working paper

The Economic Benefits of the New Climate Economy in Rural America

Download PDF

Key Investment Areas for the Rural New Climate Economy

This analysis focuses on seven opportunities for federal investment across the United States that present significant potential for both rural job creation and emissions mitigation:

  • Renewable energy
    • Construction of wind, solar, and other renewable energy resources
  • Energy efficiency improvements
    • Technologies and processes that reduce energy consumption, lower energy bills, and decrease emissions in residential, commercial, and industrial buildings
  • Energy transmission, distribution, and storage
    • High-voltage transmission lines to integrate the growing share of renewable energy and accommodate increasing demand on the grid from electrification
    • Distribution networks that allow two-way communication between consumers and providers and enable new technologies that reduce cost and save electricity
    • Energy storage technologies to improve grid reliability, meet peak energy demand, and smooth the effects of variable energy resources
  • Environmental remediation of abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure
    • Cleaning up abandoned coal mines
    • Plugging and restoring orphaned oil and gas wells
  • Tree restoration on federal lands
    • Reforestation on ecologically appropriate federally owned lands by replanting native, climate-resilient species or enhancing natural regeneration
    • Restocking standing federal forests to natural densities where trees have been lost to disease, harvest, or natural disaster by planting trees and/or promoting natural regrowth
  • Tree restoration on non-federal lands
    • Reforestation on ecologically appropriate state, local, or private lands by replanting or enhancing natural regeneration
    • Restocking standing non-federal forests as described above
    • Integrating trees into pasture while maintaining livestock production through silvopasture systems
    • Integrating trees into cropland while maintaining crop production through agroforestry systems, including alley cropping systems and windbreaks
  • Wildfire risk management
    • Prescribed low-intensity burning
    • Selective thinning of small-diameter trees or other mechanical treatments designed to reduce fuel loads

These opportunities were selected based on three key criteria:

  1. Providing significant potential for emissions mitigation and/or increasing resilience in rural communities
  2. Offering an attractive return on investment by creating jobs and stimulating economic activity
  3. Requiring federal investment to reach the scale needed to provide public benefits

The opportunities described above represent key investment needs for the new climate economy but are not meant to be comprehensive. Other strategies that may reduce emissions and create economic opportunities in rural communities include investments in electric vehicle manufacturing and infrastructure, carbon removal infrastructure like carbon dioxide pipelines and geologic storage wells, and technologies to reduce GHG emissions from agricultural operations, among others. Given its exploratory nature, this initial analysis considers only a limited set of clean energy and land sector decarbonization scenarios. Future work will explore federal investment in additional areas and the potential economic impact on rural communities.

Start reading