From Ambition to Action: A Policy Primer
How public leaders can boost climate progress, restore trust in government, and make lives better…starting today.
People across the nation are clamoring for solutions that make their lives better. And they’re frustrated by the responses they’re getting. Confronting massive inequality, Americans watch leaders finger-point on the price of eggs; yearning for security and stability, Americans watch politics lurch between radically different agendas. No wonder, then, that public trust in the U.S. government has been in the basement for decades. Americans are facing both everyday challenges and a deep, growing sense of discontent. But they’ve lost faith in government to resolve either.
That sense of stuckness doesn’t need to last. But change means focusing on outcomes, eliminating bottlenecks, and prioritizing delivery. It means embracing tools and talent that better connect big ideas to real-world results. It means resisting the temptation to chase buzzwords – from “abundance” to “dominance” to “affordability” – and focusing on the method over the message.
One place to start is with the shift to clean technologies, a place where there is powerful momentum. One in five cars globally are already electric, while heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces in the United States for four consecutive years. The vast bulk of new energy generation is renewable: globally, clean energy investment is now double the amount spent on all fossil fuels combined.
While the transition to clean technologies is unstoppably underway, it is also in its messy middle. Rival technologies and energy systems (and the economic and political systems on which they depend) are now colliding. Many counties and cities depend heavily on fossil fuel revenues; meanwhile, job quality and union density in the renewable energy industry leaves much to be desired. And core parts of our infrastructure – from the power grid to gas stations – are complex and expensive to convert to serve renewable and clean industries, even if those industries will ultimately boost affordability.
Put simply, remaining globally competitive on critical clean technologies requires far more than pointing out that individual electric cars and rooftop solar panels might produce consumer savings. But we also can’t afford to cede the space. Internationally, clean energy spending is booming. China’s clean energy industry by itself would be the world’s eighth largest economy if it were a country, and Europe’s investments have almost doubled over the last decade. Even if current estimates hold, fossil fuel demand will peak mid-century. If the U.S. continues to hold fast to existing policies until then, we’ll be 30 years behind the rest of the world’s energy economy, and it will be impossible to catch up. The bottom line? Good climate policy is good economic policy, and vice versa.
Good climate policy is also good politics. Climate-induced disasters are increasing by the day, and are impacting both safety and affordability. Americans generally see climate and energy policy as important as immigration. Most Americans, on both sides of the political aisle, support environmental regulations and clean energy development. Many say electricity costs are just as stressful as grocery bills, and they worry about higher insurance rates and local market problems. And they’re tired of entrenched corporate interests calling the shots.
What’s needed are creative, clever strategies that boost climate progress while delivering everyday benefits. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), as part of our new Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI), developed this primer to put a bunch of those strategies in one place. Our goal is for this primer to serve as a resource for public-sector leaders at the federal, state, and local levels who believe that government can do great things for our communities and our planet.
The strategies herein are open-sourced from a diverse network of contributors and collaborators, and are shovel-ready. Many of these strategies are already being deployed across the country. They’re designed to make energy, housing, and transportation better this year.
Indeed, we hope that readers see the actionability of these solutions not just as a benefit, but as an imperative. Americans aren’t looking for the magic message or the magic moment. They’re looking to government for leadership. Every day that government is paralyzed by gridlock, indecisiveness, or fear of failure is another day that it fails to realize the potential of the good that it can achieve, and that public trust in government further erodes. That’s a downwards spiral that we’ve got to stop.
Finally, we emphasize that this primer is a starting place. We’re at the precipice of a new era for climate and energy policy in the United States, and the strategies that will form the backbone of this new era – by adeptly fitting together government capacity, private innovation, and democratic decision-making – are just starting to come into view. As they do, CRI and its partners are committed to working hand-in-glove with bold doers and thinkers, sharpening our collective focus, and realizing the vision of a more responsive government, more optimistic society, and more resilient nation.
Getting to Work: Opportunities in Energy, Transportation, and Housing
Solving problems requires framing them accurately. As observed above, the truth is that clean technologies are increasingly dominant, and that the United States is rapidly falling behind. A response predicated on propping up the 20th-century fossil economy is doomed to fail. So too, we’ve learned, is a response that relies on the U.S. federal government to muscle the clean-technology transition forward single-handedly.
Fortunately, because so many clean technologies are now commercial, the opportunity for leadership on multiple levels, and multiple fronts, has never been more available – or more crucial. For example, simple economics will do much to propel wind, solar, and battery technologies if needed supporting infrastructure is in place and clean technologies are given the chance to compete on fair terms. Policymakers can worry less about expending political capital on expensive public subsidies for clean power, and focus instead on transpartisan policies enabling broad market access, streamlined interconnection processes, and swift power grid build-out. In the transportation sector, policies that ensure transparent vehicle pricing or increase market competition for legacy car companies may matter more than traditional regulatory standards.
This new reality also makes thoughtful economic, industrial, and social policy indispensable. The advent of new technology often comes with the promise of broad societal benefits, but making good on that promise is hardly a guarantee (witness the emergent effects of AI). It’s incumbent on government to ensure that the clean-technology transition reduces inequality and improves quality of life at scale, and that the transition doesn’t abandon workers in fossil-dependent regions and industries to the vagaries of the market. And it’s government, working across multiple scales, that can assess regional comparative advantages and figure out where the United States can still compete – as well as where it must innovate and diversify.
Government leaders, in short, have the unique ability to see all the way from the kitchen table to the commanding heights of the global economy, and to mediate between them.
We illustrate below the types of approaches that entrepreneurial policymakers can adopt to secure U.S. leadership on critical clean technologies, in ways that benefit all Americans. We focus on energy, transportation, and housing, which are collectively the largest sources of climate pollution and key elements of household and regional economies nationwide. The list below is not exhaustive, or comprehensive, but exemplary – a demonstration that there are real opportunities for change.
Unleashing Modern Energy
There’s massive untapped potential for clean energy in the United States. To realize it, we’ve got to make room for new energy to move.
This isn’t primarily a project of continued renewable energy subsidies: there’s good evidence that renewable energy can compete on a level playing field when it’s given the chance. Rather, the project is one of clearing away barriers to financing and building projects, fixing broken market incentives that favor existing players over new entrants and distort energy pricing, and accelerating construction of major grid infrastructure.
