The Council on Environmental Quality unveiled the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, used to map and identify communities that are most in need of investment by weighing income levels and over two dozen socieconomic, health and environmental indicators.
The software has been under development since early last year with input from the White House environmental justice advisory council as a key input for President Joe Biden's "Justice40 Initiative," a goal he set early in his presidency to ensure that 40% of the benefits of federal investments in clean energy get channeled to communities that are overburdened by pollution.
Using census tract data, the web-based program identifies communities as being disadvantaged if they are above the 65th percentile for income and above the 90th percentile for any of 25 indicators ranging from local asthma rates to traffic and hazardous waste site proximity to unemployment. But an indicator that is conspicuosly absent is race. A Biden administration official told reporters that the tool was designed to be "race neutral" to be able to withstand potential legal challenges.Sacoby Wilson, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health who helped developed a state-level screening tool for Maryland, said the decision not to use race as an indicator is political.
The Enviromental Protection Agency also on Friday launched a revamp of its own screening tool, EJSCREEN, which can be used to guide environmental rulemaking. L1N2M11WMRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comMore from ReutersSign up to our investor newsletter to get the latest news and trends in global financial markets.