The PA Department of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Justice Office released on April 1, 2022, a draft Environmental Justice Policy for public comment until May 11, 2022.  The draft Environmental Justice Policy includes several sections to expand and improve upon the existing Environmental Justice Policy which has been in effect since 2004. The new policy will attempt to integrate environmental justice into more aspects of DEP's work to benefit environmental justice communities. This may include revising definitions of environmental justice areas or populations; increasing collaboration and planning between state government agencies; developing environmental justice mapping, resources, and data for community use; prioritizing environmental justice in grantmaking practices; and training DEP staff and external partners on environmental justice.  To help facilitate further engagement from entities that represent environmental justice communities, DEP held three virtual public hearings to accept comments on the draft Environmental Justice Policy.

The Local Climate Action Plan (LCAP) program as well as climate plan implementation programs such as Shared Energy Manager, assist local governments with creating local plans to identify, address, and take action to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. These programs are designed to target and assist environmental justice communities in particular as they can be recruited to participate. As of the completion of the 5th cohort of the LCAP program, 44 of the 72 local government participants contained at least 1 environmental justice census tract. In addition to this, 16 of the 30 total local governments that have been accepted into the Shared Energy Manager program are designated as environmental justice communities. A significant aspect of the local climate plan development process is identifying marginalized and disproportionately affected communities that will be impacted by climate change to appropriately allocate attention and resources in an equitable manner. This may include things like siting the location of disaster relief centers, resiliency microgrids, electric vehicle charging and other community facing resources. Related to this, our shared energy manager contractors also take these types of things into consideration in their analysis and proposals for local government participants of the program. As mentioned in section 6b, the Shared Energy Manager program also tracks metrics on the work completed for the participants of the program designated as environmental justice communities. The current cohort of 20 participants includes 13 EJ communities.                                                                                                                                                     

In addition to these efforts, DEP also launched a Climate Action for Environmental Justice Communities program, which primarily sought to gather input from marginalized communities to inform climate and energy program design in Pennsylvania. Through in-person and online engagement sessions, surveying, and engagement with the Environmental Justice Advisory Board DEP staff collected feedback and ideas from all corners of Pennsylvania, which has informed the development of federal funding programs, training programs, an online resource database for energy project funding, as well as a guide for more equitable implementation. This program also spurred ongoing engagement with communities, carried out through a variety of DEP programs. Through the development of the PA's Priority Climate Action Plan, input was solicited from environmental justice communities across the state. This included four in-person public meetings and one virtual public meeting to generate ideas about what priorities rural and urban constituents have to address climate change in their communities. This broadened input from the Climate Action for Environmental Justice Program. This helped to shape what key focus were included in the plan that was submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency for the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant planning process.

Workforce Development

DEP worked with BW Research Partnership to deliver Pennsylvania-specific reports that will help determine the future direction of energy workforce development activities. This included a Pennsylvania Clean Energy Employment 2020 Report (PACEER) and a Pennsylvania Energy Employment 2020 Report (PAEER). These reports were based on data that BW collected as part of its US Energy and Employment Report. These reports were released in summer 2020, and new 2021 reports will be released in summer 2021. The PACEER highlighted employment in the major clean energy sectors and also included workforce data such as demographics and employer hiring difficulties, revenue or wage data, and other customized data points. The PAEER contained information on job growth over time and employer hiring projections in all energy technology sectors, not just clean energy. The Energy Programs Office and BW released a follow-on report in May 2021 to identify training needs and gaps in Pennsylvania for clean energy jobs. The findings of this report have informed conversations between DEP, the PA Department of Labor and Industry, and the Department of Community and Economic Development.

Last Reviewed: November 2024