Summary

The rapid adoption of Digital Surveillance Technology (DST) by state and local agencies is taking place in an under-regulated environment that is causing tangible harm to the communities and individuals these same agencies are tasked to protect. DST itself is plagued by fundamental flaws and vulnerabilities, issues compounded by a lack of safeguards in the environments where DST is deployed. The four biggest problems with government use of DST today are:

1. Governments falling prey to predatory or negligently marketed DST that fails to consistently achieve stated functionalities or meet reasonable standards.
2. Governments deploying DST in a way that does or could falsely implicate innocent individuals in criminal matters.
3. A lack of systematic oversight that fails to ensure accountability, equity, transparency, or cybersecurity.
4. Governments utilizing DST in a manner inconsistent with existing laws, ordinances, and regulations.

While these issues affect everyone, they disproportionately affect those who are falsely implicated in criminal matters as a result of DST, as well as the working poor (who have been historically over-surveilled). In addition to such human costs, overuse or misuse of DST exposes cash-strapped jurisdictions to multimillion-dollar lawsuits for violation of privacy and civil rights.

This proposal offers a set of actions that the Biden-Harris Administration could take to limit the harms of DST. Specifically, we recommend that the administration:

• Issue an Executive Order to create two mandatory filings for vendors and government agencies involved in active federal contracts for DST.
• Empower and fund the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with $10 million over two years to study and produce rules regarding DST marketing and sales.
• Allocate $50 million for a Privacy Pilot Program that would allow municipalities to utilize a tailored hybrid model of government and civilian oversight for DST.
• Condition federal dollars spent on DST for law enforcement on compliance with a set of assessments.
• Instruct the Department of Justice to create a DST Task Force to study the benefits and tradeoffs of different types of DST.

These actions would together begin to rein in the unchecked power of the surveillance complex that has attached itself to our nation’s law-enforcement systems. Doing so would advance racial and community equity across the United States while also helping restore public trust in law-enforcement institutions.

Every American deserves to engage with the world on their own terms. But for the 61 million adults in the United States living with a disability, challenges—including social isolation, the need for advanced assistive technologies, access to care, and economic security—abound. These challenges require a coordinated National Strategy on Disabilities.

To empower people with disabilities to engage with the world on their own terms, President Biden should establish a White House Council on Disabilities tasked with the mission of providing a federally coordinated approach to aligning federal policy, medical reimbursement, and research funding to address issues critical to people those living with disabilities. The goal of this Council would be to provide much-needed leadership and coordination among federal agencies and with external stakeholders, that enable the development of (and access to) the new knowledge and technologies necessary to better support Americans with disabilities of all types and further enrich connections to one another and our economy.

Challenge and Opportunity

July 26, 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This landmark piece of legislation aimed to “provide equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency” for people with disabilities. The ADA also drove positive change in Americans’ attitudes about disabilities by asserting that people with disabilities “should participate fully in all aspects of our communities and have opportunities to take risks, to succeed, and—yes—to fail.” While the ADA has addressed many of the major civil-rights challenges faced by those living with disabilities, more must be done to modernize the government’s approach to meeting the needs of people living with disabilities.

Over a quarter (61 million) of adult Americans live with a disability. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that out of this group:

• 13.7% have a mobility disability, experiencing serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
• 10.8% have a cognition disability, experiencing serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions.
• 6.8% have an independent-living disability, experiencing difficulty doing errands alone.
• 5.9% are Deaf or have serious difficulty hearing.
• 4.6% have a vision disability, experiencing blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.
• 3.6 percent have a self-care disability, experiencing difficulty dressing or bathing.

We the authors write from the perspective of people living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which creates physical and cognitive limitations for thousands of Americans each year and serves as a powerful example of many obstacles Americans with disabilities often face. ALS is just one of the countless conditions that make it challenging for Americans to engage with the world in the way that they want. Many of these challenges could be addressed through coordinated federal activities, investment, and programs for people with disabilities.

For example, those living with conditions such as muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and spina bifida, need new and improved technologies that provide better mobility, independence, and self-care—technologies such as lighter, nimbler wheelchairs. Today’s power wheelchairs are heavy, bulky, and hard to transport on buses and planes. In fact, one airline recently proposed a policy that would preclude people who use heavy wheelchairs from flying on small regional jets. While the policy was reversed after activist involvement, the fact that it was proposed in the first place demonstrates some of the limitations of existing equipment and policy. Public and private investment in innovation that would make power wheelchairs lighter and more mobile would make it easier for people with certain mobility limitations to leave their homes and more fully engage with the world.

Directly related to the need for innovation is the need for modern payment and reimbursement policies that create affordable access to such technologies for people living with disabilities. New medical technologies are useless if people aren’t able to access them. For example, Medicare only covers equipment primarily intended for in-home use. That means that Medicare will not reimburse for essential exterior home modifications such as wheelchair ramps. People with disabilities have the right to be outside. It is time for a commonsense approach to coverage for services and technology that empower Americans with disabilities to experience life on their terms. Another example is that Medicare will only cover equipment for a direct medical reason. This constraint precludes coverage for multi-use devices that can ease access challenges for people with disabilities, including tablet computers that can convert eye gaze to speech and other assistive technology devices.

It is time for a commonsense, open-minded approach to coverage for services and technologies that empower Americans with disabilities. Today’s medical-reimbursement policies are outdated and problematically narrow in scope. These policies must be updated to recognize the broad potential of consumer technology and value of connectedness to wellness. Removing constraints on innovation and function in reimbursement policies will also encourage development of new and creative solutions to the diverse challenges facing those with disabilities.

Modern and coordinated research, development, and reimbursement policies are critical for tapping the enormous value that society would gain from enabling people with disabilities to engage the world more fluidly and consistently—including through employment. Just 36% of adults living with disabilities are employed. Addressing the challenges faced by people living with disabilities would help more of those people join the workforce, boosting the economy and productivity while enabling those with disabilities to live lives that are fuller and more financially secure.

Finally, there is a need to develop a data-centric approach to the evolution of policy over time to ensure that guidances, rules, and regulations are regularly updated to meet the needs of people living with disabilities based on data and the best information available. Are our policies having the impacts we need to help people with engage the world on their terms?

Plan of Action

Establishing the White House Council on Disabilities

The Biden campaign’s Plan for Full Participation and Equality for People with Disabilities provides solid groundwork for ensuring that people with disabilities are included in policy and decision-making. Realizing the promise of this plan requires a coordinating executive body to ensure that government agencies are implementing synergistic policies and avoiding bureaucratic silos. The Biden-Harris Administration should establish a White House Council on Disabilities (WHCD), run through the Domestic Policy Council, as an action-oriented entity that complements—rather than replicates—the largely advisory work of the National Council on Disability. The WHCD’s responsibilities would include:

1. Coordinating federal activities and programs for people with disabilities.
2. Examining everyday challenges facing those living with disabilities, identify opportunities for addressing those challenges, and set goals and timelines designed to increase engagement and stimulate innovation around disabilities.
3. Revisiting the ADA to see where improvements and updates need to be made.

The WHCD should be tasked with developing a National Strategy on Disabilities that lays out specific actions and forward-leaning public policies related to each of these workstreams that should be implemented over the next four years in order to improve quality of life for all people living with disabilities in the United States. As part of developing the strategy, the WHCD should aunch a robust public-engagement effort. For instance, the WHCD should organize forums that bring together private and public stakeholders to discuss common issues, and should host listening sessions to hear directly from people living with disabilities and their care partners.

The Biden campaign’s Plan for Full Participation and Equality for People with Disabilities provides solid groundwork for ensuring that people with disabilities are included in policy and decision-making. However, a coordinating executive body is needed to ensure that government agencies are implementing complementary policies and avoiding bureaucratic silos, so that the promise of the President’s campaign plan can be realized. This action-oriented effort would be complementary to the National Council on Disability, which is “an independent federal agency charged with advising the President, Congress, and other federal agencies regarding policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities”. The Administration should build on this work and existing structures to ensure that the Biden plan can be implemented by appointing a Director of the WHCD to drive and oversee this effort.