This project looks a lot like the successful national push towards rural electrification that the United States led a century ago: a serious effort that aligns private and public investments to rethink how and where we deliver energy. In executing this effort, we must grapple with the full set of barriers to building – not just cost and permitting, but also thorny local siting processes, misaligned incentives for electric utilities, and lengthy wait times to connect projects to the grid.
Today, of course, we’ve also got to reckon with the growing threats of cyberattacks and extreme weather to energy infrastructure, as well as the unprecedented, unpredictable energy demands of hyperscalers. Such challenges can only be managed by a mix of climate stabilization policies, economic risk-sharing strategies, and investments in infrastructure modernization. That’s not a cheap or easy proposition, but it is one with major lasting benefits.
At the consumer level, building more clean energy can help stabilize residential electricity prices (though many other factors also contribute to electricity prices and price volatility). More broadly, clean energy could unlock billions of dollars in potential efficiencies, such as by reducing costs associated with redundant natural gas transmission infrastructure. Expanding clean energy, especially distributed energy resources and virtual power plants, can also upgrade outdated grid infrastructure and secure it against cyber threats. But getting to these benefits requires government leadership.
Energy ingenuity could look like:
- Protecting consumer electric bills from data centers. New power-hungry data centers could raise bills for families and small businesses if we aren’t careful. States and public utility commissions (PUCs) can use ratemaking proceedings to protect households and small businesses from the costs of meeting the demand of large new customers like data centers. For instance, Kentucky’s PUC requires utility contracts with these types of large-load customers to include certain protections for other consumers: any extra costs generated by the large-load customer must be covered by that customer and not place undue load or cost on the utility that can be passed on to general consumers.
- Guarding against confusing and opaque bill increases. Utility companies drive the process of setting electricity rates, submitting justifications for rate hikes that are often tens of thousands of pages long. They frequently lobby regulators and other state policymakers to accept these proposals – and in almost all states, they can recover their lobbying and political expenses from customer bills. As a result, customers are paying more for energy, and it’s difficult for any regular person to understand why. States can help by playing a larger role in evaluating utility proposals and finding bill reductions. In Hawai’i, for instance, the PUC reformed its planning process to engage more stakeholders to produce analysis to inform grid investments and provide more transparency on key decisions. New York passed a law that requires PUCs to explain why rate changes are requested and how the proposed revenue would be spent, while California’s recent statute barring utilities from charging customers for their own lobbying helps even the playing field to ensure rates are set in a more balanced way.
- Making government more responsive to clean energy project needs. Many clean energy projects get stuck in clunky, outdated state and local processes, run by understaffed agencies that weren’t designed for speed and dynamism. Most clean energy projects don’t need federal permits, but almost all must secure state and local approvals before getting built. States can engage industry and communities to identify the biggest roadblocks and then make targeted changes to reduce permitting timelines and increase certainty without sacrificing quality of projects. For example, Pennsylvania recently updated its guidance for stormwater permitting for solar projects to provide developers with more clarity on how projects will be modeled to assess their impacts. A New York law sets standard timelines for permitting decisions and creates a centralized team to improve information sharing and help projects get through the approval process. At the local level, the Sol Smart program has helped hundreds of local governments streamline their permitting processes for solar projects.
- Getting more out of existing grid infrastructure. Modernizing transmission and distribution infrastructure is expensive and takes time; it has to happen but isn’t going to all get done at once. Longer-term investments must therefore be complemented with strategies to reduce operating costs and improve performance of the grid infrastructure we have in the near term. States and PUCs can push utilities, through planning and ratemaking processes, to prioritize integration of distributed energy resources, virtual power plants, battery storage, upgrades to existing transmission lines, and other grid-enhancing technologies. Colorado, Nevada, Washington, and South Carolina are examples of states that have adopted this approach.
- Using public finance and ownership to get projects built. Relying solely on private finance raises project costs (and therefore customer bills) and limits the types of projects that get built. Public finance and ownership can help fill the gaps and reduce costs. States and cities can move towards a variety of public utility models that champion clean energy. New York’s Build Public Renewables Act allows the state-owned power authority to build and own clean energy projects. Municipally owned utilities are not a new idea, but unlocking those public dollars for clean energy can help stabilize the investment landscape. But states don’t have to own the infrastructure to make a difference. They can also help finance projects. A 2025 California law, for instance, unlocked several new tools to use public finance to reduce the costs of new transmission projects.
- Empower regular people and small businesses to be part of the solutions. Community power – also known as distributed energy resources (DER) – can complement large-scale power plants to meet demand growth and lower bills. But households and businesses must overcome major hurdles to take advantage of small-scale solar, battery storage, and flexible appliances. In most places, utilities have not made it easy for customers to participate, as community power solutions do not align with their traditional business model. State leaders can change the status quo by creating mechanisms to compensate distributed resources for the value they bring to the grid, requiring utilities to procure a minimum amount of distributed clean energy, and making it easier to connect small-scale projects to the grid. For example, a 2024 Colorado law required the utility to create a mechanism to properly compensate customers for the grid benefits of distributed resources. And New Jersey Governor Sherill directed the PUC to take steps to make it easier to connect community power projects to the grid and allow new customers to register for community solar.
- Improve planning to attract more investment. Many regions with abundant clean energy resources simply do not have enough transmission capacity to deliver that power to population centers. As a result, developers are increasingly unable to move generation projects forward even when other barriers—like siting and permitting—are addressed. Outdated planning processes have led to inefficient decisions and dampened investment, which raises costs for customers and limits clean energy growth. States can address this issue by building out smart planning processes, working with PUCs, utilities, and other stakeholders to conduct integrated planning of new transmission lines and power plants to take advantage of low-cost clean energy resources. New Mexico, for example, created a new state entity to plan and finance transmission lines that can help move electricity from solar- and wind-rich parts of the state to population centers.
- Stop forcing customers to foot the whole bill for natural disasters and cyber attacks. Under the default utility ratemaking model, electricity bills include the costs of preparing for and recovering from disasters and cyber threats. In Western and Gulf Coast states, these costs have driven bills up fast. Disaster recovery is far more expensive than mitigation, so one way for states to take this on is to invest upfront in mitigation and resilience measures. States can increase scrutiny and analysis to ensure that utilities are focusing on the most economic mitigation and resilience measures, use public financing tools to reduce costs, and consider other approaches to paying for these investments outside of customer bills. A bill introduced in California last year, for instance, would shift wildfire recovery costs off of customers and onto fossil fuel companies.
