Local climate activism leads to ‘remarkable' gains, report shows

National Observer

2 days ago

This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration
What do an offshore wind farm in New York, a campaign to install 275,000 heat pumps in Maine and the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline have in common? They were all the result of 'community-based strategies' with involvement or leadership from local grassroots groups. Advocates say this is a powerful and relatively cheap way of driving climate action, especially as the Trump administration rolls back as much progress as it can.
A new report is the first to put hard numbers to that effectiveness in the United States and Canada. The analysis quantifies how much carbon a given law, protest movement, or clean energy project will keep out of the atmosphere. It also calculates the amount spent on the local efforts advancing each campaign to determine the cost of preventing each metric ton of CO2 equivalent from being released. (CO2 equivalent is a measurement that considers other greenhouse gases like methane.) 'The numbers really did show that these had meaningful impacts and a good return on investment,' said Sam Greenberg, a director at Redstone Strategy Group and a coauthor of the report. 'The benefits are not limited just to the quantifiable carbon impact — even though that's what we were focusing on — but also understanding the full picture of all the other co-benefits we saw coming out of this.'
That wind farm in New York, for instance, will keep 7.7 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent out of the atmosphere by 2030, at a philanthropic cost of just 3 cents per ton, the report notes. A solar farm on the Moapa River Indian Reservation in Nevada will avoid 4.2 million metric tons in the same period, costing 12 cents per ton. Both are slowing climate change and reducing the air pollution that usually comes out of coal or natural gas power plants. That, in turn, brings the added benefit of improving human health.
The report considered the supply side of things as well. The Keystone XL pipeline would have ferried crude oil from Canada to refineries in the United States. But after 10 years of legal battles and fearsome opposition by environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and farmers along the route, the developer abandoned the project in 2021. The victory means that between 52 million and 105 million metric tons won't be released by 2030, the report finds. The local advocacy efforts cost $2.6 million, or 2 to 5 cents per ton. 'You can make a solid argument that both the supply-side efforts and the renewable energy development can both have a meaningful impact,' Greenberg said.
Community activism for state policies, too, are majorly slashing emissions. In 2023, Maine blew past its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule. Now it wants to install another 175,000 by 2027. Because the devices run on electricity, the state can power them with renewable energy, avoiding 1.2 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030, according to the report.
Heat pumps are a good example of climate action not necessarily being branded as such. People might want to adopt the appliances because they're more efficient, or to avoid burning toxic gas in a furnace. Advocates can also pitch renewable energy projects like wind and solar farms as job creators. 'The additional benefits of climate action, those are usually the motivating factors for people,' said Dan Jasper, senior policy advisor at Project Drawdown, a climate solutions group that wasn't involved in the report. 'Things like employment, health, less pollution — these are the things that people most fundamentally agree on, and it helps to move conversations beyond the political deadlock.'
Advocates say that "community-based strategies" driven by grassroots groups are a powerful and relatively cheap way of driving climate action, especially as the Trump administration rolls back as much progress as it can.
With a lack of sufficient leadership on climate even before Donald Trump took office again, it's been up to states to set their own policies. In 2019, New York passed the landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act after years of organizing and campaigning by the coalition NY Renews. It commits the state to 100 percent clean electricity by 2040. But even before that, the report notes, by 2030 the law will have canceled 58 million to 120 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. With $10 million spent on local philanthropic efforts, the cost comes to between 8 and 17 cents per ton.
Cities, too, are crucibles for climate action. The report notes that in 2019, San Jose, California, became the biggest city in the U.S. to mandate that all new single-family homes, duplexes, and multifamily homes of three stories or less be built without natural gas hookups. That means occupants will be running conventional electric or induction stoves and heat pumps, all electrified with ever more renewable power on the grid. The philanthropic support for the effort cost $1 million, avoiding 887,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030.
'It's kind of remarkable how much mitigation you can get from community-based, grassroots-promoted activities,' said Rhea Suh, president and CEO of the Marin Community Foundation, which collaborates with donors and nonprofits. (Redstone prepared the report for them, as well as the MacArthur Foundation and Equation Campaign.) 'It is clear that policies that were created from the ground up tend to last longer than the top-down policies.'
That's due to increased engagement, Suh adds. Whereas the federal government dictates broad policies across the whole country, mayors and governors are more in tune with what their people actually want. By working on a more granular level with communities, organizers and politicians can collaborate with residents, not dictate. 'The durability comes from just the equity sweat that is put into these things,' Suh said.