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California has long been a leader in climate change policy. Considering the gridlocked nature of the United States Congress and the increasing degradation of the environment through excess carbon emissions, the need for leadership today is especially critical. California's focus on combating climate change and promoting equitable development through a legislative agenda takes advantage of the significant investment opportunities provided by California's Cap-and-Trade auctions. As a result, California remains a trend-setter of environmental policies for other states and even other countries around the world. California's ability to provide replicable models for the rest of the world depends upon the development of successful policies and programs in the initial funding cycles of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). Informing this groundbreaking approach through "best practices" of equitable green development, technical expertise and authentic community engagement is a crucial step to ensure lasting and meaningful revitalization for environmental justice communities. Advantaging Communities focuses on environmental justice policy recommendations for GGRF investments in "disadvantaged communities" (DACs) that maintain a primary focus on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reductions, while maximizing environmental, public health and economic co-benefits, and engaging in authentic community partnerships. This report promotes targeted objectives for DACs, including quality of life improvements, greater resilience for vulnerable populations, and community-determined investments. Co-benefit maximization is sought through cross-cutting investment strategies, stronger baseline requirements and incentives for individual programs; high road labor practices; proactive anti-displacement measures and specific methods of community engagement. This document provides a community perspective for State agencies administering the GGRF and individual programs funded by Cap-andTrade auction revenues. It also serves as a guide for community advocates to navigate the complex landscape of the GGRF, and where it most needs to address issues of social, environmental and economic equity.

The warming of the Earth's temperature due to human activities, known as anthropogenic climate change, is a threat to the environment and human health. The transportation sector is a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change, being responsible for 27 percent of all domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2003. Within this sector, urban surface travel has been the major focus of researchers and policymakers. To broaden this focus to include interregional travel, the proposed research focuses on the aviation sector. Airport access modes are shown to be a large proportion of aviation system GHG emissions; due to their share and political and engineering realities they are targeted for aviation system GHG reduction. Discrete choice models are used to study the entry of clean airport access modes into the market, and it is found that the entry of a subsidized electric vehicle door‐to‐door van could reduce GHG emissions by 36 percent.

With the United States accounting for over one-fifth of global emissions of greenhouse gases, the U.S. government is facing pressures—from both domestic and international sources—to establish a comprehensive mandatory reduction program to address the risk of global climate change. If Congress decides to move forward with such a program,it could be creating an environmental regulatory regime of unprecedented scope and impact. Many policymakers are considering innovative market-based approaches to regulation, including a multibilliondollar economy-wide "cap-and-trade" program. The authors evaluate four models for a domestic program against a set of several criteria, including environmental effectiveness, cost, administrative feasibility, distributional equity, and political acceptability.

Local governments have steadily increased their initiative to address global climate change, and many present their proposed strategies through climate action plans (CAPs). This study conducts a literature review on current local approaches to greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction strategies by assessing CAPs in California and presents common strategies in the transportation sector along with useful tools. One identified limitation of many CAPs is the omission of quantitative economic cost and emissions data for decision-making on the basis of cost-effectiveness. Therefore, this study proposes a framework for comparing strategies based on their life cycle emissions mitigation potential and costs. The results data can be presented in a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) to allow for side-by-side comparison of considered strategies. Researchers partnered with Yolo and Unincorporated Los Angeles Counties to analyze 7 strategies in the transportation and energy sectors (five and two, respectively). A MACC was subsequently developed for each county. Applying the life cycle approach revealed strategies that had net cost savings over their life cycle, indicating there are opportunities for reducing emissions and costs. The MACC also revealed that some emissions reduction strategies in fact increased emissions on a life cycle basis. Applying the MACC framework to two case study jurisdictions illustrated both the feasibility and challenges of including quantitative analysis in their decision-making process. An additional barrier to using the MACC framework in the context of CAPs, is the mismatch between a life cycle and annual accounting basis for GHG emissions. Future work could explore more efficient data collection, alternative scopes of emissions for reporting, and environmental justice concerns.View the NCST Project Webpage

While the United States has not established federal regulations for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets, many US states have adopted their own standards and guidelines. In this study we examine state adoption of targets for GHG reductions during the ten-year period of 1998–2008, and identify factors that explain variation in target adoption. Potential influences are drawn from research from the public policy formulation and diffusion literature, and from studies specific to climate policy adoption. Potential influences on GHG reduction efforts among US states include socioeconomic attributes of residents, political and ideological orientations of citizens and state government, interest group activities, environmental pressures, and proximity to other states that have adopted GHG reduction targets. The findings of the multinomial logistic regression analysis indicate that states are more likely to adopt GHG reduction targets if they share a border with another state with a similar climate program and if their citizens are more ideologically liberal. Other factors including socioeconomic resources and interest group activities were not found to be associated with policy adoption. The findings yield insights into the conditions under which states are more likely to take action to reduce GHG's, and are relevant both to state policy makers and residents with an interest in climate planning, and for researchers attempting to estimate future greenhouse gas reduction scenarios.