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New Hampshire is dusting off its climate plan for the first time in 14 years. Georgia officials are drafting the state’s first-ever statewide carbon strategy. Minnesota is analyzing its environmental justice policies.
Conservative or progressive, urban or rural, pro-oil or pro-renewable — states across the country are taking millions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act to plan how to cut climate pollution.
At least, most of them are.
Four states — Florida, South Dakota, Iowa and Kentucky — have refused to apply for the climate money. So EPA is sending it to their biggest cities instead. Now, towns such as Rapid City, S.D., and Iowa City, Iowa, will try to compensate for the regulatory power, administrative capacity and budgetary heft that only states can muster.
That’s a feature of the Inflation Reduction Act rather than a flaw, experts said. The law’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants were designed so that if a state turned down the money, EPA could route those funds through that state’s biggest cities instead.
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