Eliminate Billion-Dollar Disasters: Equitable Science-Based Disaster Policy for a Resilient Future

Summary

Every year, Americans lose billions of dollars to natural hazards. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, heat waves, and droughts affect millions of Americans and are particularly devastating for low-income communities and communities of color. The number of ‘billion-dollar disasters’—those that cause over a billion dollars in damage—is rising as a result of climate change, urbanization, high risk developments, communities in vulnerable areas, aging infrastructure, and federal policy that rewards risk-prone behavior rather than incentivizing risk reduction. An overhaul of U.S. federal disaster policy will reverse the trend and eliminate billion-dollar disasters. This goal requires action at all levels of government, coordination across agencies, and leadership from the highest levels.

The Biden-Harris Administration should implement a multi-phase plan beginning with an executive order instructing federal agencies to define federal roles in disaster response, coordinate agency efforts, and integrate social justice and climate change into decision-making. Agency-level mandates will develop and implement best practices, incentivize state and local measures, and create an evidentiary basis for funding allocations. Finally, legislative reform of disaster laws will enable flexible responses to the continuing effects of climate change. A coordinated overhaul of federal laws and policies will inspire change at state and local levels, leading to a U.S. disaster policy that is climate-ready, addresses social inequities, reduces taxpayer liability and disaster damage, and saves lives.

Challenge and Opportunity

Disaster effects continue to worsen. Climate change is exacerbating hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and wildfires. Development and population growth in at-risk areas have placed more people, infrastructure, and economic activity in harm’s way. Serious disasters are more frequent and more costly (Figure 1). In 2019 alone, the U.S. experienced fourteen different billion-dollar disasters. In a five-month period that year, flooding affected eleven states: Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Federal aid is designed to be a last resort in disasters: the backstop when local and state resources have been overwhelmed. Current disaster policy and practice, however, results in disincentives for local governments to engage in proactive risk reduction. The more damage a county experiences, for example, the more money the county receives from the Federal Government, providing little incentive to adopt better building codes or limit development in risk-prone areas. The National Institute of Building Sciences estimates that updating and refining building codes alone could save $4 for every $1 spent—as well as save 600 lives, avoid 4,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and create 87,000 new jobs (NIBS 2019). Despite this alternative approach, U.S. disaster policy emphasizes recovery rather than prevention. Only a fraction of disaster funding—just 15%—is spent on reducing future losses.

Figure 1.

Relief decisions use wealth and assets as measures of need, rather than people. The result is that disaster funding increases wealth inequality. There is also little evidence that the billions in disaster recovery paid by U.S. taxpayers each year has increased community resilience. According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly 45,000 new homes experienced repeat flood losses over the last decade, while less than half that number had their flood risk reduced through elevation, acquisition, or floodproofing.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is a key organizer for federal response in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. In the long tail of recovery, though, other agencies— including the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Federal Transit Authority (FTA), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and Small Business Administration (SBA)— become involved. These agencies have significant and increasing spending authority and autonomy, but the risk reduction projects they prioritize and the reasons for their selection are often unclear or unavailable to researchers or the public. Projects are also not required to complement or support one another; each agency has its own mission, and there is little overarching coordination. At times, their actions may even work at cross-purposes.

Overhauling U.S. disaster policy will require a major effort across multiple levels and branches of government. This effort will not only limit but also potentially reverse the trend of increasing disaster costs. Disaster policy can create incentives for risk-smart development, promote climateproof investments in infrastructure, and protect society’s most vulnerable populations.

Plan of Action

A complete overhaul of U.S. disaster policy will require many actions across government branches. The following roadmap is a starting point: an initial set of steps to establish leadership, coordination, and a structure within which numerous actors can engage in a collaborative effort to build a disaster-resilient nation.

The plan is guided by the following principles:

Executive Branch

An executive order from the President or memorandum from the Office of Science and Technology Policy should direct agencies to address climate change and social equity in all federal actions. The order should provide a new mandate for inter-agency task forces such as the Mitigation Framework Leadership Group (MitFLG) to take, at minimum, the following actions:

Legislative Branch

Following the executive action, Congress should legislate reform both the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 (NFIP) and the Stafford Act of 1988. Congress should adopt the guidelines made by inter-agency task forces and recommendations made by the hazard science community. Congress must deliberate on:

University and Government Research

New science is needed to create a more robust foundation of evidentiary knowledge. Through National Science Foundation calls and inter-agency task force member agencies commissioning National Academies Studies, funding should be allocated toward:

Frequently Asked Questions
How does this proposal fit into existing disaster resilience efforts?