The WHCD should also be tasked with establishing a comprehensive research agenda focused on addressing challenges faced by those living with disabilities that goes beyond the development of new technologies, and also improves social engagement and isolation common among people living with disabilities. The agenda should include research on:

1. Meeting technology needs, including those related to assistive technology and durable medical equipment (DME), communications technology and broadband access, transportation, and education.
2. Ensuring affordable access to and reimbursement for care, including by implementing new financing mechanisms, working with existing providers, and funding innovation.
3. Promoting economic security of those living with disabilities, including by expanding employment opportunities, implementing tax reforms, and changing social policies.

Priority areas and opportunities for action

Herein, we expand on three priority areas—and associated opportunities for action—that the WHCD could pursue. Each of these areas demonstrates the clear positive impacts that a WHCD could have on the lives of the millions living with disabilities across the United States.

Priority Area 1. Research and technology: innovation that empowers

People with disabilities use a variety of technologies to improve their lives. For mobility-challenged persons, for instance, key technologies include powered wheelchairs, special beds, and stair-lifts. But these products can be expensive and unwieldy, and no federal agency is specifically charged with driving innovation for the disabled community. In cases where innovation has occurred, such as more compact ventilators or high mobility wheelchairs, Medicare’s focus on in-home use does not adequately consider the benefits of equipment that better supports travel and social engagement. 

As part of the National Strategy on Disabilities, the WHCD should identify ways to improve and expand access to advanced technologies for people living with disabilities, such as:

• Providing federal incentives for development of cost-effective solutions to address the challenges that people with disabilities face.
• Development of a DARPA-like agency for Health (HARPA) to address the market failures that often limit innovation for people with disabilities.
• Providing much-needed coordination among federal agencies on a research and development agenda and an investment plan for diverse technologies to assist those living with disabilities.

The federal government could also establish clear and straightforward reimbursement pathways for advanced technologies. Better reimbursement policies create incentives for innovations and accelerate uptake of new technologies, thereby improving quality of life improvement for people living with disabilities. Durable Medical Equipment (DME) is a class of technologies that would especially benefit from modernized reimbursement policies. DME refers to non-disposable devices used at home to assist someone with a function. Examples of DME include wheelchairs, ventilators, crutches, and CPAP machines. As discussed previously existing reimbursement policies like in home use requirements tend to be rigid in the types of DME they cover, leading to disincentives to innovate in this space. The WHCD could coordinate a strategy for enhancing innovation in DME.

The first step is to ensure that research and development funding, as well as federal insurance coverages for DME, enable innovation that maximize engagement and equipment function. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could sponsor an Innovation Pilot testing novel DME devices. The WHCD could ensure that federal initiatives such as this are coordinated and complementary. The second step is to encourage DME manufacturers to enhance collaborations with manufacturers of consumer technology (e.g., speech-to-text capabilities and auto-driving assistance) as well as with manufacturers of cutting-edge technology (e.g., brain-computer interfaces and exoskeletons). Innovation to support enhanced mobility, computer control, and other important functions for people with disabilities can in turn cross over to applications in broader consumer markets. The end result of these cycles of improvement will be better DME for people with disabilities as well as new products that benefit even those outside of the disabled community.

Priority Area 2. Communication and social engagement

The WHCD could establish an interagency agenda to develop and deliver science and technology that can reduce the isolation of Americans living with disabilities, and empower those Americans to engage with the world as they wish. Developing and implementing the science for this subset of Americans can not only result in fast improvements, but can also help develop strategies to address isolation and disengagement across America as a whole.

The impacts of social isolation have come into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet people with disabilities face challenges of isolation every single day. Disabilities can make it difficult to communicate online, to speak on the phone, and/or to meet people in person. Investments need to be made to identify and deploy effective mechanisms for all people with disabilities to maintain social engagement and emotional wellness. The Biden campaign’s call for a new Assistive Technology Innovation Fund, administered by the Department of Commerce, to sponsor public-private partnerships focused on increasing the independence of people living with disabilities is a great starting point. As with DME, innovations targeted at the disabled community will ultimately cross over into the broader consumer market to help address isolation and disengagement across America as a whole.

Improving access to broadband is fundamental to ensuring that people with disabilities have the means for social and economic engagement. Broadband also fulfills a medical need, providing better access to healthcare through avenues such as remote monitoring and telehealth. However, according to a Pew Research Center survey, “[d]isabled Americans are about three times as likely as those without a disability to say they never go online.” Adults with disabilities are also less likely to have broadband at home. President Biden’s commitment to invest $20 billion in rural broadband infrastructure, direct the federal government to support cities and towns that want to build municipally owned broadband networks, and increase funding for states to expand broadband will help communities tackle the digital divide. Broadband access alone is not sufficient to create social engagement, but ensuring equitable access is an important first step.

A next step is supporting research into how today’s technologies and tools can be leveraged to better include and engage people living with disabilities. How can we best use broadband and internet-enabled platforms to promote social engagement? How can instrumental enablers of engagement like broadband and social media, accessible transportation, DME, and others be combined with behavioral and educational interventions, volunteer activities, and online communities to reduce social isolation? These are empirical questions that need study and demonstration, coupled with evidence-based policymaking, to drive a new era of inclusiveness for all people with disabilities. And if we as a nation can develop the science to address isolation for Americans with physical and communication challenges, we can use that same science to help reduce isolation for all Americans. This will lead to the more connected and inclusive nation President Biden has been calling for and that we all wish to see.

Finally, reducing social isolation and promoting engagement—as well as simply making it easier to get around one’s community —for those with disabilities demands a concerted effort to address transportation challenges. While investing in better, nimbler DME is a start, new strategies and investments are also needed to improve the transportation infrastructure for the disabled community. Making it easier for people with disabilities to go out in the world makes it easier for them to take advantage of broader opportunities for employment, volunteering, and social engagement, leading to an increase in well-being for individuals and strengthening the overall fabric of our society.

Priority Area 3. Affordable access to care

People with disabilities often have more complex medical needs as well as greater difficulty obtaining quality care. The WHCD should draft forward-leaning access to care policies that agencies can implement, including policies related to telehealth, transportation to medical appointments, and others. Additionally, many forms of disabilities typically require specialized care, including care that sometimes cannot be provided within the person’s home state. Accessing out-of-state care can be challenging, especially for people covered by Medicaid or CHIP. Even after a state Medicaid program or Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO) has already authorized out-of-state care, delays in accessing that care may follow. This is an area that the WHCD should examine and propose policy solutions or pilots to address.

People with disabilities often have more complex medical needs as well as greater difficulty obtaining quality care. Additionally, many forms of disabilities typically require specialized care, including care that sometimes cannot be provided within the person’s home state. The WHCD should draft forward-leaning access to care policies that agencies can implement, including policies related to telehealth, transportation to medical appointments, and access to distant specialty services.

Conclusion

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a laudable piece of civil-rights legislation. But this 30-year-old law certainly does not solve the many challenges encountered by Americans with disabilities today. ADA current rules are insufficient – three decades ago it was about getting people into places and securing legal protections, but we’re facing a different set of problems now like access to Broadband, self-driving cars, and telemedicine.

Now is the time to put into motion a coordinated federal effort to empower people with disabilities to engage with the world on their own terms. The problems are complex and require coordination of federal agencies and leadership from and within the White House. The Establishment of the WHCD could ensure that legislative policy fixes and agency implementation go hand in glove.

The Biden campaign’s Plan for Full Participation and Equality for People with Disabilities provides a solid foundation for ensuring that people with disabilities are well served by federal policy and decision-making. A coordinating body can bring the President’s vision to life and ensure that government agencies are implementing complementary policies and avoiding bureaucratic silos. A new White House Council on Disabilities (WHCD) can serve these functions.