Making Transportation Cleaner and Cheaper
People just want to get to where they’re going safely, efficiently, and affordably. Yet despite record levels of federal transportation spending, traffic, emissions, and pedestrian deaths keep rising. And as the Cato Institute observes, “U.S. policy contributes to an inefficient and costly transportation system that reduces workers’ time and incomes.”
We can do better. This starts by recognizing that in much of the United States, cars are both essential and increasingly unaffordable. There’s opportunity for a suite of policies that break market strangleholds while expanding consumer choice, moving us away from involuntary dependence on expensive cars and towards a future with transit that people actually want to ride – as well as affordable yet excellent, and often zero-emission, personal transportation. Core federal clean transportation programs have supported $4.6 billion in domestic investments and created at least 14,000 jobs in manufacturing, demonstrating the large-scale benefits of such programs and the economic case for continued federal support. Because the tools involved are nearly all within the authorities of state and local governments, and independent of ongoing federal regulatory disputes, they also can go into effect quickly.
On the vehicle side, this agenda includes governmental efforts to address legacy company market power. Incentives and protections for domestic manufacturing are sensible so long as they boost local economies, support American workers, and drive American innovation – but they’ve got to be coupled with policies ensuring price transparency and other oversight mechanisms, to ensure that benefits flow to consumers rather than pad company profits. Unlocking a more affordable, competitive, zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) market – with more options for buyers at lower prices – is also a key political foundation to the next round of vehicle regulatory mandates, by creating a larger constituency for further progress.
On the system side, states and cities can significantly build up regional budgets with savvy transportation investments. The data are clear that transit and walkability investments bring more valuable housing into cities and connect people with jobs, raising economic activity and raising property values. Investments in electric-vehicle charging similarly boost local business revenue and spurs economic vitality. Communities thrive when their members have transportation options (that all work well), instead of being steered towards legacy vehicle technology and wrestling with creaky 20th-century infrastructure.
On the vehicle side, transportation ingenuity could look like:
- Focusing on capital access to drive ZEV technology forward. Clean vehicles are now cheaper to run, in most cases, than fossil vehicles – a success of the initial wave of regulatory ZEV policy. But purchase prices remain high, making it difficult for many consumers and businesses to realize these long-term savings. The traditional way of solving this problem (incentive checks) runs hard into budget realities. The alternative is to focus ever more on lower-cost financial instruments, including loans, that can provide a return on investment and which can draw in private capital. Rather than writing grant checks, states can focus on de-risking ZEV finance, starting with state-backed loans for key consumer classes, and moving rapidly towards de-risking private loans (e.g., by guaranteeing the resale value of EVs – a far smaller investment than new-car subsidies). The goal should be to make a standard consumer or fleet loan for a ZEV as easy to secure as an internal combustion engine car loan is today. That possibility is on the horizon, and available for states that rapidly bring together financiers, consumer groups, and business interests to map out the financial products needed. Unlocking ZEV affordability is also a key foundation for the next round of regulatory progress, in states and at the federal level. States could implement a fee on retail deliveries—like Colorado has done—and put the revenue towards EV charging infrastructure or towards unlocking ZEV affordability. Like California is doing, states could consider an EV incentive program that requires participating OEMs to match state funds dollar-for-dollar.
- Stop legacy companies from jacking up prices. In addition to creating new capital flows, states need to make sure that investments translate into low prices. Especially in the heavy-duty truck and the bus sector, concentrated markets and non-public pricing have given manufacturers far too much power to keep prices high. One straightforward intervention is to use existing sales and pricing data held by state DMVs on every vehicle transaction to publish pricing information across vehicle markets, and then to task state market oversight bodies (including attorneys general) with addressing overconcentrated market power using antitrust and business law tools. State financing mechanisms can also be explicitly tied to lowering prices year over year, driving affordable vehicles into the market.
- Drive competition in the ZEV market. The ZEV market is a big one, and state support through economic development offices for new market entrants can drive down prices and boost options for consumers. States are well-positioned to support new companies – both in-state (as California did by creating Tesla a decade ago) and via working to onshore competitors, with adequate protections, from overseas. These companies can compete on price, onshore overseas companies that are making more affordable electric vehicles, or figure out ways to lower the costs of imports, to lower overall consumer costs and provide healthy competition to incumbent companies that are slow-walking incorporation of new vehicle technologies. Charging state business offices with clearing away red tape for new market entrants, while using convening powers to bring companies together with both public and private capital, is a powerful way forward.
- Normalizing ZEVs through visible MDV and HDV deployment. Expanding the number and diversity of zero-emission medium- and heavy- duty vehicles (MDVs and HDVs) on the road itself is a powerful adoption strategy. When the public regularly sees and interacts with ZEVs, they shift from being perceived as niche or experimental to practical, proven solutions. State leaders can drive this shift by prioritizing ZEV deployment in public, municipal, and contracted fleets like school buses, transit buses, garbage trucks, and last-mile delivery vehicles.
- Supporting secondary infrastructure. States have multiple tools to drive the charging infrastructure build-out. Continued federal funding, unlocked in part by state litigation, can be deployed along key corridors – but broader efforts by the states can accelerate infrastructure independent of federal support. Importantly, federal dollars remain available through NEVI, the Low- or No- Emission Vehicle (Lo-No Program), EPA’s Clean School Bus Program, and other initiatives, and states should move quickly to deploy these funds. Beyond direct funding, states can use their convening authority to coordinate construction and investment (or apply for investments) along key corridors, amending building codes to ensure chargers can be quickly added (especially to apartment buildings), easing permitting approval processes, and providing maps to transportation agencies and the public on locations of existing high-power electricity capacity for use in siting EV charging stations. States also have significant opportunities to design vehicle-to-grid electricity rate programs that leverage the benefits of charging to lower overall electricity rates and to store energy for when it is needed, providing major savings to both drivers and to the general public.
