Brenda Mallory, 12th chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the first African American in that role, advises the president about a variety of environmental issues in public health and the environment, with a specific focus on environmental justice, economic development, and job growth. In a Q & A with the Amsterdam News, she discussed the Justice40 initiative, funding for greenhouse gas reduction, and the environmental strategic plan of the Biden administration.
AmNews: Can you talk about the work your office and the White House are doing around environmental quality?
We have a president and a vice president who are focused on trying to make sure that all communities get the benefit of clean air, clean water, and (living) in a healthy environment. Much of our agenda has been anchored to that core belief and there’s a real focus on communities that have been historically underserved. We have what we refer to as an environmental justice/equity agenda and that has some key elements, which are designed [for] communities that generally have not been considered when. . .trying to create programs. A key element of that is something that we call Justice40.
AmNews: Could you describe the Justice40 initiative?
The Justice40 initiative is the president’s commitment that 40% of the kind of overall benefits from certain climate clean energy (and) affordable housing investments actually end up in communities that have been historically disadvantaged and historically underserved.
As part of Earth Day, we made an announcement about a program that’s called Solar for All. This is a program that’s being run out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of the president’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was historic funding that…had a $27 billion greenhouse gas reduction fund as part of [it]. One of the elements of that was $7 billion for Solar for All. The grantees were announced—60 different grantees across the country were identified. These are people who had applied because of their connection and expertise in helping to distribute funding. In fact, some of them are already working in communities that are underserved and are helping those communities get solar and other clean energy resources.
We believe that the $7 billion [investment] will enable us to provide solar to more than 900,000 households and that it will also help result in about 200,000 jobs over the time of the program and the whole greenhouse gas reduction fund. The way the program is structured, the idea is to have this serve as seed money to get other kinds of private sector [funders] who are interested in the communities to start to invest in the communities as well. This…helps lay the groundwork for what would be longer-term investments in some of these communities, so that was really exciting.
AmNews: Is there anything else you want people to know about the work that the White House is doing specifically around underserved communities and environmental justice?
We are seeing things like the lead pipes that are being removed from people’s homes, electric school buses in communities that have been underserved, a legacy of infrastructure that has impacted communities, and we’re laser-focused on dealing with that legacy [and] making sure that communities get the benefit of the new investments that we’re putting out.
If [your readers] have any questions at all, they should go to our justice40 site and get more information about the work that we’re doing [and] about work going on across the country.
For additional information about the White House Environmental Justice Council, visit https://www.whitehouse.gov/environmentaljustice/white-house-environmental-justice-advisory-council/. For details about NYC-specific environmental information, visit the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice: https://climate.cityofnewyork.us.
This article has been lightly edited for AmNews style.