Existing efforts at achieving disaster resilience need coordination and high-level direction to become priorities. Existing task forces (such as MitFLG) should be leveraged and given expanded membership and mandates to promote a more widely coordinated approach to disaster reduction and response. Executive Order 13653, “Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change” should be reinstated and additional guidance should be provided to state agencies on how to assess climate risk, how to promote incentives for resilience, and how to include equity in decision-making processes.

If hazards are expected to intensify and become more frequent due to climate change, do we have ways to reduce losses from disasters?
Yes! As Gilbert White said, “floods are ‘acts of god,’ but flood losses are largely acts of man.” The same logic can be applied to nearly all hazards. Decades of scientific research and empirical data have identified simple principles that are known to reduce disaster losses. These principles are: (1) avoid building in areas known to be hazardous, (2) protect and/or insure infrastructure in hazardous areas, (3) reduce carbon emissions, (4) protect the most vulnerable. The National Institute of Building Sciences estimates that updated building codes alone could save $4 for every $1 spent—as well as save 600 lives, avoid 4,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and create 87,000 new jobs.
Why are agencies other than FEMA included? Does the problem not primarily lie with FEMA?
FEMA’s role is to coordinate emergency management following disasters that are beyond the ability of states to respond. FEMA also provides grants that support disaster mitigation, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Furthermore, the majority of the rules laid out by the Stafford Act apply to FEMA activities. However, in recent decades, numerous agencies have been allocated money by Congress in disaster relief authorizations. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is now a primary disaster response funder, through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) takes primary responsibility for levees, dredging, and beach nourishment, and their decisions have important implications for disaster risk reduction policy. A wide range of other agencies—i.e., the Small Business Administration (SBA), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), etc.—disperse disaster funds. The Department of Education, for example, disperses funds for school recovery. While FEMA plays a central role in disaster management, the coordination between all of these agencies is a major area where improvement is needed.
Why should Congress reconsider elements of the Stafford Act?

The Stafford Act is supposed to position the Federal Government as the intervener of last resort. It allows the President to declare disaster, and then it generally reimburses state and local governments—and other public organizations—a minimum of 75% of the cost of damage to public infrastructure. FEMA makes disaster recommendations to the President based upon a uniformly-applied and highly-prescribed loss threshold. The process is known to be wrought with politicization and assumes that every location experiences disasters in the same way. We know that each community has unique resources and advantages and disadvantages; a political decision about disbursement runs contrary to the Federal Government as the intervener of last resort.


To truly establish the Federal Government as the intervener of last resort, Congress must reconsider the disaster threshold by taking into account local capacity and ability to recover. Congress must also reconsider the cost-share and whether different incentive models are better equipped to induce better local hazard-reduction decisions and improve long-term resilience. Finally, Congress must formally address the role of each agency—as opposed to FEMA alone— to ensure government efficiency and that actions are not at cross-purposes.

FEMA recommended significant changes to the Public Assistance Program in 2016 that may not require congressional approval. Are those changes sufficient?

No. FEMA recommended adopting a state-wide deductible which must be met before Public Assistance is made available. While a positive step, it only addressed one of scores of disaster relief programs, albeit the largest. Furthermore, the recommendation did not include an evaluation of whether the proposed structure would incentivize local change. It does not explicitly reward individual hazard-reducing behaviors, but rather evaluates hazard reduction at a state level.


However, this proposed rule makes a step in the right direction by stating that the deductible level should be influenced by local hazard exposure and ability to recover.

Is your position anti-growth?

No. In face of the climate crisis, the only way to ensure consistent long-term growth is to put policies and incentives in place that protect people and infrastructure. In the same way that smart growth urban planning guides development based on economic and social priorities, we encourage growth that aligns with hazard risk reduction goals.

Has a federal ‘push’ worked to change state and local approaches in other issue areas?

