and infrastructure to disadvantaged communities, a key step in fulfilling a promise by the Biden administration to prioritize environmental justice.
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.