Within 6 months of formation, the WHCD should develop and release a detailed National Strategy on Disabilities that covers topics such as innovation in technologies that enable those living with disabilities to engage with the world as they choose, ensuring affordable access to those technologies, and promoting economic security by expanding employment opportunities for those living with disabilities. These actions can and must be informed by the communities they affect. The WHCD should prioritize listening sessions with those living with disabilities and their care partners. It will also be important to bring together other key stakeholders from the disabilities community, including nonprofits, advocates, medical providers, payers, technologists, and others. By working together, we can do much to empower people with disabilities to live independently and to the fullest.

Summary

The information contained in the methods section of the overwhelming majority of research publications is insufficient to definitively evaluate research practices, let alone reproduce the work. Publication—and subsequent reuse—of detailed scientific methodologies can save researchers time and money, and can accelerate the pace of research overall. However, there is no existing mechanism for collective action to improve reporting of scientific methods. The Biden-Harris Administration should direct research-funding agencies to support development of new standards for reporting scientific methods. These standards would (1) address ongoing challenges in scientific reproducibility, and (2) benefit our nation’s scientific enterprise by improving research quality, reliability, and efficiency.

Biology is becoming a defining technology of the modern era: the bioeconomy is expected to contribute nearly 1.1 million jobs to the United States by 2030. Preparing the skilled workforce that our nation will need to fill these jobs requires a fundamental shift in how the field of biology is viewed. Biology is not merely a collection of facts to be memorized in school. Rather, it is a dynamic economic sector that provides opportunities for Americans of all skillsets, and that can generate creatively engineered solutions to persistent global challenges.

The Biden-Harris Administration can position the United States as a world leader in the emerging bioeconomy by funding modernized biology education, establishing world-class entrepreneurial hubs for biotechnology in non-traditional regions of the country, and supporting equitable access to industry-recognized certificates and work-based training. Through this comprehensive Built with Biology Plan, the federal government can prepare and invite more Americans into skilled jobs that support the bioeconomy. The social imperative for investing in the bioeconomy is at least as great as the economic one. We will build a better future for all Americans—including people of color, people with disabilities, and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds—only by harnessing regional talent and growing robust bioeconomies in all 50 states.

Challenge and Opportunity

Scientific and engineering advances have positioned biology to become a core technology of the modern era. Sequencing the human genome is 10 million times cheaper than it was twenty years ago. Genome editing, which includes technology to read and write genetic codes, has redefined DNA as a programming language for cells: one that engineerable and available for updates in the same way that a computer’s code can be. Companies, universities, and government agencies are applying genome-editing tools to meet global needs in healthcare, agriculture, sustainable energy production, and environmental remediation. The economic impact of these efforts is already valued at nearly $1 trillion and is projected to increase for at least a decade.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed the importance of the bioeconomy into stark relief. The pandemic proved without a doubt that biological threats can send the world into turmoil. But the development of multiple astonishingly effective COVID vaccines in record time—and the associated ramp-up of biomanufacturing plants to mass-produce vaccine doses on a global scale—also proved that bioeconomic innovations can solve society’s most pressing challenges. The unprecedented impacts of COVID-19 make today biology’s “Sputnik Moment.” 70 years ago, the manned moon landing elevated the status of math and physics, triggering lasting change in public education and motivating young people across the country to become scientists and engineers. So too has the pandemic emphasized the pressing need to modernize biology education, training, and investment.

Indeed, as the bioeconomy has grown, so too have its difficulties hiring appropriately trained workers. A recent survey, for instance, found that nearly 80% of industry leaders in the biopharmaceutical sector struggle to find workers with science, engineering, and technical skills. Other countries are rushing to fill this talent vacuum. China’s investment into the bioeconomy is especially noteworthy. An April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution noted that China “intends to own the biorevolution…and they are building the infrastructure, the talent pipeline, the regulatory system, and the financial system they need to do that.” In the United States, conversely, most high schoolers and college students are still performing the same rote biology experiments that they did decades ago.

We as a nation must rethink how we teach and talk about biology in order to remain competitive. We need new curricula that integrate digital technologies and computational thinking alongside core biology concepts. We need to invest in regional infrastructure—including labs, startup space, product accelerators, and more—that will support robust and inclusive bioeconomies to flourish in all 50 states. And we need to create career pathways that enable all Americans to participate in the industry that has anchored the battle against one of the greatest challenges of our time. Concerted federal investment in the bioeconomy will simultaneously advance U.S. scientific capacity, modernize U.S. education, bring good jobs to more people, cement U.S. leadership in key industries, and improve our nation and our world.

Plan of Action

The Biden-Harris Administration should support a four-part Built with Biology Plan. Modeled on Obama-Biden Administration initiatives related to computer science (CS4All), technical education, and entrepreneurship, the plan will accelerate the U.S. bioeconomy through investment in “M.O.R.E.” educational and workforce programs that build lasting knowledge, skills, and professional competencies in bioengineering, biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals, and related fields. The plan will also help advance many of the Biden-Harris Administration’s top priorities, from mitigating climate change to implementing lasting economic relief. M.O.R.E is an acronym for changes in:

• Mindset. From middle school through college, biology must be taught not merely as a collection of facts, but as a technical foundation for creatively engineering solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.
• Opportunities. American companies must be incentivized to recruit and retain local talent so that world-class bioeconomies can grow in all 50 states.
• Recognition. A coherent set of certificates and credentials must be developed to facilitate professional advancement in the biotechnology industry and in academic settings.
• Entrepreneurship. Bioeconomy hubs must flourish in places and for people traditionally underrepresented in science and engineering.

The sections below present recommended actions to catalyze change in each of these categories.

Part 1: Mindset

The federal government should move to establish biotechnology training as a core competency. In particular, the federal government should allocate persistent funding for relevant teacher training and high-quality instructional materials at the high-school level. A good goal would be introduce at least one million high school students each year to a modern mindset in life science by the year 2025.

Approaches to teaching high-school biology are remarkably similar around the country, and have remained relatively unchanged for the past 30 years. This temporal and spatial consistency both helps and hinders needed progress. Standardized education means that modernized approaches that succeed in one classroom are likely to succeed in another. But schools and educators alike may be resistant to depart from established curricula—especially when limited resources are available to help them make a shift.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), for instance, were intended to improve K–12 science education for all students. But only 20 states have adopted these standards since they were introduced by the National Research Council in 2013. States forgoing adoption cite limited resources, underprepared teachers, and insufficient classroom time to implement new ways of teaching. Most enrichment programs that provide teacher training are expensive and require updated classroom and lab equipment, adding thousands of dollars to school budgets unless the programs are underwritten by private foundations.

A modern mindset in life science education—in which biology is perceived as both fascinating and engineerable—requires a pedagogical change beyond the NGSS. Simply updating standards is not enough. The challenge is to use existing, free, and/or low-cost resources to creatively reimagine how biology is taught, while respecting the constraints of overburdened educators and overstretched science programs.

The BioBuilder Educational Foundation serves as an excellent example of how this can be done. BioBuilder is a 501c3 organization that provides open-source curricular materials for teaching engineering biology at the secondary and post-secondary school level. BioBuilder trains teachers, provides online biodesign lessons for students, and develops investigative laboratory activities and simulations. Its open-access textbook has been translated by the publisher into Japanese and Russian and translated by local educators into Mandarin and Spanish. BioBuilder’s approach is a proven way to increase student engagement and open new opportunities in the bioeconomy for students who would otherwise face limited access.

To introduce a BioBuilder-like curriculum into every public school in America, the federal government should enhance the Department of Education budget with an additional $500 million to cover expanded investment in biotechnology education. This funding would supplement the Career and Technical Education (CTE) State Grant and the Elementary and Secondary Education for the Disadvantaged (ESED) Block Grant programs for teaching engineering biology in vocational and comprehensive public schools. The federal government can also move to establish a national initiative for DNA coding modeled on the Obama Administration’s “CS4All” initiative. CS4All aimed to provide computer-coding experiences to all students by activating funds in the Department of Education and at the National Science Foundation, as well as by directly funding states to support computer-science education.

Part 2: Opportunities

The federal government should launch an interagency Biology Career Pathways initiative that helps connect biology learning to real-world opportunities. Coordinated by Department of Labor, Department of Education and the NSF, this initiative would support paid high-school internships, technical training pathways, and first jobs in the bioeconomy.