On the system side, transportation ingenuity could look like:
- Using transportation infrastructure to support goals in other sectors. With 48,000 miles of interstate highways and 140,000 miles of freight railroads, the United States has a vast network of transportation rights-of-way (ROWs) that can be leveraged for new infrastructure – such as high-speed EV charging infrastructure and long-distance electrical transmission – without the need for costly land acquisition or major structural change. States including New York and Wisconsin have already constructed several hundred miles of co-located transmission lines along highway/interstate corridors. Not far behind, states like Minnesota have conducted feasibility studies and are currently in the process of removing barriers to transmission construction in its publicly owned ROWs.
- Employing effective land use strategies. States have significant authority to dedicate both state and federal funds towards transportation, which can include bringing additional housing and transit to suburban areas. There is also a major opportunity to avoid ineffective investments in major new highway capacity, which almost always increases traffic congestion and is rarely the highest and best use of urban land.
- Using transportation funds to expand public revenue and public choice. Providing transportation choices – from transit to biking to safe sidewalks for kids – raises property values and quality of life. States can build these design principles into their transportation funding and planning processes. States can also go further by shifting funding to narrow or remove excess roadway capacity, or by swapping costly underused infrastructure for new housing and improved urban fabric (and hence greater public tax revenue that can then again be reinvested in communities). These financing models were once used to support excess highway construction, but now can be used to invest in transportation solutions that also address housing needs and budget crunches. Leaders at all levels can also expand eligibility for micromobility (e.g., walking, biking, and scooters) in federal transit grant programs.
- Improving planning processes. Transportation accounts for a large chunk of most state budgets. Conducting a close review of the existing project pipeline for state-funded transportation, in order to identify and prioritize projects that genuinely expand mobility choices and connect to broader regional and urban development goals, is therefore in state fiscal interests – and can have the happy consequence of also improving air quality and quality of life. Indeed, the California Air Resources Board has determined that the climate impacts of reducing car dependency are on the same scale as its world-leading vehicle electrification rules; meanwhile Minnesota and Colorado have both initiated audits to prioritize funding to reduce car dependency, with good early results. Because these alternate projects are generally much less expensive than major road construction projects, and more likely to raise overall property values, they are an exceptionally good approach for public officials looking to make climate progress.
Building Affordable, Abundant Housing
Housing shouldn’t be a luxury: it’s a prerequisite for a stable, healthy life. Yet Americans – facing prohibitively high (and increasing) rental costs as well as unrealistic down payments and pathways to ownership – are struggling to meet this basic need. And with extreme weather on the rise, renters and owners alike are facing concerns about physical safety and skyrocketing insurance as well as price hurdles. The emissions that the housing sector produces only worsen these problems.
Delivering more affordable, resilient, and climate-friendly housing means making it easier to build housing of all shapes and sizes; tailoring solutions to rural communities, urban communities, and different geographies generally; and striking a better balance between development for housing and development for other purposes. These strategies need to be paired with deep investments in government capacity to facilitate permitting and approval of new housing construction, as well as to facilitate more complex projects – like retrofits, infill development, and office-to-residential conversion – at scale. Also critical is reimagining community and stakeholder engagement on housing questions, aiming to maintain trust, democratic process, and local buy-in without overvaluing the perspectives of existing homeowners, developers, or any other particular constituency. at the expense of the rest of the community.
Housing ingenuity could look like:
- Reforming zoning to support more flexible and mixed-use buildings. Zoning makes sense when it stops a refinery from being built next to a playground. Zoning is a problem when it overprioritizes one kind of development, artificially limiting construction of diverse housing types. Policymakers can prioritize zoning and land use reforms to increase housing supply for a range of budgets and families. Policymakers have been working on creative zoning fixes for years: Houston led the way in reducing minimum lot sizes to encourage denser housing, while Minneapolis got rid of parking requirements, legalized accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to get more out of existing lots, and ended single-family zoning. These changes have helped stabilize rent prices, diversified housing mixes, and given more people an entry point into the housing market.
- Investing in infill housing. Infill developments can often be expensive, restricted by zoning, or face public opposition. Public leaders can get creative with solutions, such as by pre-identifying and providing data on infill development opportunities to help reduce costs for developers, or by reforming zoning laws to allow more flexibility in what type of development can fill in. Leaders can also facilitate retrofits and upgrades of existing buildings to convert those buildings to residential housing, which is effectively another type of infill strategy.
- Limiting incumbent interests. Large institutional investors like private equity firms can drive up rental costs and reduce housing supply when they purchase single-family homes as investment opportunities. State and federal policymakers can make these homes less appealing investments by introducing tax penalties, removing tax breaks, and encouraging firms to offload the homes they currently own over time, as proposed in recent legislation. This is a bipartisan issue: President Trump signed an executive order aiming to prevent firms from buying single-family homes outright; this directive was followed by a similar commitment by Governor Newsom.
- Streamlining permitting. Part of the housing supply issue is related to long permitting processes and high upfront development costs. The solutions are straightforward: invest in human talent and AI tools (in tandem with consistent AI governance and technical support) to clear permitting backlogs; provide limited, clear, and objective standards for rejecting permits; and create pre-approved plans to fast-track permitting of resilient, efficient homes. These actions will get homes on the market faster and cheaper, since every day a lot sits waiting for a permit increases development costs. Form-based zoning codes, for example, are designed around what the physical building form is rather than on what the building will be used for. These codes streamline review processes, but also help enable neighborhoods with good character and safe streets.
- Building safer and more resilient houses. Every year, one in ten homes in the United States are directly impacted by fires, floods, storms, and other types of extreme weather. As extreme weather increases, investments in home resilience are critical to keep people safe and long-term costs low. Policymakers can support safer and more intentional development in high-risk areas, with second-order benefits for energy access, reliability, and cost. Holistic approaches, like combined risk-reduction and pooled insurance “Housing Resilience Agencies” are the types of overhauls needed, but policymakers can also use tools like insurance premium reductions to lower the costs of roof improvements, like in Alabama. Other solutions target the community level, like using shared infrastructure and nature-based solutions to reduce risk for a group of homes.
- Simplifying building codes to allow for more flexibility and innovation. Building codes are responsible for ensuring consumer safety, but are often so complex and restrictive that they can drive up build times and increase construction costs. Policymakers can act to simplify codes without compromising safety by incorporating new research. Codes requiring buildings over three stories to have two staircases in the name of fire safety, for example, are more expensive and less space-efficient than single-stair buildings. Single-stair buildings that exist in much of the rest of the world are not necessarily less safe, and have cost benefits. States are starting to implement changes: Texas, Colorado, Montana, and New Hampshire all legalized single-stair buildings in some form in 2025.
