Cities, counties, and states are setting bold new climate action plans to decarbonize their communities, but how do we know their proposed actions are actually effective? As graduate student researchers with the Sustainable Development Goal Policy Initiative (SDGPI) at the University of California San Diego, we’re helping advance meaningful climate policy by building the evidence base to answer this very question.
Drawing on our coursework in econometrics, energy systems, and environmental policy, we’re digging into the scholarly literature that evaluates decarbonization efforts to identify climate actions that deliver tangible results in a cost-effective fashion. Under the guidance of professors Gordon McCord and Teevrat Garg, we are synthesizing key lessons and outcomes found in our literature review into resources that will guide policymakers towards effective and equitable policy solutions.
Good Intentions Are Not Enough
Local governments have become the locus of change for creating climate policy. From incentives for heat pump water heaters to programs for creating community composting sites, jurisdictions are creating Climate Action Plans (CAPs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while benefitting local communities. As of February 2022, 35 of the 50 largest cities in the U.S. had adopted local climate action plans, which include such policy interventions.
The challenge, however, is this: policymakers often do not know which policy interventions are the most effective or whether a program that worked in one city will work in another.
As part of the SDGPI team, we are working to close this evidence gap. With support from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America, we are identifying rigorous impact evaluations, which quantify the real world outcomes of government programs, to write a playbook of truly effective climate actions and to blaze new paths for future research.
The San Diego County Climate Action Plan (CAP)
In our first project for SDGPI working with the County of San Diego’s Department of Planning and Development Services and Office of Evaluation Performance and Analytics, we reviewed the evidence base for the policy actions within the County’s CAP. From solid waste to energy to transportation, we reviewed hundreds of articles and mapped them to interventions within the CAP. Our goal was to:
- Find well studied policy interventions to inform policy development.
- Identify knowledge gaps to highlight fruitful areas for future research.
In the course of our work, we discovered important patterns in the studies that we reviewed, which have direct repercussions on effective policymaking. For example, we found that evaluations of energy efficiency programs often revealed that actual savings from energy efficiency investments are much lower than predictions made through engineering simulations. In other words, governments and program administrators predicted energy savings that were much higher than reality. In the fleet transition literature, evaluations of electric vehicle (EV) incentive programs, which aim to accelerate the adoption of EVs, find that these programs often increase adoption rates among households who would have purchased relatively fuel-efficient cars anyway. This tendency reduces both the cost-effectiveness and potential of subsidy programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In December of 2024, we presented our findings to County officials during a two-day workshop at the County of San Diego headquarters. During this workshop, we also actively participated in program design, contributing to discussions on important considerations for two prospective County programs. We continue to participate in monthly meetings as SDGPI and the County of San Diego work to design randomized control trials to fill in knowledge gaps identified in the literature review.
The Literature Review Goes National
In continued partnership with J-PAL North America, we are now tailoring our literature review findings to a nationwide audience. We are conducting additional reviews for actions in CAPs from jurisdictions like the City of Orlando and the State of Minnesota to broaden the scope of findings and expand effective policymaking across the country. In addition, we’re actively advising J-PAL North America on the contents of educational materials used to train jurisdiction staff on randomized evaluation in the context of climate policy.
Based on feedback from these jurisdictions, we are designing a universal tool that is accessible to policymakers across the nation. This tool will allow jurisdictions to quickly view the evidence base for particular actions and glean important insights to inform policy development. We’re not only immersing ourselves in program evaluation, we’re also gaining hands-on experience managing researcher-government partnerships with one of the world’s premier economic research organizations.
What’s Next?
Our work will eventually culminate in a white paper that maps the entire landscape of climate policy impact evaluations. This paper will help researchers quickly identify fruitful courses of research that close evidence gaps and deepen our understanding of the most effective climate policies for rapid decarbonization.
This research is demonstrating that the path to a greener tomorrow is paved with evidence-based policymaking and strong partnerships between policymakers and researchers. By rigorously reviewing the evidence for actually implemented policies, we’re not just advancing knowledge–we’re actively participating in building a better future.