In 2012, the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services issued a joint letter to promote the use of Career Pathways, which they defined as “well-executed alignment of education, training, and employment” in ways that help students gain marketable skills. A substantial body of research indicates that meaningful work helps students explore careers, put classroom learning into context, and build professional capacities needed for future jobs.

Unfortunately, many career-training programs are developed without partnership from future employers. Inefficiencies and mismatches frequently result. For example, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, an economic-development and investment agency funded through public-private partnerships, connects high school and college students with prospective employers through an online platform and subsidizes up to 12 weeks of summer wages. But company policies often limit appetite and ability to hire summer interns. Similarly, dual-enrollment and career-pathway programs, along with more traditional types of career and technical education, enable high-school students to earn class credit while training in high-demand technical fields. However, job-placement options for students during these programs and upon graduation depend on the abundance and strength of local industry. This presents a “chicken-and-egg” issue for the emerging bioeconomy and limits options for students in rural or economically struggling areas where bioeconomy-employment opportunities tend to be scarce

The Biden-Harris Administration should inventory, improve, and expand funding for programs that offer industry-informed work experiences in the bioeconomy as a way to recruit and retain regional talent. Lessons can be learned from successful models such as the NSF’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program and the Department of Labor’s Youth Apprenticeship. Both programs emphasize collaboration among academia, industry, nonprofits, and government. Industry partners co-develop and co-deliver technical training offered through the programs, and then commit to hiring program graduates. This collaborative model has enabled community-college students to perform industry-relevant product development for credit at school, while incentivizing employers in high-growth sectors to offer work-based learning experiences for high-school, out-of-school, and working youth.

Coordination and partnership do not happen by chance. Federal support is needed to provide organizational solutions, convene stakeholders, build consensus, manage and evaluate programmatic efforts, and accelerate the adoption of successful models. The Biden-Harris Administration should therefore increase funding for key bio-focused federal programs. We recommend allocating an additional $50 million to the Department of Education budget for Biotech Innovation and Modernization, an additional $25 million to the Department of Labor’s Apprenticeship Program for paid bioeconomy internships, and an additional $35 million to the NSF to support bioeconomy education and workforce development.

Part 3: Recognition

The federal government should establish a new competitive grants program to create bioeconomy-specific certificates and credentials that validate the quality and experience of their holders. This effort should be administered by the NSF, with guidance from the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Individual advancement in the bioeconomy currently relies heavily on previously established professional networks and “pay-to-play” experiences, putting students who are traditionally underrepresented in science at a disadvantage. An accessible, industry-recognized credential is needed to level the playing field. An international competition in biotechnology called iGEM provides an example of what a bioeconomy credential might look like. The stated mission of iGEM is to educate students in modern biotechnology and to train them as independent researchers. But the value of participating in iGEM has grown beyond that. Past participation in iGEM is often used as a marker of commitment to biological engineering by undergraduate and graduate university admissions committees, and as a filter to narrow the field of applicants for internships and jobs at biotechnology companies.

But the cost for iGEM participation (estimated in 2015 to be $50,000 per team), as well as the technical sophistication required to be competitive, makes iGEM inaccessible to students from most high schools and colleges. Inequities are hence exacerbated by widespread use of iGEM participation as a de facto qualifying credential for academic programs and jobs in the bioeconomy.

A more inclusive alternative is needed. The federal government should work with industry leaders in the U.S. bioeconomy to define a recognizable credential, akin to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certification and modeled on the Biotechnician Assistant Credentialing Exam (BACE) certificate, that is accessible to all U.S. students. With a modest allocation of $5 million (the same amount of funding it would take to support two iGEM teams per state for one year), federal agencies can create such a credential18 and develop a digital platform that connects (i) certificate-seekers to training providers, and (ii) certificate-holders to companies. In addition, open-access publications such as BioTreks, a peer-reviewed journal for high-school biological engineers, could be cultivated as an academic credential. Federal funding to index BioTrek issues and to provide small research grants that support high schoolers in carrying out scientific experiments will make it possible for all interested students to explore and publish their ideas.

Part 4. Entrepreneurship

The federal government should increase funding for the Department of Commerce Economic Development Association (EDA) to support regional programs and infrastructure needed to grow bioeconomy hubs. When combined with non-federal cost-sharing from states, companies, universities, nonprofits, and venture-capital groups, allocating $25 million per year for 3–5 years should be enough to kick-start bioeconomy hubs in a dozen new regions across the United States.

Successful precedent for this type of investment exists. A public-private investment of $10 million in 2013 established LabCentral as a shared lab and office facility for startup life-science companies in Cambridge, MA. Since then, LabCentral-incubated startups have raised $5.9 billion in private financing and created more than 2,000 jobs in Massachusetts. Other move-in-ready laboratory facilities for life-science startups have been built around the country, albeit mostly in locations with existing biotechnology clusters (e.g., North Carolina, California, and New York).

To encourage nationwide entrepreneurship19 and establish bioeconomy hubs in more rural communities and communities of color, additional funding should be allocated to a Department of Commerce grant program for regional alliances of academic, philanthropic, and business entities that aim to establish world-class biotechnology launchpads. This funding could, for instance, fund entrepreneurship workshops and grants, subsidize construction of shared lab space for startups, or provide incentives for faculty at local academic institutions to further develop their research discoveries into pilot programs, patents, and products. Over time, flourishing regional bioeconomy hubs will enable local students to pursue technical careers close to home wherever home may be, thereby distributing the benefits of the growing bioeconomy throughout the country. 

Conclusion

The Biden-Harris Administration can position the United States as a world leader in the bioeconomy through a four-part Built with Biology Plan that (1) revises legacy approaches to biology education, (2) promotes work-based learning, (3) develops accessible and meaningful credentials, and (4) invests in regional bioeconomy hubs. As the editors of Nature Biotechnology wrote in a March 2021 letter,21 U.S. investment in the bioeconomy must “not only promote technical excellence, but also foster equity, ethics, dialogue and social responsibility in how the fruits of…research are deployed.” Changes to biology education and investments in career pathways and entrepreneurship, as outlined in this memo, are central to achieving those goals.

Summary

Information technology (IT) refers to the full range of computing technologies and the people that work with them. IT itself is among the world’s fastest-growing economic sectors, and is an integral part of most other sectors. Rapid growth and demand for IT services have led to critical workforce shortages. Efforts to address these shortages have largely focused on K–12 and college education while ignoring the post-graduate population. This is a critical error. The post-graduate population is a valuable potential source of high-skilled tech talent and diversity. Many individuals with computing-related degrees would benefit from updates to their training, while individuals with expertise in other areas increasingly stand to benefit from adding IT competencies to their existing skills. Expanding post-graduate education and training opportunities would give current employees additional avenues for advancement, while also offering displaced workers ways to reenter the job market with a new set of skills. Such opportunities would also help employers quickly meet workforce needs, enabling the IT sector to become more dynamic, agile, productive, and innovative.

The Biden-Harris Administration should make a substantial investment in post-graduate opportunities that enable college graduates from a range of disciplines to build or upgrade their computational skills. These opportunities could include everything from business-to-business (B2B) short-term classes to update computational skills, to Master of Science (MS) degree programs that don’t require prior computer-science experience, to research and mentoring experiences that prepare students for Ph.D. studies. When implemented at scale, such opportunities will enable our nation to address pressing IT talent shortages while empowering Americans of all backgrounds to participate in—and benefit from—the IT economy.

Note: An initial version of this document was posted as a Widening Participation Quadrennial Paper. Citation: Cuny, J.; Danyluk, A.; Rushmeier, H. (2020). Fostering a Post-Graduate Tech Boom. Computing Research Association.

Summary

A robust STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) ecosystem is imperative to our country’s national security, international leadership, and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Insights into youths’ daily lives, ambitions, and concerns for the future are paramount to developing effective and diverse policies that strengthen STEM education, career pathways, and public engagement. Unfortunately, youth voice is too often absent from STEM initiatives and policymaking processes in the United States today.

