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Climate law offers perks for local zoning changes
The Biden administration will use the new funding to promote housing projects that don't rely on cars.
CLIMATEWIRE — The Biden administration might have found a way to influence local zoning decisions to make cities less dependent on cars.
The Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law provide the federal government with financial incentives that could help persuade communities to build housing projects around mass transit — and potentially punish those that don't.
The administration released a blueprint last week for decarbonizing the transportation sector, and it listed "community design and land-use planning” as one of three strategies to “tackle the problem at the root” and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 (Energywire, Jan. 10).
It's an acknowledgment that electric vehicles alone won't make the sector carbon-free. Other modes of transportation — such as trains, buses and bikes — should be expanded to help address climate change, many experts say. For those options to be more attractive, cities are being asked to increase housing density and yield space now occupied by cars to walkers and bikers.
“The demand for transportation is intrinsically tied to how we design our communities,” said Adie Tomer, an infrastructure expert and a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. “What appears to be the most promising intervention here is the federal government using pockets of money to incentivize developments in more climate-efficient locations.”
Those incentives would come in the form of federal grants for local programs. The Inflation Reduction Act established the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, granting EPA the discretion to handpick applications from local governments that are in line with the federal climate goals. The infrastructure bill passed in 2021 created a $15 billion Capital Investment Grants program, which allows the Department of Transportation to attach conditions to new transit projects.
“What's different with this law is the scale of discretionary money,” said Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress. “Because of the dollars that flow, you can strongly incentivize folks to make different choices. If a jurisdiction has a vision for doing big box stores, huge parking lots and low-density residential development, the question is, do you fund them?”
Other grant programs could be tweaked to help meet the administration's climate goals, Tomer said. When giving out Community Development Block Grants, the Department of Housing and Urban Development can offer additional bonuses to local governments that promise to build high-rises around major transit stops.
HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a statement that the blueprint’s focus on local land use will include historically disadvantaged minority groups, “to better align transportation, housing, and community development investments in these and other communities across the country.”
Despite the carrots and sticks that are available to the Biden administration, it is still dependent on local governments’ willingness to build projects that are centered around public transportation and multi-family housing.
“There's a challenge in getting the kind of geographic coverage that you want, while also making sure that those projects are aligning with your broader climate and social equity goals,” DeGood said. “They're constrained by what projects come in the door.”
