replaced eventually with electricity, Clay said. That transition requires investments in upgrading the energy grid to allow for the more efficient movement of electricity.
The increased need for electricity is already evident. For example, data centers that support the world’s technology needs today consume ten to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.
As technology continues to grow, society will increasingly rely on electricity to power their homes and lifestyles.
We’re going to consume a lot more electricity, and so we need electricity transmission upgrades, we need investments in EV [electric vehicle] charging, and we need batteries.Professor Karen Clay
“We’re going to consume a lot more electricity, and so we need electricity transmission upgrades, we need investments in EV [electric vehicle] charging, and we need batteries,” Clay said.
Batteries allow renewable energy to be used more evenly throughout the day and the year. Effective and efficient battery storage would reduce the need for energy companies to rely on peaker plants when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining to produce wind and solar energy – or when the energy demand is particularly high, such as during intense heat waves.
Clean water is another key priority on which policymakers must continue to focus, according to Clay.
One challenge in tackling water pollution is the existing construction of sewer systems across much of the U.S. Many communities have combined sewer systems that collect both sanitary sewage and stormwater runoff into the same pipeline. Combined systems can overflow during heavy rains, causing raw sewage to flow into local waterways. That contamination has an effect on fish and wildlife as well as recreational activities like swimming and boating.
Mitigating the system to protect clean drinking water and avoid polluted waterways can be expensive, Clay explained, as it often requires building a second system so that sewage is sent to water treatment plants and stormwater runoff is carried to local water storage basins and waterways.
Rain gardens and urban green spaces are wonderful ways to reduce runoff and can complement these larger infrastructure solutions but are not effective at the scale needed. “Fixing the thing that’s wrong – having a separate sanitary sewer system – is the only real solution,” Clay explained.
Where Are We Now? (The Answer Might Be More Positive Than You Think.)
Some of the necessary investments to address these challenges are already happening. Two pieces of recent legislation are making a difference, Clay said, despite having names that don’t sound particularly focused on the environment.
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provide substantial funding to improve the energy grid and energy storage, to address the need for clean drinking water, and to deliver cleaner air. The Environmental Defense Fund called the measures “the most ambitious environmental laws in U.S. history.”
The Department of Energy (DOE)’s resulting 2022 Build a Better Grid initiative aims to deliver clean energy from where it’s produced to where it’s needed. Financed with more than $20 billion in federal funding, the DOE is upgrading and expanding the nation’s electric transmission grid to support resilience, reliability, and decarbonization.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocates more than $50 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve the nation’s drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure. The funding is earmarked to replace lead service lines, eliminate forever chemicals from drinking water, and upgrade sewer systems and wastewater treatment facilities to reduce water pollution. The Inflation Reduction Act includes $4 billion to address drought in the western United States and $20 billion to support voluntary conservation on ranches and farms across the nation.
In addition to federal funding, Clay said that certain policies on vehicle, power plant, and methane emissions have been effective in moving the needle on climate change.
“These policies go through an extensive review process, so they’re typically implementing the correct strategies,” Clay explained. “Although sometimes, once they’re in place, it becomes evident that they’re not stringent enough.”
Most of the real progress on decarbonization has been made in the electricity sector, Clay said, because they’ve been able to switch from coal to renewable energy. One upcoming challenge is how to get buy-in from homeowners and businesses to transition renewable energy.
“If we can get widespread uptake of things like heat pumps to heat homes instead of natural gas or oil furnaces, and if we can make progress on renewable energy in the transportation sector, that will have an impact,” Clay explained.
Clay’s current research focuses on the historical patterns of carbon emissions as well as energy transitions and home heating. She’s hopeful that understanding past trends with energy transitions can inform future strategy on energy policy.
Policymakers in the U.S. and around the world face a weighty responsibility as they continue to address both the causes and effects of climate change. Clay’s insights highlight the importance of continued research and evidence-based decision making to shape effective environmental policy. The path forward demands a collective effort from policymakers, researchers, and the public to foster a resilient and sustainable world for generations to come.
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