This memo proposes a joint initiative led by the White House and its Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Education, and other federal agencies to amplify youth voices in STEM. The goals of this initiative are to (1) foster active youth participation in STEM policymaking, (2) position youth to provide critical insights into the future of STEM work, (3) champion youth STEM ambassadors in schools across America, and (4) promote youth engagement in STEM more broadly. Leveraging existing programs such as Jason Learning’s Argonaut, Rutgers 4-H STEM Ambassadors, Youth and Educators Succeeding/GenYES, and the Chief Science Officer (CSO) initiatives, this initiative would enable youth to participate in meaningful dialogues with the Biden administration and other federal decisionmakers. The proposed initiative aligns with the National Science and Technology Council’s goals of building strong foundations for STEM literacy; increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM; and preparing the STEM workforce for the future.

Smoke from wildfire disasters kills many more people than direct exposure to wildfire flames, and impacts many more communities than the communities located directly in wildfire perimeters. Direct exposure to the 2018 California wildfires caused 104 deaths statewide, but smoke from those fires were responsible for over 3,500 more. The United States currently lacks a systematic way to track health impacts (and associated costs) of wildfire smoke. This critical knowledge gap inhibits our nation’s ability to effectively recover from, respond to, and prevent future wildfire disasters.

The Biden-Harris Administration should address this gap by establishing a national public record of wildfire-smoke health impacts: a resource that would enable better accounting of wildfire costs and would support evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of efforts to prevent and mitigate catastrophic wildfires. Specifically, the Biden-Harris Administration should take the following actions to improve understanding of wildfire-smoke health impacts, better guide investments into wildfire management, and ultimately reduce the costs of wildfire disasters:

1. Systematically track mortality and morbidity due to smoke from wildfire disasters.
2. Fund research to better understand the scale of wildfire-smoke health impacts, and to develop cost-effective approaches for reducing those impacts.
3. Ensure that approaches to respond to, recover from, and prevent wildfire disasters include goals to equitably reduce the wildfire-smoke health impacts.

Challenge and Opportunity

Deaths and costs due to wildfire smoke are typically excluded from reported assessments of impacts associated with wildfire disasters due to a lack of readily available data. However, a growing body of research has found that wildfire smoke represents a significant portion of the costs incurred by society from catastrophic wildfires. Wildfire smoke exposes populations to hazardous levels of air pollutants, including particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less (PM2.5). Increased PM2.5 levels caused by wildfire smoke are associated with increased cases of respiratory (e.g., asthma, pneumonia), cardiovascular (e.g., heart attacks), and cerebrovascular (e.g., stroke) complications. Costs associated with these health impacts include the cost of health care, the value of lost wages, and the value of lost lives.

Smoke from wildfires has been found to be more deadly and more costly than the heat and flames from those same fires. A recent study estimated that smoke from the 2018 California wildfires—including the catastrophically deadly Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise—were responsible for 3,652 deaths in California.4 This count is considerably greater than the 104 deaths reported due to direct exposure to the wildfires. Similarly, estimated costs of smoke deaths from the 2018 California wildfires represented a loss of $32.2 billion. This is greater than the capital losses from those wildfires, estimated at $27.7 billion. The relatively large impacts of wildfire smoke are due in part to the fact that smoke from a wildfire regularly spreads far beyond the fire perimeter, meaning that many more communities are exposed to hazardous levels of wildfire smoke than are exposed to fire heat and flames. Moreover, PM2.5 from wildfire smoke may be up to 10 times more toxic than an equal dose of PM2.5 from other sources of ambient air pollution.

Catastrophic wildfires that blanket large swaths of the country with hazardous levels of smoke have become a common occurrence: one that is only predicted to worsen in the future as a result of climate change. Burke et al. (2020) found that wildfire smoke in western regions now accounts for up to 50% of overall exposure to air pollution (PM2.5 levels) for people living in those regions, compared to less than 20% a decade ago. Long-distance transport of wildfire smoke from western states accounts for more than 50% of smoke exposure in the rest of the United States. Long-distance transport of wildfire smoke also means that the negative impacts of wildfire smoke—and the benefits of effective management—regularly cross jurisdictional boundaries. The federal government and local, state, and Tribal governments must therefore coordinate to effectively reduce wildfire destructiveness.

Impacts of wildfire smoke disproportionally affect vulnerable populations. Outdoor workers, those who are unsheltered, and other populations unable to access indoor clean-air spaces due to socioeconomic factors are at greater risk of exposure to hazardous levels of air pollutants during wildfire-smoke events. The elderly, children, pregnant people, and those with pre-existing medical conditions are at greater risk of health complications when exposed to wildfire smoke. Equitable implementation of disaster resilience policies must address these disproportionate impacts of wildfire smoke on disadvantaged communities and vulnerable populations.

A clear understanding of the scale of past disasters is important to ensure that public investments in prevention and mitigation will be effective at reducing loss of life and other negative outcomes of future disasters. However, our understanding of the scale of wildfire-smoke health impacts across the nation is poor. There is currently no systematic nationwide accounting of excess deaths and injuries due to smoke from wildfires. Without a public record of health impacts due to wildfire smoke, it is difficult to gauge the full scale of damage caused by wildfire disasters or to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of prevention and mitigation efforts. This critical knowledge gap inhibits our nation’s ability to effectively respond to, recover from, and prevent catastrophic wildfires.

Creating a national public record of wildfire-smoke health impacts aligns with the Biden-Harris Administration’s priorities to:

• (a) Tackle the climate emergency and address racial equality.
• (b) Make evidence-based decisions guided by the best available science and data.
• (c) Assist federal agencies and state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments, communities, and businesses in preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change by expanding and improving climate-forecasting capabilities and information products for the public.
• (d) Enhance data collection and collaboration capabilities for high-consequence public health threats.

Plan of Action

The Biden-Harris Administration should take the following actions to reduce the destructiveness of catastrophic wildfires: 

Action 1. Systematically track the public-health impacts of smoke from wildfire disasters.

There is currently no nationwide, systematic tracking of mortality and morbidity due to wildfire smoke. The absence of robust tracking makes it difficult to compare wildfire disasters, draw conclusions about the scale of the problem, or assess effectiveness of prevention and mitigation efforts. The Biden-Harris Administration should direct relevant federal agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to develop appropriate protocols to collect, analyze, and publicly report estimates of population exposure to wildfire smoke, as well as of excess mortality and morbidity due to wildfire smoke.

A 2020 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine provides detailed recommendations for implementing a national framework for assessing mortality and morbidity of large-scale disasters. In addition, the CDC’s Health Information Innovation Consortium provides a useful forum in which to develop new approaches for surveilling the public-health impacts of wildfire smoke. The forum utilizes improved informatics, real-time sharing of electronic medical records, and an open-source, more integrated approach that enables cloud-based communication between data sets (e.g., data on health impacts and on smoke plumes). The CDC’s Flu View program, which tracks excess cases of pneumonia attributable to seasonal influenza activity, may provide a useful model for tracking excess cases of heart attack, asthma, stroke, and other health complications attributable to wildfire smoke. Development of protocols for tracking wildfires should be established immediately, perhaps starting by integrating relevant data from the state and local levels in western states. Integrated datasets should include sufficient geographic and demographic detail to identify disproportionate impacts to specific populations, such as disadvantaged communities. Efforts should also be made to retroactively estimate health impacts for past wildfire disasters to the extent feasible with existing data.

Action 2. Fund research and monitoring to better understand wildfire-smoke health impacts and to identify cost-effective strategies for preventing and mitigating those impacts.