- Stabilizing insurance markets. As extreme weather risks increase, home insurance providers are bumping up premiums and dropping policies for high-risk areas, leaving homeowners with few or no options for coverage. State policymakers can help keep consumers safe, limit additional costs, and improve transparency within the market. Colorado passed a law requiring providers to report on their risk assessment methods when using catastrophe risk models and to account for homeowner mitigation when setting rates. Other states, including Arkansas and Florida, expanded access to mitigation funds for homeowners.
- Supporting technologies that cut home energy costs. Housing policy offers an indirect yet effective way to bring down rising energy bills. For instance, “bring your own device” programs, such as those that have been deployed in Arizona and Vermont, enables homeowners to participate in virtual power plants using solar, batteries, and potentially energy-storing equipment like water heaters. States like Vermont have established on-bill financing programs for weatherization and efficiency upgrades, helping all Americans access the comfort benefits and long-term energy savings of these upgrades.
- Enabling more choices for homeowners. As families change, so do their housing needs. But there are often financial barriers to moving. Policymakers can design policies that allow for flexibility in different stages of life, like tax reforms to lower the barriers for moving into smaller homes. States can also offer tax credits for developers to build more accessible housing that’s more attractive to older homeowners, or implement policies (as in California) that allow older homeowners to maintain their property tax rate if they move into a similarly priced home. Giving people the capacity to live in places and housing types that fit their needs can reduce emissions from extended commutes and overbuilt homes.
- Lowering construction costs to increase supply. High development costs make it difficult to meet housing supply needs quickly. Modular housing, made up of standardized and interchangeable parts and assembled on site, can significantly reduce build times and construction costs – and those savings can ensure housing prices that work for more Americans. Modular homes can often be lower-emission and more energy efficient than traditional homes. Policymakers can direct funds specifically towards modular housing, or reform building codes to make it easier for modular housing to qualify (unlike manufactured housing, modular housing has to adhere to state and local building codes).
Making Solutions Stick: The Cross-Cutting Benefits of Government Capacity, Pro-Democracy Design, and Innovative Financing
Each of the policy solutions above offers a way to boost climate progress while delivering everyday benefits across energy, transportation, and/or housing. But how do we make those solutions stick? With trust in government at historic lows, public-sector leaders must quickly follow ambition with action, investing in both ideas and the building blocks that turn ideas into reality. Below, we outline how public leaders can use three of these core building blocks – government capacity, financing, and pro-democracy design – to get on the scoreboard early…and stay there for the long term.
Government Capacity
Government capacity refers to the ability of government to get things done, whether through efficient processes, effective talent, or fit-for-purpose tools. Americans are frustrated by the slow pace of government, but they don’t want the functions that keep them safe and supported dismantled: they want them improved. Accomplishing this requires more than new programs or new funding streams or new inventions. It requires leaders to seriously (and systematically – not via a “wrecking ball” approach) consider which government functions are working, which need to be overhauled, and which should be retired.
Rebuilding government capacity is inseparable from strengthening democracy itself. Both of these goals are wholly intertwined with climate progress. When government acts competently, transparently, and in partnership across levels, it restores public faith that collective action is possible and worthwhile. When it can’t, even well-designed policies stall under the weight of fragmented authority, procedural burden, risk aversion, and institutional inertia. Treating government capacity as a core investment is therefore much more than administrative housekeeping. It’s a prerequisite for durable climate progress.
To boost government capacity, public leaders can:
- Align on policy outcomes, owners, and indicators. Governments should establish collective, ambitious, and executable goals, not just agency outputs; clear and cross-cutting responsibility, not siloed authority, and collective signals that show when things are getting off track or are moving to success. These shouldn’t be one-off reporting exercises, but valued north stars with relentless attention. And to enable shared outcomes, owners, and indicators, public sector leaders need to consider the full “map” of the climate-oriented transition they are aiming for: how the various puzzle pieces of planning, utilities, transit, infrastructure and more will sequence logically and in resourcing; how tactical actions that are possible now intersect with ambitious long-term planning; how to mitigate barriers in advance of key inflection points; and how to storytell what may be a long transition to residents.
- Shore up linchpin talent. Government delivery often fails at the human bottleneck. No program, however brilliant, will work if it’s not adequately staffed with the people needed to run it. Emphasis on talent growth, talent sharing, and talent strategy can be game-changing for governments if undertaken at the front end, such as:
- Empowering “machinery” expertise. Functional roles like procurement officers, finance specialists, engineers, and lawyers, are the engines of the government capacity needed to drive climate action. Instead of treating people in these roles as workhorses, jurisdictions can treat them as strategic enablers, giving them time, authority, and political cover to redesign how work gets done.
- Sourcing technical talent creatively. Leaders can think outside the box when it comes to talent for high-impact roles and roles that involve specialized, high-demand technical expertise. For instance, leaders can establish shared services and shared delivery teams that enable individuals to contribute across internal departments, or regional implementation offices that support multiple jurisdictions at once. Leaders can also explore pathways to bring in fellows and detailees from external organizations for short-term tours of service.
- Upskilling current workforces. With significant evolutions in technology, funding, and collaboration coming every year, public sector entities can’t pursue new hires every time something new emerges. Investing space, patience, and resources into upskilling current workers and setting a culture where collaborative learning is the norm will pay off far more than relying on expensive consultants.
- Investing in delivery and relational capacity. Understanding local context is a technical skill like any other, and when regional partners trust each other, decisions accelerate. Federal leaders can build regional roles and teams, and invest in intergovernmental capacity for working with states and localities on implementation, not just convening.
- Establish “safe-to-experiment” parameters and expectations. Creating safe-to-experiment space is less about changing statutes and more about leadership setting expectations and guardrails, as well as working collaboratively to shift from risk minimization to risk management. Leaders can consider:
- Testing regulatory sandboxes. A regulatory sandbox is a mechanism that provides a structured environment for testing new technologies and business approaches under modified rules to increase the speed of adoption. The goal of sandboxes is to test, learn, and collect data, not strive for immediate perfection. Once an approach is proven promising, pilots can be set up to be scaled rapidly. In 2023, for instance, the Connecticut Public Utilities Commission established a regulatory sandbox called the Innovative Energy Solutions (IES) Program to pilot innovative technologies to expand its electric grid.