Seatbelts. The Federal Government passed the first seatbelt law, which required lap and shoulder belts in all vehicles beginning in 1968. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, however, the effort to require states to implement seatbelt laws had limited success. But in 1985, Secretary Dole issued a rule requiring automakers to install driver side airbags in all vehicles, unless two-thirds of the states had passed a mandatory seatbelt law. This set off intense lobbying by automakers for bill passage in state legislatures. In 1998, an Executive Order (13043) mandated that all federal employees use seatbelts. As of 2020, only one state (New Hampshire) does not require seatbelts.


Clean Air. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) promulgated new air quality standards for acceptable levels of carbon monoxide, ground level ozone, and fine particulates. The 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act coordinated with CAAA by including directions on how cities and metropolitan areas were to demonstrate achievement of and progress toward air quality goals. These guidelines stated that transportation planning should emphasize system efficiency, and that in cities with severe air pollution, transportation projects must contribute to cleaner air. Urban areas were given flexibility to focus on local priorities and problems, with strict federal sanctions as incentives for compliance with both laws. The result has been a significant and continuing drop in criteria air pollutants.


Similarly, financial incentives for resilience (either carrots or sticks) could encourage state and local governments to use their authority to reduce risk exposure in their jurisdictions. This is the rationale behind the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Community Rating System (CRS), which rewards communities who engage in resilience behaviors with lower insurance rates. The CRS could be improved by requiring local governments to take stronger actions to qualify for reduced rates and by increasing transparency about how community ratings are calculated. Additional incentives could be used to encourage state and local governments to take actions such as: adopt internationally recognized building codes, enforce building codes, zone hazardous lands for no or low-density development, charge externality fees for developers, and invest in stormwater management upgrades.


This was also the rationale behind FEMA recommendations in 2016 that would have required states to contribute a set amount towards disaster recovery (a ‘disaster deductible’) before Public Assistance would be made available. The amount of the deductible could be reduced if the state demonstrated that it had taken actions to reduce risk exposure. We recommend that this and similar programs be revisited and strengthened.

Improving Federal Management of Wildlife Movement and Emerging Infectious Disease

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed systematic vulnerabilities in the way that wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases are managed at national and international scales. The next administration should take three key steps to address these vulnerabilities in the United States. First, the White House should create a “Task Force on the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases”. This Task Force would convene agencies with oversight over animal imports, identify necessary policy actions, determine priority research areas, and coordinate a national response strategy. Second, the next president should work with Congress to pass a bill strengthening live-animal import regulations. Third, U.S. agencies should coordinate with international organizations to address global movement of infectious diseases of animals. Together, these actions would reduce the risk of emerging infectious diseases entering the United States, offer greater protection to citizens from zoonotic diseases, and protect American biodiversity from losses due to wildlife diseases.

Challenge and Opportunity

More than 60% of emerging infectious diseases in humans first originate in animals. More than 70% of these come from wild animals. HIV, for instance, jumped to human hosts from primates in Africa. MERS spread to humans from camels in the Middle East. Of present salience, experts believe that the virus that causes COVID-19 originated from wild animals in China (probably bats).

The risk of animal-to-human “spillover”—and the global spread of zoonotic diseases—increases when wildlife are traded and imported around the world (e.g., for food, traditional medicines, display, pets, etc.). The global spread of COVID-19 has drawn attention to problems such as lack of disease surveillance in wild animal populations and lack of disease testing in many live animals at international borders. International wildlife-trade laws do not account for public-health risks of wildlife trade. These laws also do not require collection of data on zoonotic diseases (i.e., diseases caused by germs that spread between animals and people): data that could help prevent the next pandemic. These problems are exacerbated by accelerating rates of habitat conversion and biodiversity loss coupled with increased volume and speed of international commerce.

The United States is especially susceptible to emerging zoonotic diseases because it is the world’s largest importer6 of legally traded wild animals, yet lacks domestic regulations requiring most imported live animals to be tested for diseases, pathogens, or parasites. Gaps in U.S. statutory and regulatory frameworks governing live-animal imports increase disease risks for humans while also threatening our country’s biodiversity and natural resources. In the United States, four agencies oversee some aspect of live-animal imports—but this oversight is far from comprehensive. The Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is responsible for assessing the risk of diseases in agricultural imports, but not wildlife species. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) oversees imports of only primates and some species of rodents, bats, or birds known to spread zoonotic diseases. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is responsible for regulating imports of all wildlife (and imposes stricter standards on species previously identified as injurious), but its mandate does not cover infectious diseases or parasites. The upshot is that imports of most wildlife species to the United States are not assessed for disease risk by any agency. Most disease agents that infect wildlife (except for a small number of known zoonotic diseases) are not monitored by any agency either.