Although a growing body of research has found that wildfire smoke is a serious public-health threat, there remain critical knowledge gaps that impede our ability to mount cost-effective prevention and mitigation campaigns. The federal government has mounted some laudable efforts to address these gaps. For example, the EPA—in partnership with 10 federal, state, tribal and local organizations—recently launched the “Cleaner Indoor Air During Wildfires Challenge” to stimulate development of new technologies to help address health impacts of wildfire smoke. The Biden-Harris Administration should continue to fund research, monitoring, and innovation to improve our understanding of the public-health impacts of wildfire smoke. Priority areas for investment include:

• Improved monitoring of population exposure to wildfire smoke. Existing ground and satellite monitoring infrastructure is mostly designed to monitor ambient air pollution. There is a need for monitoring infrastructure optimized for monitoring wildfire smoke, which is much more variable in time and space than ambient air pollution.
• Generation of dose-response curves specific to wildfire smoke. Dose-response curves for ambient air pollution may not adequately reflect the health impacts of wildfire smoke, which typically exposes populations to potentially more toxic and relatively higher concentrations of air pollutants for shorter time periods. Dose-response curves specific to wildfire smoke are necessary to improve predictions of the health impacts of future wildfire disasters.
• Improved understanding of the health impacts of smoke from managed and prescribed fires relative to the health impacts of smoke from uncontrolled wildfires. Managed and prescribed fires can be effective at reducing the risk of future uncontrolled wildfire but are themselves a potential source of harmful smoke exposure.
• Cost-benefit analyses of different approaches to mitigating wildfire smoke. Actions such as reducing outdoor activities, masking, and operating HEPA filtration systems can reduce population exposure to wildfire smoke. More research is needed to assess the cost-effectiveness of these and other impact-mitigation strategies.
• Improved understanding of how exposure to wildfire smoke—and ability to mitigate wildfire-smoke health impacts—varies among populations. Many disadvantaged populations are especially vulnerable to negative health outcomes from wildfire smoke because socioeconomic factors prevent them from following public-health recommendations for reducing smoke exposure. For example, agricultural workers without paid time off may be unable to reduce time spent outdoors. Lower-income households without access to air conditioning may be unable to close windows on hot days to create a clean-air indoor space at home.

Action 3. Ensure that approaches to respond to, recover from, and prevent wildfire disasters include steps to equitably reduce wildfire-smoke health impacts.

Wildfire response, recovery, and prevention efforts should all strive to reduce losses from wildfire smoke as well as losses from wildfire flames in order to reduce the total destructiveness of wildfire disasters. For example, approaches to harden homes to prevent wildfire losses typically focus on installation of ignition-resistant roofs or ember-resistant vent screens to prevent houses from catching fire. Home-hardening approaches should also include steps to prevent losses from wildfire smoke (e.g., installation of whole-house HVAC systems with HEPA filters to maintain clean-air indoor spaces). Particular emphasis should be placed on reducing smoke impacts to vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly, those with pre-existing medical conditions, disadvantaged communities, outdoor workers, and populations unable to take mitigation actions due to socioeconomic factors. For instance, the federal government could subsidize installation of whole-house HVAC systems for households below a minimum income threshold.

Conclusion

Smoke from wildfire disasters kills many more people than direct exposure to the flames and impacts many more communities than the communities located directly in wildfire perimeters. Disadvantaged communities bear an outsized portion of the public-health burdens of wildfire smoke. The United States currently lacks a systematic, nationwide accounting of the scale of health impacts of smoke from wildfire disasters. Without a public record of wildfire-smoke health impacts, it is difficult to gauge the full scale of damage caused by catastrophic wildfires or to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of prevention and mitigation efforts to reduce wildfire impacts. This critical knowledge gap inhibits our nation’s ability to effectively respond to, recover from, and prevent future disasters. The Biden-Harris Administration should act to (1) systematically track mortality and morbidity due to wildfire smoke; (2) fund research and monitoring to better understand wildfire-smoke health impacts and to identify cost-effective approaches for preventing and mitigating those impacts; and (3) ensure that approaches to respond to, recover from, and prevent wildfire disasters include steps to equitably reduce wildfire-smoke health impacts. With climate change poised to increase the severity and frequency of wildfire disasters, our nation must act now to develop the deep understanding of wildfire-smoke health impacts that will support increased resilience to this aspect of global change.

Summary

Rebooting the American Dream (RAD) is a proposed national challenge-grant program that funds “Regional Centers for Shared Prosperity” in emerging innovation ecosystems, with the intent of (1) accelerating startup creation, (2) developing the next-generation of talent, and (3) providing alternative capitalization models. It is expected that initially funding the program to award six regional challenge grants of $25 million each will yield at least a 3:1 return in private-dollar investments—for a total of $500 million—and create at least 21,000 jobs in underserved areas of the country. In light of the massive job losses induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, RAD grants will build momentum behind existing place-based initiatives and help surface the wealth of diverse human potential and innovation that exists across the United States. 

The RAD proposal aims to revive entrepreneurship across America by helping give every American, regardless of geography, race, gender, or socioeconomic status, the opportunity to build a competitive company. Advancements in internet capabilities, communication tools, and information technology have made entrepreneurship accessible to more people in more places than ever before. Yet massive job losses related to COVID-19 and ever-growing global competition require the United States to discover new ways to create sustainable jobs. Over the past decade, initiatives led by the federal government in partnership with academics and nonprofits have given policymakers a markedly better understanding of the issues facing entrepreneurs. RAD is directly informed by this body of knowledge. By supporting bottom-up, place-based investment and building a network of new ideas through RAD, the Biden-Harris Administration can simultaneously foster American dynamism and strengthen American economic competitiveness.

Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration should create the Local Innovation Unit (LIU) to catalyze and coordinate decentralized, city and county-based experiments focused on the most urgent and complex challenges facing the United States. Traditional “top-down” methods of policy design and problem solving are no longer effective in addressing our nation’s most pressing issues, such as pandemics, climate change, and decreasing economic mobility. The nature of these problems, coupled with an absence of tested solutions or “best practices” and ongoing partisan gridlock, demands a more agile and experimental “bottom-up” approach. Such an approach focuses on empowering coalitions of social innovators at the local level—including local governments, private-sector businesses, community-based organizations, philanthropists, and universities—to design and test solutions that work for their communities. Promising solutions can then be scaled horizontally (e.g., to other cities and counties) and vertically (e.g., to inform federal policy and action).

The LIU will be a place-based policy initiative consisting of two primary components: (1) multi-city and county experimentation cohorts organized around common problems, via which local coalitions design and test solutions within their communities, and (2) a digital platform, housed in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), that will help LIU participants connect, exchange materials and resources, help participants collect and visualize data, evaluate solutions, and publish lessons learned.

Summary

Cancer patients urgently need more effective treatments that are accessible to everyone. This year alone, an estimated 1.9 million people in the United States will receive new cancer diagnoses, and cancer will kill more than 600,000 Americans. Yet there are no targeted therapeutics for many cancers, and the treatments that do exist can be prohibitively scarce or expensive.

Repurposing existing drugs, especially off-patent generics, is the fastest way to develop new treatments. Hundreds of non-cancer generic drugs have already been tested by researchers and physicians in preclinical and clinical studies for cancer, some up to Phase II trials, and show intriguing promise. But due to a market failure, there is a lack of funding for clinical trials that evaluate generic drugs. This means that there isn’t conclusive evidence of the efficacy and safety of repurposed generics for treating cancer, and so cancer patients who desperately need more (and more affordable) treatment options are unable to realize the benefits that existing generics might offer.

To quickly and affordably improve the lives of cancer patients, the Biden-Harris Administration should create the Repurposing Generics Grant Program through the National Cancer Institute. This program would fund definitive clinical trials evaluating repurposed generic drugs for cancer. A key first step would be for President Biden to include this program in his FY2022 budget proposal. Congress could then authorize the program and related appropriations totaling $100 million over 5 years.

Introduction

For those who can afford to fill their fridge by clicking a button on their smartphone or walking around to the organic grocery around the corner, it is easy to forget how complex and fragile our food systems can be. However, for millions of Americans who suffer from poor health because of food insecurity, or farmers and ranchers whose yields are decreasing along with the nutrient density of their product, that fragility is felt every day. Sustainable food systems engender intricate connections and feedback loops among climate change, public health, food security, national security, and social equity. When one of these factors is overstressed, disaster can result.