- Collaborating on pathways to scaling. Before beginning an experiment, those involved should collaborate to create milestones and criteria for discontinuing unsuccessful experiments, as well as a clear transition and ownership path for working experiments to get to the next level.
- Using proactive messaging. Leaders should be clear with public sector workforce, media, advocacy, and oversight communities when the objective of a policy experiment is to learn. Such messaging should also emphasize that while successes are valuable outcomes, so too are well-understood setbacks.
- Use collective-action tools. Ambitious policy decisions are often inaccessible for cities, states, and even federal agencies acting alone because of limited capacity, procurement constraints, and fear of litigation from incumbent interests. Collective-action tools let local and state governments pool risk and resources, smoothing out the cost and bumpiness of transitions while helping governments deliver more together, including:
- Coordinated and reinforcing public funding instruments: Government institutions have a range of market shaping tools available to them to facilitate climate innovations, whether demand side (procurement, advanced market commitments) or supply side (grantmaking, loan guarantees). In a resource-limited environment, public sector organizations can work together to share insights and risk, to balance across the stages of innovation they want to drive to (higher risky experiments? near term performance criteria? sustainable supply?), and align the timeline and ROI of their policy levers in order to shape access to the capabilities they need. That might include:
- Pooled procurement. Joint Powers Authorities are agreements or entities created between multiple public-sector organizations to collectively deliver services or exercise authorities. JPAs or lead entity models can aggregate buying power for emerging tech and new clean energy capabilities. JPAs in California have been used to aggregate procurement for clean energy, insurance, and shared services. Standardizing technical specifications for transit procurements across transit districts can similarly help drive down transit costs.
- Build a shared information base: Rebuild the environmental data backbone at the state/local level, including working to preserve and sustain current environmental resources; over time, expand interoperable data collection and make it genuinely usable to support consistent, evidence based state and local action.
- Pooled legal funds. Public sector entities can establish or engage with agile pooled legal funds addressing legal and regulatory barriers that block climate innovations and getting access to specialized regulatory and litigation expertise that would be cost-prohibitive to maintain in-house.
- Reciprocity. States and municipalities can invest in shared permitting, licensing or certification schemes in areas enabling climate action. If a green tech design or contractor is authorized in one jurisdiction, reciprocity would ensure that their eligibility extends to others, helping enable a common market and reducing the burden needed to obtain duplicative certifications.
- Coordination across technical assistance resources. Many TA resources for state and local implementers exist for the multiple phases of clean energy projects. But they tend to be siloed, and few usable maps exist for resource and time-strapped state and local entities to take advantage of.
- Coordinated and reinforcing public funding instruments: Government institutions have a range of market shaping tools available to them to facilitate climate innovations, whether demand side (procurement, advanced market commitments) or supply side (grantmaking, loan guarantees). In a resource-limited environment, public sector organizations can work together to share insights and risk, to balance across the stages of innovation they want to drive to (higher risky experiments? near term performance criteria? sustainable supply?), and align the timeline and ROI of their policy levers in order to shape access to the capabilities they need. That might include:
- Design processes and feedback loops for outcomes, not box-checking. There’s significant value in government consistency and legibility in decision-making, but maximal interpretation of rules for rules sake serves no one. Government agencies should make a regular practice of assessing frustrating process flows for accumulated “kludge,” duplication, and poor user experience (grantmaking and permitting are obvious targets). At the same time, agencies should upgrade how performance measures serve as feedback loops throughout complex processes: are metrics telling you what you need to know about performance when you need it to take action, or months after the fact?
- Design for (sustainable) decisions. Government processes are often over-engineered, lacking clear guidelines for who is ultimately in charge of making a decision. To speed up permitting, deployment, rulemaking, and community engagement, governments should:
- Clarify authority. Speed requires empowering specific decision-makers with cover to say yes, authority to change course, and will to stop a failing experiment.
- Enable collaboration, not duplication. A well designed cross-functional team breaks down silos and acts with fluidity, agility, and overcommunicating focus–not doubling up meetings or reporting, not relying on standalone dashboards, and overcommunicating. Teams can be oriented around common outcome goals rather than teams grouped by administrative departments.
- Build transition resilience. Invest in transition planning across administrations for key initiatives – especially when there are shifts in political ideology.
- Deliver excellent frontline services. Particularly at the state and local level, the front lines of climate action are in day-to-day public services that can get slowed by burdensome processes. Agencies can apply journey-mapping techniques, already used in benefits delivery and permitting reform, to climate-facing services like interconnection approvals or home retrofit permits. Such techniques identify slow-downs and places where residents drop out from frustration.
- Engage the private sector as a partner and source of capacity. Governments can harness external capacity (without giving up oversight) by shifting how responsibility is allocated while remaining clear on outcomes, enforcement, and accountability. Examples of this sort of approach might include adopting self-certification options when strong third-party verification is feasible; using market discipline to reinforce public outcomes, engaging insurers, reinsurers, and lenders to incent safer construction, resilient infrastructure, and better operational practices; or leveraging credible existing private standards instead of reinventing compliance regimes.
Finance
Capital is a powerful tool for policymakers and others working in the public interest to shape the forward course of the economy in a fair and effective way. Very often, the capital needed to achieve major societal goals comes from a blend of sources; this is certainly true with respect to climate action and facilitating the transition to clean technologies.
States, cities, banks, community-driven financial institutions (CDFIs), impact investors, and philanthropies have long worked in partnership with the federal government on clean-technology projects – and are stepping up in a new way now that federal support for such projects has been scaled back. These entities are developing bond-backed financing, joint procurement schemes, and revolving loan funds – not just to fill gaps, but to reimagine what the clean technology economy can look like.
In the near term, opportunities for subnational investments are ripe because the now partially paused boom in potential firms and projects generated by recent U.S. industrial policy has generated a rich set of already underwritten, due-diligenced projects for re-investment. In the longer term, the success of redesigned regulatory approaches will almost certainly depend on creating profitable firms that can carry forward the clean-technology transition. Public sector leaders can assume an entrepreneurial role in ensuring these new entities, to the degree they benefit from public support, advance the public interest: connecting economic growth to shared prosperity.
To be sure, subnational actors generally cannot fund at the scale of the federal government. But they can have a truly catalytic impact on financing availability and capital flows nevertheless.