Plan of Action 

The next administration should take three key steps to address systematic vulnerabilities in the way that wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases are managed in the United States and around the world. 

Create a White House Task Force on the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

This Task Force would convene agencies with oversight over animal imports (including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), and CDC) and those supporting research (NSF, NIH) or international assistance (U.S. Department of State, USAID) to determine global research priorities on wildlife disease, and facilitate international cooperation on mechanisms to reduce demand as well as disease risk in the live animal trade. The task-force would use the One Health concept that links human health with animal health and environmental health, and that applies a comprehensive approach to understanding the drivers of disease emergence, the spread of disease, and the impacts on human health.

Work with Congress to pass a bill strengthening live-animal import regulations.

This bill would build on past legislation (e.g., H.R. 6362/S. 3210;11 H.R. 3771/S. 1903;12 and S. 375913) related to wildlife disease. The bill should:

Coordinate internationally to address diverse aspects of wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases.

The next administration should direct USDA (primarily APHIS) and the FWS to lead the following efforts:

Conclusion 

Regulatory gaps put Americans at risk of exposure to emerging infectious disease from unregulated and under-regulated imports of wildlife. The next administration should address these gaps by creating a White House task force, strengthening live-animal import regulations, and coordinating with international institutions to reduce the global movement of emerging infectious diseases. The result would be a nation that is healthier and safer—for humans and animals alike.

Earth Observation for Sensible Climate Policy

The United States lacks the basic information and digital infrastructure required to effectively respond to the emerging climate crisis. While the science and technology needed for sensible climate policy exists, efforts to leverage these technical resources are fragmented and undirected. Actors in the most important sectors of the U.S. economy are making long-term investment decisions based on inaccurate or outdated data as a result. In the past 10 years, for example, homes worth over $11.2 billion have been built in areas that are at risk from sea-level rise. Insurance companies have paid over $25 billion in claims resulting from the 2017 wildfires in California. Better information on environmental impacts of climate change will make it possible to mitigate losses from wildfires, droughts, floods, and extreme weather events. Therefore, the next Administration should invest in Earth observation to directly measure environmental change and greenhouse gas emissions.

The next Administration should also invest in modern data and information technology infrastructure to effectively and efficiently respond to climate change. Such digital infrastructure will make it easier to integrate climate science into decision making. These investments will not only strengthen the domestic economy, but will also reposition the United States as a global leader on one of the most pressing “moonshots” of our time—basic measurements of humanity’s impact on our home planet.

Challenge and Opportunity

By 2050, the cost of anthropogenic climate change to the United States is projected to be equivalent to the cost of a mid-scale pandemic, year-over-year. Yet American homeowners, small businesses, and even large enterprises are making investments with expected dividends in 10- 30 years as if the impacts of climate change are unknowable — they aren’t. The technology exists to measure the causes and effects of climate change at a resolution and frequency commensurate with economic decision-making. The challenge is to effectively organize disparate federal efforts to collect and distribute information about how our home planet is changing, so that Americans and American companies can make smart, forward-thinking choices.

Environmental information, especially about climate change, is a public good and should be provisioned by the public sector. In addition, there are sweeping economies of scale associated with Earth observation — with high upfront costs of data collection and data infrastructure, but low marginal costs to extend coverage from one state to the next. As such, the Federal Government is a natural home to lead and coordinate Earth observation.

Bolstering the Federal Government’s Earth observation will reposition the United States as a global leader on the most pressing “moonshots” of our time. Establishing capacity to collect basic information about the vital signs of our planet will be a clear diplomatic, scientific, and economic win for a new Administration. This document outlines feasible, measured, and near-term activities in support of that goal.