COVID-19 has underscored the vulnerability of our food systems. The pandemic caused restaurants to close overnight, strained supply chains, and led to food rotting on land, in warehouses, and on shelves. Low-income and food-insecure families waited in lines that stretched for miles while producers and distributors struggled to figure out how to get supplies to those who needed them. Concurrently, generations of racial inequity and the coordinated disenfranchisement of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) has crystalized as an issue that needs to be addressed at every level in our country, especially within our food and agricultural systems.

Addressing these issues—now and for the future—requires a coordinated response across sectors. Food security is deeply intertwined with public health and social equity. Un- and under- employment, the racial wealth gap, and increased financial hardships for certain communities result in increased malnutrition, obesity, metabolic diseases, and chronic illness, as well as particular susceptibility to severe impacts from COVID-19 infections during the present pandemic. The climate crisis compounds these issues. Farming practices that degrade soil health, reduce agriculture capacity, and compromise the well-being of small farms and rural communities prevent us as a nation from becoming healthier and more secure. As we look at opportunities to “build back better,” we must embrace paradigmatic shifts—fundamental restructuring of our systems that will support equitable and inclusive futures. Compounding crises require changes in not only what we do, but how we think about what we do.

A fundamental problem is that progress in modern agriculture has been implicitly defined as progress in agricultural technology (AgTech) and biotechnology. Little emphasis is placed on examining whole-systems dependencies and on how connections among soil health, gut bacteria, and antibiotic use in livestock impact human health, economic prosperity, and climate change. With such a narrow view of “innovation,” current practices will solve a handful of isolated problems but create many more.

Fortunately, alternatives are ripe for adoption. Regenerative farming, for instance, is a proven way to combat future warming while increasing the adaptive capacity of our lands, providing equitable access to food, and creating viable rural economies. Regenerative farming can also restore soil health, which in turn improves food quality while enhancing carbon sequestration and providing natural water treatment.

Transitioning away from dominant but harmful practices is not easy. The shift will require an inclusive innovation ecosystem, investors with long time horizons, new infrastructure, tailored education, economic incentives, and community safety nets. This document explores how the agricultural sector can support, and be supported by, policies that advance science, technology, and innovation while revitalizing living systems and equitable futures. We recognize that agricultural policy often overlooks interventions that are appropriately suited to advance these concepts with Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities and on tribal lands. To avoid this mistake, the concepts presented herein start from the ground up. We focus on the benefits of improving soil health and food security through regenerative agricultural activities, and provide examples of policies that could promote such activities in a variety of ways. Letting practice drive policy— instead of having policy dictate practice—will result in more sustainable, inclusive outcomes for all communities.

While agricultural policy can and should be shaped at the local, regional, state, and national level, this document places special emphasis on the role of the federal government. Building better food systems will require multiple government agencies, especially federal agencies, to collaboratively advance more equitable policies and practices. Most national agricultural programs are housed within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But the interconnectedness of how we produce food and fiber (and the ways in which those practices impact our environment and nourish people) demands priority investment not only from USDA, but also from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Health and Human Services—to name just a few. This document—based on a review of existing policy recommendations and current practice, development and refinement of new ideas, and identification of underleveraged roles and programs within the government— suggests what such investments might look like in practice.

Achieving energy decarbonization in America will require a power grid supplied by renewable energy and backed by ample energy storage. The challenge is that many types of renewable energy provide power intermittently depending on factors such as the time of day or weather conditions. To maintain grid reliability while working towards a nation powered by 100% renewable energy, the Biden-Harris Administration should accelerate adoption of distributed energy resources and expand transmission capacity to create a more unified national power grid. These efforts will increase equitable access to clean energy, accelerate investment in renewables, and create thousands of long-term, high-skilled jobs in a robust American energy sector.

Challenge and Opportunity

The U.S. power grid was built in—and designed for—a previous energy era: one in which on-demand, regionally located energy supplies (such as coal-fired power plants) are delivered to thousands of customers along one-direction transmission lines and managed by public utilities that operate as local monopolies.

But as our nation pushes to replace fossil fuels with cleaner sources of power, the energy landscape will look quite different. Many types of renewable energy provide power intermittently depending on factors such as the time of day or weather conditions. Supplies of such energy sources cannot be ramped up easily (or at all) during periods of peak demand. Meanwhile, smart-and-distributed-energy technologies—such as smart thermostats, rooftop solar, and electric vehicles—have led to an increasingly dynamic and complex power grid. 

The policy response to these rapid changes in the way we generate power has mostly constituted a patchwork of efforts at the state and regional level. Federal attention to renewables has focused largely on tax incentives and on regulation via orders from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). For instance, FERC’s recent order opening wholesale energy markets to distributed energy resources is an important step towards increasing the share of renewables in the U.S. energy sector. Incentives to increase adoption of renewables and investment in research and development (R&D) to improve performance and utility of renewables are essential as well. But to realize a quick and smooth transition to a clean-energy future, concerted action is needed to tackle the intermittency challenge that renewables pose.

Such action can proceed via two complementary pathways simultaneously. The first pathway is using technology advances like vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration, demand response, smart thermostats, and energy storage to flexibly shift load demand. These technologies help guide certain discretionary types of energy consumption (e.g., running a load of laundry) to occur during times when renewable-energy supply is high but demand is low, and can even enable consumers to return energy to the grid (e.g., by plugging in a parked electric vehicle so that the vehicle’s battery can be used as a power source) to during periods of peak demand.

Unfortunately, innovative energy-management technologies are markedly underutilized in the U.S. power sector. Distorted market-incentive structures, inadequate control protocols governing relationships between operators and consumers, and reliability concerns have all made utilities reluctant to embrace a more dynamic grid. Moreover, grid users (i.e., residential and commercial customers) cannot currently participate in an open energy market on an equal footing with utilities. This means that our nation is not realizing the full value of services that customers can provide to a power grid.

A smarter grid-operating system would (1) make it easier for operators to integrate distributed energy resources (DER) with more conventional types of power supplies, (2) economically incentivize changes in user behavior to smooth out energy-demand curves, and (3) enable everyday Americans to invest in distributed clean-energy technologies and earn returns for providing various services to the power grid. These steps in turn would greatly facilitate large-scale integration of renewables into the U.S. power mix.

The second pathway for addressing the intermittency problem is to finally create a connected and integrated American power grid. This would enable areas with steady supplies of renewable energy—such as solar in the Southwest, wind in Texas and the Midwest, and off-shore wind in New England—to deliver power to different parts of the country as needed. Preliminary studies done by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated the economic and environmental benefits of unifying currently disconnected sections of the American power grid. Examples from California and Texas illustrate the need to and benefits of expanding national transmission capacity.

California’s power grid highlights the problems of building aggressive renewable energy portfolios without sufficient transmission. As renewable-energy capacity in California has increased, so too has curtailment—i.e., deliberate reduction in output—of that capacity (Figure 1). Roughly half of this curtailment has been due to transmission constraints. Transmission constraints have also prevented creation of approximately 72,000 potential American jobs from renewable-energy projects in the Midwest.

Figure 1

Insufficient transmission capacity coupled with increasing renewable-energy production in California is resulting in significant curtailment, or waste, of renewable energy in the state. (Source: California ISO. (2021).

In Texas, the 2021 winter storm Uri recently demonstrated an even more dire consequence of limited interconnection across our nation’s power infrastructure: the disastrous failure modes that can manifest in isolated power grids. When Uri hit, grid operators simultaneously encountered high load demand as residents turned up their heaters and inadequate energy supply as naturalgas power plants began failing in the cold weather. The rolling power failures experienced in Texas during the storm could have been mitigated if Texas had been able to import energy from other grids. Connecting the regional power grids that exist in the United States will improve grid resiliency across the nation by allowing regions to draw from each other as circumstances and local conditions demand.