To boost finance, public leaders can:
- Combine financing and procurement policy. As electrification reaches individual communities and smaller businesses, many face capital-access problems. Subnational actors should consider packaging similar businesses together to provide financing for multiple projects at once. Leaders can also consider complementary public procurement policies to pull forward market demand for projects and products. For instance, grant programs can preference applications that utilize joint procurement, thereby helping public grant dollars go further. This strategy was previously employed in the Federal Transit Agency’s Low or No Emission Grant Program for clean buses.
- Blend public and private capacities. Dollars go further and the funding landscape is easier to navigate when public and private funders work together. Public and private entities can join forces around flexible finance mechanisms (e.g., bond-backed financing, rapid permitting pilot zones, and revolving loan funds) needed to push projects “over the finish line”, particularly in high-demand power markets. One compelling example is the Connecticut Green Bank, which has successfully blended public and private capital to deploy over $2 billion in clean energy investments since its founding. States can similarly support programs like the Municipal Infrastructure Fund (MIF), facilitated by ICLEI USA and the Coalition for Green Capital (CGC), to provide seed grants to local communities for market building and development of clean energy project pipelines. Groups like CGC also develop loan products specifically targeted at municipal energy infrastructure projects that can help cities access larger investment tools.
- Provide project certainty. Uncertainty around federal policy and the likelihood of project completion is constraining available finance as well as increasing costs for both project developers and involved counterparties (e.g., those helping finance a project by purchasing its tax credits). Though the public sector has a key role to play in reducing uncertainty, an emerging strategy for living with uncertainty is the formation of “coalitions of the credible”: i.e., “governments, industrial firms, and financiers who are capable of showing sustained, coordinated commitment to building clean energy systems despite global [and national] discord.” State and local leaders can help kick-start these coalitions.
- Help smaller developers and investors access needed components. Despite optimistic growth prospects, shrinking profit margins and tighter financing conditions in the near term are making it harder for smaller and less liquid developers and community financial institutions to remain solvent. Industry concentration could lead to less innovation and higher prices in the long term. State energy financing institutions can create warehouses to buy key clean-technology components in bulk and then resell these components to smaller developers and investors. As the Center for Public Enterprise observes, “these cooperative purchasing structures are already how some states in the Northeast procure heating oil and fuels, and how Climate United intended to mobilize investment into electric trucks for independent drivers working at the Port of Long Beach.”
- Leverage the power of information. Deep, shared, information architectures and clarity on policy goals are key for institutional investors and patient capital. Shared information on costs, barriers, and rates of return would substantially help facilitate the clean technology transition. Simple RFIs targeted at businesses and developers can function as dual-purpose information-gathering and outreach tools for these investors. By asking basic questions through these RFIs (which can be as short as a page!), investors can build the knowledge base for shaping their clean technology and energy plans while simultaneously drawing more potential participants into their investment networks.
- Tapping into new markets. As demand for electricity increases, new markets and business models are opening in the clean economy. General Motors and Redwood Materials, for instance, joined forces to use surplus and used EV batteries to help power data centers and other hyperscalers. There is a surprising but potent opportunity to market and finance clean energy and grid upgrades as a national security imperative, in response to the growing threat of foreign cyberattacks that are exploiting “seams” in fragile legacy energy systems. And as climate-linked disasters grow, so has the market for adaptation and resilience solutions, including many that reduce emissions as a co-benefit. Public leaders can work with the private sector to identify and support these types of innovative strategies, including by working with existing economic development agencies, chambers of commerce, accelerators, and other components in the innovation ecosystem.
- Keep eyes on the long-term prize. Investing with a short-term mindset can hobble state economic strategy before it gets started; moreover, many clean technology projects may have higher upfront costs balanced by long-term savings. States can set themselves up for long-term gains by:
- Helping firms stand on their own. States should design incentive programs with an eye for long-term business growth. States can focus, for instance, on incentives that intentionally partner well with other financing tools, thereby attracting new industries and market players to make durable investments. State strategies outlining multi-year economic plans (such as the one that New Mexico has published) can help businesses develop workable investment and growth strategies.
- Taking active equity stakes. Debt equity, provided through revolving loan funds, can play a large role in accelerating deployment of clean technologies by buying down entry costs and paying back the public investor over time. Moreover, the superior bond ratings of state institutions substantially reduce borrowing costs; sharing these benefits is an important role for public finance. State financial institutions can explore taking equity stakes in some projects they fund that provide substantial public benefits (e.g., mega-charging stations, large-scale battery storage, etc.) and securing an attractive long-term rate of return over time in exchange for buying down upfront risk.
- Adopting portfolio approaches. Diversified subnational institutions can use cash flows from higher-return portions of their portfolios to de-risk lower-return or higher-risk projects that are ultimately in the public interest. States with operating carbon market programs can consider expanding their funding abilities by bonding against some portion of carbon market revenues, converting immediate returns to long-term collateral for the green economy.
Public Participation
Public participation in climate action is often treated as a procedural requirement to be satisfied late in the process, rather than as a core function of governing well. The result is familiar: performative town halls, notice-and-comment processes that invite frustration rather than insight, and transparency tools that are easily weaponized by organized interests. This dynamic erodes trust, slows projects, and fuels the perception that government is both unresponsive and incapable. Yet participation, when designed well and tailored to the moment, is not an obstacle to effective governance: it is how government discovers what will work, where friction will arise, and how to build solutions that communities will defend rather than resist. Treating participation as a functional component of state capacity means seeing it as an input to smarter design, faster implementation, and more durable outcomes.
Upgrading how government listens and engages is vital to upgrading how government delivers. When residents see clearly how their input shapes decisions, participation builds legitimacy and reduces the incentives for obstruction and litigation later in the process. When agencies invest in the infrastructure, tools, roles, and expectations that make participation meaningful, they create a feedback loop that improves policy design and strengthens democratic trust at the same time. And when climate leaders meet the public where they are in terms of how they experience and make consumer choices in the the climate transition, we can strengthen the connective tissue between government action and public trust.The recommendations below are aimed at helping public leaders move beyond compliance-driven engagement toward participation models that are relational, deliberative, and integrated into the machinery of experience and delivery. This approach ensures that climate solutions are not only technically sound, but socially resilient and democratically grounded. These take time, but we encourage recognition that they enable enormous time, risk and failure saved.