Plan of Action

The next Administration should take immediate and bold actions to elevate Earth observation at the federal level. Specifically, the next Administration should 

Deputize the next NASA Administrator to lead Earth observation for the Federal Government, with decisive support for budget-neutral reallocation of resources toward Earth science. NASA has the mandate, public trust, technical resources, and science budget to take a leading role in monitoring climate change. Currently, only 7% of NASA’s annual budget is dedicated to studying our home planet. The urgency of climate change requires that number to be much higher. The percentage of NASA’s annual budget allocated to Earth science should be doubled within the first year of the next Administration. Moreover, structures to support climate science within the Federal Government are insufficient. NASA leadership will organize, elevate, and operationalize existing efforts. For example, reallocation and refocusing of resources could be used within the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to develop an ecosystem of firms capable of (i) collecting and processing climate data and (ii) creating decisionsupport tools to foster better understanding of climate change impacts and more effective adaptation responses.

Establish a Climate Corps to increase the pipeline of talent in climate-change mitigation and adaptation, with a specific branch dedicated to leveraging Earth observation data. The Climate Corps should adopt a tiered approach that puts members to work at the local, state, and federal levels, tailoring information and services delivered accordingly. The federal branch of the Climate Corps could be modeled on and work with existing programs such as the Presidential Innovation Fellows. The state and local branches of the Climate Corps would link federal investment in climate data and science with on-theground needs. Localities on the front lines of climate change require tailored scientific and technical expertise to support evidence-based decision-making. We recommend recruiting graduates with science and technical degrees to branches of the Climate Corps focused on serving such localities nationwide. Much like the Peace Corps embeds members within communities abroad, this Climate Corps branch would embed members within front-line communities at home to facilitate two-way communication about local needs, relevant scientific findings and capabilities, and informed investments at all levels of government.

Create a collaborative public-private partnership for climate data and science, much like the BRAIN Initiative brings together public and private entities to advance understanding of brain function. The partnership should be overseen by a civilian science board and should aim to allocate $5 billion over five years in applied research grants to universities and small businesses. These grants would spur development of innovative technologies to monitor Earth systems in response to community and industry needs. Supported by committed involvement from the Department of Defense (e.g., DARPA, IARPA), part of the partnership’s mandate should be to reinstate the MEDEA program (or follow-on incarnation) to make military data assets available to civilian researchers and data scientists.

Conclusion

There are moral and economic imperatives for the United States to take swift action, supported by consistent and credible data, on climate change. Global investment in Earth observation is insufficient to adequately respond to climate change. The United States can leverage its comparative advantage in scientific diplomacy and domestic talent to fill this information gap. By doing so, our nation can lead the world to the next great human achievement—a stable and productive climate.

A National Initiative to Revitalize American Farming and Advance Regenerative Agriculture

Summary

A national regenerative agriculture initiative launched by the federal government could transform how American farmers provide food, fiber, and land stewardship. This initiative would commit to matching what farmers earn growing food and fiber with an equal investment in farmers’ work to rebuild the country’s natural capital.

Regenerative agriculture produces a safe and abundant food supply while building soil health and regenerating natural resources. This approach recognizes the key roles farmers and ranchers have in providing clean air, clean water, and ecosystem services that benefit all society.

A national regenerative agriculture initiative would provide needed investment in rural economies while simultaneously empowering current and future farmers to grow food in ways that improve soil health, ecosystem services, and natural resources. This strategic initiative would support the return of farming as a more widely valued job in America.

To achieve truly regenerative agricultural systems nationwide, the federal government should catalyze new markets and focus federal funding for regenerative agriculture programs, research, and development. Key steps towards this goal include creating a Regenerative Agriculture Advisory Task Force, mobilizing substantial investments to upgrade the agricultural sector, and prioritizing regenerative agriculture as a major theme in agricultural innovation.

An Initiative to Build the National Climate Bank

The next administration should support legislation to fund the National Climate Bank, a non- profit that will create millions of jobs through public-private investment in clean energy and climate-related technologies. Built on the successful “green bank” model, the Climate Bank will spur $500 billion of private and public investment, create 5.4 million jobs, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while driving capital into frontline and environmental-justice communities. Legislation to support this policy passed the House of Representatives with billions of dollars in funding in July. The administration can enact this policy by including funding for the National Climate Bank in its climate and infrastructure-oriented stimulus proposals to Congress.

Approximately 30 million Americans—one in five workers—are collecting unemployment benefits. Labor-force participation is at its lowest level in nearly fifty years. These figures are worse than anything seen during the Great Recession. Deep, forward-thinking, and transformative measures are needed to revitalize our economy and open stable, well-paying opportunities for working Americans. Yet Congress has focused exclusively on short-term relief.

