Policy in the Pandemic: Our Environmental Policy World Has Changed; Let’s Talk About It!

By Tim Profeta, Director, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned nearly every aspect of human life upside down in the last few months. That is true in environmental and energy policy, as well as innumerable other places. As we live through this disruptive time, we at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions thought we would create this forum to explore COVID’s impacts on the world we know best.
In particular, changes are coming fast and furious to environmental and energy policy. At the Institute, they are affecting our lives in many ways. Most obviously, the pandemic has shifted how we interact with policy makers and stakeholders. The need for social distancing has replaced face-to-face meetings and workshops with video conferencing and webinars.
The pandemic, however, is not just altering how we work, but what we work on. Our professionals are re-examining topics that they’ve long studied through the lens of coronavirus. For example, our research on environmental challenges for low-income communities now has added the lens of whether those factors have made the same communities more vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. Our policy discussions have morphed to embrace questions such as whether green banks would be good vehicles to deploy stimulus funding or whether funding for forest and agricultural stewardship also could infuse rural America with needed investments. And new areas of study have leapt onto our radar screen, such as the inquiry of our water program, to be featured in this missive later this month, regarding how COVID-related lockdowns are affecting water use across the country, and, by extension, affecting potential revenues for utilities.
These rapid and dramatic developments have generated lively conversations among our team of professionals and raised critical questions, such as:
- Are the trends that we’re seeing new, or are they simply accelerating what was already happening?
- Are the policy responses directly related to COVID, or are they because there's a window of opportunity that wasn't there before?
Each week in this email, we want to bring that conversation to you. Our professionals will discuss the trends that they are seeing in their respective areas of expertise as a result of the pandemic.
In the coming weeks, here are some of the topics that you can expect to read about:
- Importance of reliable electricity access for monitoring and treatment of infectious diseases
- Water bills, COVID, and pension funds
- Conflicting signals for climate on China's COVID recovery
- Importance of local parks and open space during COVID, and a spatial analysis of areas of the Southeast with low access to local open space
- Review of 20 years of plastic policy, and how that might be changing during the pandemic
- Use of a National Climate Bank to invest in America
- Sustainable infrastructure and the global "green" versus "brown" stimulus recovery response
This email is intended to be a starting point for that conversation. We don’t have all the answers; we want to hear from you. As such, each week’s commentary, including this one, will be followed by a series of questions intended to spark dialogue about research into the topic and the direction that policy should take during and after the pandemic. We will also provide a list of things you should know from the policy world. These could be new policy approaches, research papers, news articles, or our own work.
We look forward to the conversation!
The Big Questions
To continue the conversation on this week's topic, here are a few questions for further consideration and study:
- What are the biggest changes that are occurring in environmental and energy policy during the pandemic?
- What opportunities exist for positive change? What progress might be frustrated?
- Are we looking at the right things?
What to Know for This Week
- China’s economic rebound from COVID-19 disruptions has begun. As with reactions to the 2008 global financial crisis and the domestic slowdown of 2015, the country appears poised to scale up construction and heavy industry as a means for growing the GDP and getting people back to work. Steel and cement production began booming in April in anticipation—bringing with them the suite of environmental concerns one might expect.
- In North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper signed an executive order this month to address racial disparities in social, environmental, economic, and health outcomes that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The state has seen an increase in confirmed cases over the last three weeks since moving to phase two of its reopening.
- The Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership has released a set of 10 principles for how infrastructure investments under economic recovery packages can be more sustainable and resilient. The document encourages countries to make decisions on infrastructure spending based on strategic planning aligned with the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement. Other principles call for steps to avoid future crises, quickly boost employment, and protect ecosystems and biodiversity.
- The electric power sector is facing major operational challenges as a result of the pandemic. Jennie Chen, the Nicholas Institute's senior counsel for federal energy policy, joined industry experts June 1 for a panel discussion of how the electric power sector is weathering these challenges—and what the impact might be for the energy transition. The conversation was presented in partnership with the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, the Duke Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, and the Duke University Energy Initiative.
- An International Energy Agency report published in late April projected an 8 percent decline in global greenhouse gas emissions for 2020 as energy demands, particularly for fossil fuels, have declined amid coronavirus-related lockdowns. A panel of Duke University energy experts—Kate Konschnik, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions; Brian Murray, Duke University Energy Initiative; and Drew Shindell, Nicholas School of the Environment—discussed the potential short- and long-term effects of the pandemic on the energy landscape during a press briefing last month.
Subscribe
"Policy in the Pandemic" is a weekly email featuring insights from the Nicholas Institute on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting environmental and energy policy. Click here to subscribe.