To boost public participation, public leaders can:
- Invest in government participation capacity: Engagement fails when it is treated as a public-affairs sideline. To be effective, it must be integrated into the agency’s internal machinery and the community’s external ability to show up. There is no one size fits all toolkit for engagement, and the scope of the topic defines the method, energy, and limits.
- Know the stakeholders: Leaders should have the expectation that program leads know the full set of impacted (near term and long term) stakeholders in their policy area and have early and iterative engagement with them. Likewise, leaders should know, cultivate, and rely on trusted messengers in key communities.
- Have a plan for engagement: Define the purpose, scope, and timeline of participation at the outset of an intervention or change, including how it does and does not shape decisions. When residents see a clear path for their influence and co-design (and staff see it as a core function) it’s easier to become vested stakeholders in a project’s success.
- Participation training and roles for staff: Community engagement, facilitation, listening, and conflict transformation are technical skills that agencies can invest in across the span of a project team, in addition to relational roles.
- Recognize the full range of impacts: Every policy has near and long term winners and losers, and these voices may be unintentionally elevated or muted in design. Leaders should incent their staff to recognize and validate that full set of impacts, bring in communities early to understand parameters and co-design solutions, be clear about intentions to weigh or mitigate, and be direct about decision ownership.
- Leadership cover: Leadership needs to set the expectation that surfacing weak signals of concern early is a success, not a failure. Providing political cover for staff to iterate based on early feedback prevents catastrophic delays later in the cycle, as does enabling staff to move to the next phase with informed decisions.
- Feedback loop accountability: Proactively message to the public how community input changes project design or outcomes. People stop engaging when they feel unheard and demonstrating that participation matters build investment in long term success (even if not wholly in line with their feedback).
- Upgrade listening tools: Traditional feedback mechanism (like notice-and-comment) are often overengineered for compliance and late stage. Government agencies should prioritize investing in their listening plumbing.
- Experiment with deliberative models: Move beyond one-way listening sessions toward deliberative democracy models, which have some great pilots in California. These allow residents to grapple with real-world trade-offs (e.g., local land use vs. regional grid stability) alongside experts, leading to more durable mandates that are less vulnerable to litigation.
- Listening at scale tools: Investigate and invest in tools and methods that make taking the pulse of a broad or targeted community possible. Find opportunities where the people are (Reddit? Community Centers? ) rather than expecting them to navigate a govt.exe portal. Utilize tools that lower barriers to entry and analysis, like SMS-based surveys, AI-assisted triage for public comments, and digital town halls.
- User experience toolkits: Agencies should invest in user experience tools to understand how a particular proposal, innovation, or ecosystem works and feels from an immersive resident standpoint. Small tweaks may be barriers that prevent adoption.
- Invest in how people experience and adopt the solutions government is trying to deploy. The clean-energy transition is not implemented solely through permits and public meetings: It is implemented through millions of household decisions about heating systems, vehicles, appliances, and power sources. Too much of the climate movement’s engagement strategy still treats Americans primarily as political constituents to persuade. People are far more likely to embrace clean-energy solutions when they see how those choices improve their daily lives. To strengthen consumer-centered climate engagement, public leaders can:
- Broaden from policy messaging to benefit messaging: Frame clean-energy programs around concrete improvements people care about (like comfort, savings, reliability, and service quality) rather than abstract climate goals or technical policy descriptions.
- Invest in understanding residents as consumers: Use market research, behavioral insights, and segmentation to understand what different communities value, what barriers they face, and what motivates action.
- Elevate trusted messengers: Partner with the people residents already rely on for advice about their homes and services (like neighbors, contractors, utilities, tradespeople, and community organizations) rather than relying solely on government spokespeople.
- Meet people where decisions happen: Integrate or encourage outreach into the places and moments where people make choices: point-of-sale materials, contractor visits, utility communications, home-improvement stores, and neighborhood groups.
- Use social modeling and peer effects: Highlight visible examples of adoption within communities and create opportunities for residents to learn from one another through open houses, neighborhood pilots, and group demonstrations.
- Remove friction through group and guided programs: Support group purchasing models, concierge-style assistance, and personalized coaching that simplify complex decisions and reduce perceived risk.
- Align infrastructure investments with visible benefits: Use the reality of extreme weather and infrastructure upgrades as opportunities to demonstrate how clean-energy improvements strengthen local resilience and service reliability.
- Build the infrastructure for community trust. Effective engagement is not a one-off transaction, it is a relational investment. Because governments often lack the time and personnel for deep localized work, they must build the connective tissue between agencies and the ground, and several models exist to work from:
- Community navigator hubs: To make existing capacity go further, governments can work with civil society and community organizations to leverage non-governmental talent through initiatives like community navigator programs, that use local and state-level expertise to guide policy design and implementation and combine it with government technical assistance – in the process creating public buy-in and trust of a policy. It’s worth it to set up these programs in advance, as it can reduce opposition later on and help design future policies that are better suited for the communities they’re for.
- Community capacity support for participation: Recognize that participation has a cost. While some agencies are able to support compensation models for community participants for their time, there are other ways to reduce the burden of participation, whether scheduling flexibly, providing childcare or transport, offering translation, or simply using plain language rather than technical jargon.
- Implementer partnerships: Work on lowering barriers between the public and program implementers in the private sector, bringing them together early to align on community benefits agreements early.
About The Primer
Ambition to Action was authored by Angela Barranco, Zoë Brouns, Megan Husted, Kristi Kimball, Arjun Krishnaswami, Hannah Safford, Loren Schulman, Craig Segall, and Addy Smith.
Many individuals contributed ideas and input to this primer. The authors are grateful to the following individuals and organizations for their time, expertise, and constructive feedback: Patrick Bigger, Laurel Blatchford, Heather Clark, Ted Fertik, Danielle Gagne, Kate Gordon, Betony Jones, Nuin-Tara Key, Alex McDonough, Sara Meyers, Shara Mohtadi, Saharnaz Mirzazad, Beth Osborne, Alexis Pelosi, Sam Ricketts, Bridget Sanderson, Lotte Schlegel, Igor Tregub, Louise White, and Clinton Britt. The content of this primer does not necessarily reflect the views of individuals or organizations acknowledged. Any errors are the sole fault of the authors.
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