The next administration must quickly correct this error by investing substantially in job creation. Investments should meet three critical requirements:

Transitioning the United States to a 100% clean electric grid over the next 20 years will require an estimated $225 billion of new investment per year. We are far short of this benchmark. Only $78 billion was invested into U.S. clean energy in 2019. Investment shortfalls and barriers can and must be overcome through an influx of public capital, with a particular focus on investing in underserved, frontline communities and communities of color.

Plan of Action

The next administration should endorse the National Climate Bank Act in Congress to put Americans back to work building our nation’s clean-energy future. The National Climate Bank created under this Act would be an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit finance entity that would use federal funds to mobilize greater private investment to address climate change. The next administration should, therefore, include funding for the National Climate Bank in stimulus proposals. 

Building off of the “green bank” model already proven at the state and local levels, the National Climate Bank could use $35 billion of federal funds to achieve $500 billion of investment in domestic clean energy and climate-related infrastructure in just five years. This level of investment would create an estimated 5.4 million jobs spread across the country (since cleanenergy projects are needed in every community). This level of investment would also create opportunities for workers of all skillsets, not just technical workers. No new authority or government agency is needed to create the National Climate Bank as an independent nonprofit. Legislation is only needed for seed funding. 

The National Climate Bank would invest across a broad set of sectors to ensure that communities can build the climate solutions they most need: solutions that include renewable-power projects, building efficiency and electrification, clean transportation, industrial decarbonization, improved grid infrastructure, sustainable agriculture, and resilience efforts. This model works. State and local green banks across the United States have already catalyzed over $5 billion of investment into such solutions, with each green bank dollar driving an average $2.60 of private coinvestment.

Solutions financed by green banks are not only environmentally prudent, but materially improve economic well-being for individual Americans as well. For instance, alternative underwriting criteria can give low-income communities access to rooftop solar and efficiency projects that lower home energy bills. Coupling roof replacement with solar energy increases community resilience while lowering home-insurance costs. Improving building efficiency for small businesses enables small businesses to hire more workers thanks to lower operating expenses.

The National Climate Bank would also be uniquely positioned among federal agencies to advance equity and environmental justice nationwide. The National Climate Bank could and should direct investment towards frontline and communities of color, delivering benefits like job creation, lower energy costs, and increased public health. The National Climate Bank would also be flexible and nimble enough to quickly respond to community needs as they emerge. By combining multiple financing tools (e.g., co-investment, subordinated debt, credit enhancements) with market-development strategies, the National Climate Bank would leverage new private investment and reach untapped markets. Finally, the National Climate Bank would only directly finance projects that are national in scale. For all other projects, the National Climate Bank would partner with local leaders to form state and local green banks where they don’t already exist. Such decentralization would ensure that funded projects are tailored instead of “one size fits all” and that project benefits and wealth accrue within targeted communities instead of leaking out and trickling up.

There is already considerable support for a national green bank in Congress. Senators Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen and Representative Debbie Dingell introduced the National Climate Bank Act in 2019. And the policy (under the name Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator) was included in the $1.5 trillion Moving Forward Act that recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Establishing a national green bank was a key recommendation of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and is part of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s CLEAN Future Act. Nearly 100 organizations, including environmental organizations and industry associations, have signed a letter of support for a national green bank. Polling shows that 7 in 10 Americans—including a majority of independents and Republicans—support the funding and creation of the National Climate Bank. Finally, the idea of a national green bank was endorsed by multiple presidential candidates including Jay Inslee, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, and Kamala Harris. The next Administration can harness this legislative and popular momentum and fund the NCB through stimulus.

Frequently Asked Questions
Why do we need public funding for climate investment? Don’t private capital markets work fine?
In some geographies and for certain customers, there is ample private capital to finance technologies like utility-scale solar and wind projects. The same is true of efficiency projects for high-credit owners of large buildings. However, we can’t transition to a clean-energy economy and sustainable climate future on the timeline we need by investing in only a subset of people and places. Clean-energy and climate solutions must be distributed fairly across the United States without raising costs. But right now, very little private capital flows into low-income or communities of color for any climate-related activity. And many solutions—such as reforestation, industrial decarbonization, electric-vehicle fleet replacement, and distributed energy storage— are undercapitalized for all communities. The National Climate Bank will address these market failures, catalyzing private investment in underserved technologies and communities to the benefit of all Americans.
Why form the National Climate Bank as a non-profit?