Strengthening the U.S. power grid through improved use of energy-management technologies and better regional interconnections will have benefits that extend beyond grid flexibility and resilience. Grid modernization will create jobs across America in the construction, manufacturing, and energy sectors. By empowering rate-payers to produce their own energy, sell back surplus energy to the grid, and be rewarded for shifting energy-consumption patterns in response to grid conditions, grid modernization will generate economic value for consumers. By encouraging development of distributed energy resources, grid modernization will allow rural communities to replace expensive and burdensome propane shipments with continuously flowing electricity from local solar and storage installations. By transforming the U.S. power grid from a collection of regional entities into an interconnected, national resource, grid modernization will allow energy developers to tap into a national energy market instead of being limited by regional boundaries. And by creating a more unified energy sector, one in which states and communities rely on each other for power, grid modernization might even result in a more united country.

Plan of Action

The federal government plays a critical role in regulating and maintaining the nation’s grid infrastructure. As such, there is much that the Biden-Harris Administration can do—by using existing executive authority and by working with Congress on legislative actions—to strengthen the resilience of the U.S. power grid and foster integration of distributed energy resources and renewables into the U.S. power sector. Progress on these fronts will help transition the United States towards a 100% clean-energy future while creating industries and jobs centered around clean-energy resources, building up America’s advanced manufacturing base, and generating new economic opportunities for all Americans.

Actions using existing executive authority

Improve coordination between federal and state entities to reduce regulatory barriers to energy development. The federal government can support interstate grid projects (such as regional interconnections) by helping coordinate state legislatures and by reducing regulatory burdens related to such projects. In particular, FERC plays an important role in coordinating regional grid investments and planning across states (such as the Eastern seaboard’s off-shore wind grid). The Biden-Harris Administration should prioritize this function of FERC in order to reduce the bureaucratic hurdles faced by energy developers. The new White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy (Climate Policy Office) can play an additional coordinating role, helping to align technical research conducted at the Department of Energy (DOE)‘s national labs with policy and regulatory work conducted through the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Department of Interior, the Department of Defense, and other relevant federal entities. Finally, the Climate Policy Office can work with state legislatures to provide state-specific recommendations (i.e., recommendations tailored to the unique natural resources and electricity market structures of each state) on how to best incentivize investment and job growth in the energy industry.

Actions involving collaboration with Congress

Scale R&D innovations in clean-energy technologies by increasing relevant DOE funding. The federal government can use its federal budget to help scale R&D innovations in clean energy and help advance those innovations towards manufacturing and production. By accelerating commercialization and mass production of clean-energy innovations, federal investment will help make clean energy more affordable for American consumers, while simultaneously fostering job growth in the American energy sector. To that end, the next White House budget proposal should include significant funding increases for DOE, in particular for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE)¹, Loan Program Office (LPO), and Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy (ARPA-E). Increasing funding for these offices, which use different financing schemes to invest in technologies at different stages of commercialization, is a direct way for the federal government to scale up American-made energy technologies. These three offices heave a proven ability to identify promising candidates for energy innovation.² Increasing appropriations for these high-impact offices by $500M will represent a more than 10% increase in each offices’ budget: enough to make a difference, but not a dramatic departure from the budget increases already appropriated by Congress from FY 2019– FY 2020.

Broaden the definition of “qualifying facilities” to allow everyday Americans to participate in energy markets. Broadening the definition of “qualifying facility (QF)” in the Power Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) of 1978 to include energy storage, power quality factors, and demand response would require utilities to compensate energy providers for a wider range of services: i.e., services that go beyond simple energy production. The power grids of today and of the future are more than a collection of relatively fixed energy demands and supplies. Broadening the definition of QF would acknowledge the increasingly dynamic nature of the power grid, where excess supply often needs to be stored for later and where some portion of demand load can be shifted to different times of day. In particular, broadening the definition of QF would require utilities to (1) treat their own customers as first-class suppliers for a diverse set of potential use-cases in the energy marketplace and (2) properly compensate rate-payers for any services they provide to the power grid. Ensuring the market properly rewards customers for adopting novel clean-energy technologies will spur clean-energy market growth, drive innovation, and generate economic value for individual Americans newly able to participate in electricity markets.

Encourage construction of additional transmission capacity via tax incentives and loan programs. Tax credits have historically been a popular way for Congress to incentivize development of renewable energy such as wind and solar.³ By making the construction of additional transmission capacity similarly eligible for tax credits, Congress can support a critical piece of our nation’s grid infrastructure while creating construction jobs across the country.⁴

Frequently Asked Questions

What role can electric vehicles play in a smarter grid?

From the standpoint of the power grid, electric vehicles (EV) are essentially mobile batteries. EVs plugged in and their batteries used to store surplus renewable energy when production is high or return energy to the grid when renewable-energy production drops. However, this vehicle-to-grid exchange requires careful coordination between EV owners and utility operators. The current power grid is not designed to handle individual consumers returning power to the grid, and there is no way for utilities to compensate EV owners for the value they provide to utilities by doing so. A “smart grid” would create an electricity marketplace that EV owners could participate in. Such a marketplace would significantly improve the value proposition of EVs, encouraging EV uptake as well as domestic investment in advanced automobile manufacturing. Given that Tesla became America’s most valuable automobile company in 2020, the market has already seen the value that EVs have to offer. A smarter power grid will allow full capitalization of that value by consumers, industry, and our power grid.

read more

In an increasingly divisive political environment, how can bipartisan support be generated for investment in energy infrastructure?

Investing in the U.S. power grid will benefit many constituent groups, allowing for a multifaceted approach to messaging. For instance:

• Solar energy coupled with storage can lower electricity costs and reduce reliance on imported natural gas or propane for rural and isolated communities.


• Certain U.S. geographic regions, such as the Southwest, contain some of the greatest natural renewable energy sources in the world. Directing federal incentives towards such areas will create jobs at the state and local level while reducing foreign energy dependence.


• President Eisenhower passed the Interstate Highway Act by appealing to bipartisan support in a Cold War environment and helped create our modern road infrastructure. The transmission power grid, as the “interstate highway” for the electricity that powers America, is a similarly important piece of infrastructure that will help America maintain its national security and international competitiveness.

read more

How do established or maturing clean-energy technologies relate to America’s economic and strategic interests?

Distributed clean-energy technologies, like energy storage, residential solar, on-shore and offshore wind, and electric vehicles are quickly reaching economies of scale. Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to ensure grid stability, optimize grid operations, and inform resource planning. High-voltage transmission lines and power inverters are critical parts of the infrastructure that makes up the backbone of the power grid. Each of these technologies presents an economic opportunity for the federal government to invest in building new infrastructure and spur private development, creating new jobs and industries in the process. In addition, many of these technologies are currently manufactured abroad or rely on minerals imported from foreign countries. The federal government should direct research funding towards technologies that do not rely on foreign imports and that leverage America’s existing manufacturing infrastructure and natural resources. Finally, maintaining a robust workforce of professionals who know how to manage and debug production processes will be important for ensuring that our nation is capable of translating American R&D into products that can be manufactured domestically. Following through on the Plan of Action outlined in this proposal will help open the power grid to broader participation and ensure cleaner, more equitable power distribution while simultaneously advancing American technical competitiveness and manufacturing capabilities.

read more

Why is changing the definition of qualifying facilities under PURPA important to helping Americans achieve access to the power grid market?

The federal government’s recent involvement in the power market has focused on tax credits and R&D funding. Indeed, the Energy Act of 2020 injects significant federal funding to R&D funding programs and extends certain tax credits. While continued support for R&D funding is important and tax credits are an important market mechanism, amending PURPA is a different type of action altogether. By changing the definition of qualifying facilities, the federal government categorically changes the basis by which utilities buy power. Firmly establishing an expanded definition of QF via legislation will prevent non-elected bodies from arbitrating the definition of QFs either now or in the future. FERC performed such arbitration in 2020, to the detriment of energy storage projects and the chagrin of clean-energy trade associations.

Amending the definition will force the market to properly compensate consumer-provided services that provide value to the grid. For instance, smart thermostats can reduce electricity used for heating and cooling when energy supply drops or electric vehicles can be optimized to only charge when supply is ample. Incentivizing behavioral changes like these is critical for achieving a 100% clean power grid. Amending PURPA to allow Americans to invest in and earn returns on a broad range of energy technologies today will prepare the United States for the power grid of tomorrow.

read more