Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization is a legislative project leveraging the expertise of a nationwide network of pro bono attorneys to draft and promote model laws. Our scope addresses every area of decarbonization, and every level of governance in the United States, from Congress to city hall, and from building codes to forestry. 

The project is grounded on a seminal academic report edited by our principals at Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Widener University's Commonwealth School of Law. Based on a technical analysis undertaken by the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, in 2019, Professors Michael Gerrard and John Dernbach published a book entitled Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States. That text, showcasing 60 expert authors focusing on 35 different areas of the economy, offered more than 1,000 specific legal recommendations that can be taken by legislators at the federal, state, county and local levels, and by private actors to reduce GHG emissions. These recommendations for legal action are the original foundation for the model laws prepared by the LPDD project.

Working from that foundation, our team has assembled a nationwide network of expert attorneys working pro bono to turn these legal recommendations into law. Among our publications, e.g., are draft laws on the subsidization of electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging stations, the decarbonization of the electric supply, the spread of community-owned renewable energy, the development of a state‚ renewable gas supply, various green financing institutions, green building codes, and the sustainable management of food waste. More indirectly, our team has identified procedural opportunities, such as imposing climate mandates at transportation planning commissions, enabling public contracting for renewable energy, and changing how utilities charge customers for their unsustainable behaviors, which will all have a substantial downstream emissions impact.

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The LPDD project provides high-quality legal work to US-based legislators who want to meet carbon reduction goals, encourage green businesses, drive green manufacturing, and future-proof their jurisdictions from the worst impacts of expected climate disasters. At this time, the project's core offering is a massive online library of draft laws and other legal resources affecting every area of decarbonization, at every level of government within the United States. In addition to over 75 model laws generated by our core team of project coordinators and pro bono legal network, we have catalogued over 2,000 other legal resources, including model laws drafted by other organizations, model contracts, enacted laws representing best practices, and curated white papers with legislative applicability, all organized by topic and applicable level of government. A small core team of dedicated coordinators promotes this work to legislators in statehouses, Congress, and at the municipal level. LPDD.org is unique, and to date has been a pro-bono effort. No other non-profit organization provides nationwide legislative drafting and regulatory support for deep decarbonization in all 50 states and at the federal level.

Legislative drafting and expertise represents a key bottleneck in decarbonization efforts, particularly at the state and local levels. Legislators lack dedicated, expert staff focused on the myriad technical subjects that affect GHG emissions, and as a result, climate policy can often be driven by special interests. We aim to address this bottleneck by: (i) educating lawmakers and advocates about areas of decarbonization policy that they might not even be aware of; (ii) providing draft or model legislative products that address these areas; (iii) helping lawmakers understand and adapt these models to the needs of their jurisdiction throughout the legislative process; and (iv) where appropriate, helping disadvantaged communities access resources and processes that result from these legislative efforts.

To date, our project has had several success stories, working from minimal resources. With financial support, we would be able to expand our technical, drafting, and outreach staff to reach lawmakers at scale, while leveraging the expertise of a nationwide network of pro bono attorneys who wish to make a contribution to addressing climate change.

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Since its inception, our project has integrated social equity (SE) and environmental justice concerns (EJ) into our approach. We do this substantively, by identifying policies likely to have an impact on underrepresented groups, and procedurally, by performing outreach to and soliciting feedback from representatives for marginalized communities, many of which serve on our Climate Justice Advisory Council, or instructing our drafters on how to identify sensitivities in their work product and address them.

Substantively, our project has identified several legislative areas that impact underrepresented groups. In summer 2023, we published a group of five model laws addressing permitting questions from an environmental justice perspective, focusing on cumulative impacts analysis, indirect emissions, and community representation. Elsewhere on our site, we promote best practice in several policy areas having an outsized impact on marginalized groups, like Equitable Access to Renewables and Electric Vehicles, Reducing Fossil Fuel Pollution in Frontline Communities, and Reducing Fixed Electricity Charges.

Procedurally, we have convened a Climate Justice Advisory Board, whose members or their representatives are engaged in periodic discussions to ensure that we cultivate and support EJ perspectives in our work. These members have also been invited to serve as peer reviewers on specific model laws of interest, and have sharpened our work product. Additionally, every drafter and peer reviewer assignment includes asking those experts to find policy options that address EJ issues inherent in their work.

Finally, we aspire to further leverage our technical expertise to ensure that the interests of marginalized groups are not sidelined in the energy transition. With funding, our project has developed plans to expand our offerings to services to marginalized communities and groups, helping them navigate the legislative and regulatory process, and take advantage of new resources that emerge from it. We hope to have the resources to make more of an impact in this domain shortly.

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