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.

How Project Affects Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions:

['Replaces/avoids GHGs (e.g., projects that replace sources of GHGs, such as the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, transport, or other energy uses)', 'Reduces GHGs (e.g., projects that reduce sources of GHGs, such as through efficiency or other changes in consumption)', 'Removes/stores GHGs (e.g., projects that capture, sequester, or otherwise enhance the "sinks" that accumulate and store GHGs)']

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

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 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.