The National Climate Bank must be non-political to succeed. Companies and investors must view the National Climate Bank as a trusted and stable market participant that they can securely contract with for multiple decades. This will not be the case if the Bank’s short-term viability vacillates with changing administrations and national fiscal conditions. This truth has been sadly proven out by green bank institutions in and outside the U.S. that have been hampered or shut down by changing political conditions.


Studying existing green banks (such as state and local green banks) provides strong evidence that a national-level green bank will only work if it operates outside of government. The government-owned Connecticut Green Bank, for instance, was operating successfully but nevertheless had funding swept back as part of a fiscal austerity measure. The governmentowned Australian national green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, has had its mission and operating procedures altered regularly as different political parties have come into power.


While the National Climate Bank should be formed as an extra-governmental non-profit, it should still coordinate closely with federal, state, and local government to utilize incentives, rebates, and tax credits and to optimize program design for efficient delivery of capital.

Doesn’t the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office already do this?

The Loan Programs Office (LPO) is a “commercialization”-focused tool within the federal government. As such, there are stringent constraints on the kinds of projects the LPO can fund. The LPO also has limited financing tools at its disposal and cannot prioritize investment in underserved communities. The result is that the LPO has not closed a clean-energy loan in nearly a decade. This lack of investment is partly due to the political impact of being within government. The LPO was hampered post-Solyndra, and has been effectively shut down during the Trump administration. Political influence has sadly undermined the legitimacy of the LPO, a finance entity that still has tens of billions of dollars of unused investment capacity. Reviving or reforming the LPO are worthy goals, but would still not be a substitute for creating a National Climate Bank

How will the National Climate Bank relate to existing state and local green banks?
The National Climate Bank will provide technical assistance to geographies that want but do not have green bank. The National Climate Bank will also provide capital to help new and existing green banks finance projects. These roles are critical given that lack of local public funds to capitalize state green banks is the main barrier to green-bank growth. Lastly, the National Climate Bank will only directly finance projects of regional or national scale (e.g., a long-distance transmission line for renewable energy). Otherwise, most financing activity of the National Climate Bank will flow through the state and local green banks with which it partners.
Does the National Climate Bank really need so much money? Is that much necessary?

The climate investment gap is considerable in the U.S. Investing federal funds in a National Climate Bank allows each public dollar to be multiplied, moving us significantly closer to filling that gap. Modeling has shown that in just five years, if the National Climate Bank received $35 billion of public capital, for example, that could catalyze nearly $500 billion of total investment. This is because public funds will be multiplied in 3 ways through a Climate Bank. First, it will finance projects using techniques that leverage multiple private dollars for each public dollar deployed. The second is that public dollars will be recycled and then re-lent out for future investment because they are used for financing, rather than grants. And the third is that, over time, the National Climate Bank will be able to directly borrow private capital onto its balance sheet based on its track record and investment income. This means the National Climate Bank can ultimately triple its own investment capacity beyond its initial capitalization (which is conservative from a risk perspective, as typical commercial banks leverage their balance sheets 10:1). Collectively these financing methods (which are proven and standard across development banks, commercial banks and green banks), will allow the National Climate Bank to drive far more investment than its initial appropriation. The more public funds the National Climate Bank is given up front, the greater this multiplicative effect is and the closer we can get to entirely filling the climate investment gap.

Mass-Digitizing Biodiversity Collections of the United States

Summary

Mass digitization of U.S. biodiversity collections would position the nation to achieve massive advances in the life sciences—a leap forward on par with the way that DNA technology transformed genomics at the start of the 21st century. This heritage consists of hundreds of millions of dry, wet, and otherwise preserved specimens in U.S. museums and other collections, including plant germplasm, microbial cultures, non-human biomedical samples (e.g., parasites), fossils, and other plant and animal samples. This proposal presents actions for the Biden-Harris Administration to take to catalyze this advance to pave the way for a sustained, coordinated effort to mass digitize the physical specimens in U.S. biodiversity collections (and their associated metadata).