Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” charged the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) with creating a geospatial Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool and publishing interactive maps highlighting disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution. Federal agencies will use the tool in implementation of the Justice40 Initiative goal of directing 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments to disadvantaged communities in climate, clean energy and energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, clean water infrastructure, and the remediation of legacy pollution. The function of the tool is to employ indicators for the purpose of identifying communities that exhibit conditions of underinvestment in energy, transit, housing and water infrastructure, disproportionate pollution burden, and job training and employment. Agencies will use the tool to guide program investments in the areas noted above under the Justice40 Initiative.
CEQ has developed a beta version of the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, which is available at https://screeningtool.geoplatform.gov. Under the current methodology (v0.1) in the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, a census tract will be considered disadvantaged if (1) it is above the threshold for one or more climate or environmental indicator; and (2) it is above the threshold for one or more socioeconomic indicator. The methodology and the datasets currently being used are available at https://screeningtool.geoplatform.gov/en/methodology.
Read more > https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/23/2022-03920/climate-and-economic-justice-screening-tool-beta-version
