After adopting its own Green New Deal, a college town sets a new target

Five years after setting some of the most ambitious climate targets in the nation, Ithaca, N.Y., is hoping to set a new standard. The city council unanimously voted this week to require that half the funding spent on its energy transition and on major infrastructure investments go toward those residents most at risk from climate change.

The vote makes Ithaca the first U.S. city to set a 'climate justice' spending benchmark higher than the target set by the Biden Administration.

It's the latest development in the college town's effort to model how a small city can tackle climate change. In 2019, Ithaca passed a Green New Deal resolution, becoming the first city in the country to commit to removing fossil fuels from all buildings within a decade. That effort has lagged behind its target, though it's now picking up steam.

"It's impossible to separate economic and social injustice from the impacts of climate change," said Ithaca mayor Robert Cantelmo in an interview just after the council voted unanimously to adopt the new framework, called Justice50. The legislation, he said, is an attempt to right the city's history of putting poorer communities in the path of more pollution and environmental disinvestment.

The Justice50 framework will require that half the city's spending on major infrastructure upgrades and its Green New Deal reach communities most vulnerable to climate change. That includes the city's historically Black Southside neighborhood, much of which the federal government recently designated a flood-risk zone. New investments could include greater flood protection in at-risk neighborhoods, and helping lower-income residents reduce energy costs, the mayor said.

The hope, according to city sustainability director Rebecca Evans, is that these investments will help reduce economic and social disparities in Ithaca. Census data shows the city has some of the highest rates of income inequality in the state.

"It really is literally putting our money where our mouths are," Evans said. "It's a way for the city to say that, yes, we care about climate justice. But we also care about justice more broadly. And we want to have a city where people have equal access to resources."

The new framework is modeled after a federal initiative, called Justice40. In 2021, President Biden signed an executive order directing that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal climate and energy spending should flow to communities that have been heavily polluted or have historically lacked public investment. That came after New York State passed its own legislation requiring that disadvantaged communities receive at least 35% of state spending on clean energy initiatives under its 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

Ithaca's plan goes further, not only setting a higher target, but also applying it to a wider range of spending. The city will apply the standard not only to its environmental investments, but to its entire capital budget, which includes funding for roads, buildings, and water infrastructure. The Justice50 framework also requires the city to report regularly on which communities benefit from its spending — an accountability measure the federal initiative currently lacks.

That could be a model for other efforts around the country, said Colleen Callahan, the co-executive director of UCLA's Luskin Center for Innovation, who has researched state approaches to climate justice spending. Environmental advocates have voiced concern that the federal Justice40 guidelines are too vague and its benefits difficult to track.

Local initiatives like Ithaca's could help ensure federal funding actually reaches communities most affected by climate change, Callahan said. That's because states and cities often have discretion over where funding covered by the federal Justice40 initiative goes.

"Local guardrails are no substitute for federal guardrails, but they are really important nevertheless," Callahan said.

Under the new framework, Ithaca will create a rubric to determine how to prioritize spending. Among those the city has defined as 'climate justice communities' are low-income households and residents who spend more than 15% of their total income on household energy costs. Nationally, lower-income households often live in neighborhoods that are hotter, and have fewer resources to deal with extreme weather and health conditions made worse by heat, like heart disease or asthma.

Environmental advocates in Ithaca said the adoption of the new framework marks a significant step towards one of the central pledges of the city's Green New Deal: a commitment to addressing economic inequality while tackling the climate crisis.

"We haven't really had a concrete way of holding the city accountable to that promise," said Siobhan Hull, a student at Cornell University and an organizer with the local chapter of the Sunrise Movement. "Justice50 offers an opportunity for us to do that."

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