Center for American Progress

Donate

Energy and Environment

Climate and Energy

Everyone deserves clean air, clean water, affordable energy, and good pay for hard work. Our mission is to build a clean energy economy that improves public health, creates shared prosperity, drives innovation, and returns global temperatures to safe levels.

Girls playing with kites in a wheat field with wind turbines in the background. (Getty/Tetra Images/Erik Isakson/Brand X Pictures)

What We're Doing

Accelerating clean technologies across the U.S. economy

Clean electricity, efficient and resilient housing, and zero-emission transportation choices are all essential to healthy living and a livable planet. Expanding access to healthy and safe homes, renewable energy, and clean transportation will cut pollution and are key to reversing the harms and costs of climate change. 

Creating good jobs in the United States and designing worker- and climate-centered trade policy

Building renewable energy and zero-emission technologies supports millions of jobs, and policy must ensure that these jobs are located here in the United States and provide workers high wages, good benefits, and full collective bargaining rights. Aligning a U.S. trade and industrial policy regime to prioritize workers and reduce pollution will drive American innovation, support a thriving workforce, and strengthen supply chains in industry and manufacturing. 

Protecting public health for all Americans

Strengthening public health and environmental standards to rein in corporate polluters will ensure everyone can realize their fundamental right to clean air, clean water, and healthy, thriving communities. 

 

Learning from leadership across the country and advancing global climate action

Creating a road map for federal action that lifts up lessons learned from states, local governments, and tribal nations will build on important progress made on climate, public health, resilience, clean energy, and good jobs. Collaborating with other countries to support clean tech deployment and supply chain resilience will drive down global oil and gas demand, delivering benefits for the American people and communities around the world in the form of lower energy costs, decreased greenhouse gas emissions, and independence from volatile authoritarian governments.

It's time to build a 100 percent clean future, deliver on environmental justice, and empower workers to compete in the global clean energy economy.

Default Opt Ins

Variable Opt Ins

Featured Work

Latest

Compact View

  • Filter by
  • Type
    • Type
    Show Results
  • Date
    • Date
    • Date

    • to

    Custom range Fixed range
  • Topic
    • Topic
    Show Results
  • State
    • State
    Show Results
  • Toggle Search

  • 216 Results

Clear filters

Down to the Roots: Building Rural Policy Around Rural Needs Past Event
A man walks through a field of soybeans at sunset.

Down to the Roots: Building Rural Policy Around Rural Needs

This event will explore what it means to invest in rural communities on their own terms and build a rural policy agenda rooted in resilience, opportunity, and shared prosperity.

Center for American Progress and online via Zoom

The Long Game on Energy Affordability Report
Electrical transmission lines hang over a housing development in Sylmar.

The Long Game on Energy Affordability

As electricity costs rise and states make important decisions about energy affordability, the most successful approaches protect consumers today while continuing to invest in energy efficiency and clean energy resources that lower bills over time.

Frederick Bell

The Trump Administration’s Sweeping Rollbacks of Pollution Protections Endanger the Health and Safety of All Americans Video

The Trump Administration’s Sweeping Rollbacks of Pollution Protections Endanger the Health and Safety of All Americans

Listen to one mom’s story as she talks about how her cancer journey triggered her awareness of harmful pollution and toxic chemicals and how the Trump administration is making children and families less safe by rolling back many safeguards.

Margaret Cooney, Olivia Mowry, Hai-Lam Phan

CAP Testimony Before the House Committee on Small Business’s Rural Development, Energy, and Supply Chains Subcommittee Testimony

CAP Testimony Before the House Committee on Small Business’s Rural Development, Energy, and Supply Chains Subcommittee

Trevor Higgins, senior vice president for Energy and Environment, testified before the House Committee on Small Business's Rural Development, Energy, and Supply Chains Subcommittee at a hearing titled “Fueling the Golden Age: Future Resource Needs and Small Business Opportunity.”

Trevor Higgins

How Trump’s Cuts to FEMA and NWS Are Leaving Communities Defenseless Against Extreme Weather Disasters Article
A worker in FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center looks at a map of an approaching winter storm.

How Trump’s Cuts to FEMA and NWS Are Leaving Communities Defenseless Against Extreme Weather Disasters

Federal agencies help Americans prepare for, survive, and recover from extreme weather disasters, but the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Federal Emergency Management Agency weaken that lifeline at every stage of a storm.

Margaret Cooney, Devon Lespier

Hoja informativa: Un plan para hacer la electricidad más asequible en EE. UU. Hoja informativa

Hoja informativa: Un plan para hacer la electricidad más asequible en EE. UU.

El plan de CAP ahorraría a los hogares más de $900 en costos de energía durante cuatro años, a la vez que construiría un mejor sistema energético que ahorraría a las familias estadounidenses miles de millones en los años venideros.

Trevor Higgins, Shannon Baker-Branstetter, Michael Negron, 2 More Lucero Marquez, Kendra Hughes

Proposed Electric Vehicle Fees Would Only Make Life Less Affordable for Americans Article
An electric vehicle charges in Monrovia, California.

Proposed Electric Vehicle Fees Would Only Make Life Less Affordable for Americans

Electric vehicles help shield Americans from volatile gas prices and are already cheaper to maintain and operate than gas-powered cars; yet some members of Congress are seeking to make this technology more expensive through the upcoming surface transportation bill.

Leo Banks

State Climate Action in 2026: How States Are Delivering Real Benefits Through Climate and Clean Energy Policy Report
An electric vehicle is seen charging in a parking lot in Storrs, Connecticut, on March 31, 2026.

State Climate Action in 2026: How States Are Delivering Real Benefits Through Climate and Clean Energy Policy

As the Trump administration drives up costs and creates new challenges, states are making timely decisions on infrastructure and accountability, advancing policies that tackle climate change, lower energy bills, improve air quality, and support good-paying clean energy jobs.

Frederick Bell

Trading Offshore Wind for LNG: A Lose-Lose for Americans Article
The Sabine Pass LNG plant is seen in Cameron, Louisiana.

Trading Offshore Wind for LNG: A Lose-Lose for Americans

The Interior Department’s unprecedented deal with TotalEnergies redirects nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars away from reliable domestic electricity production and into volatile fossil fuels destined for export, signaling a new, corrupt approach to depriving the nation’s grid of new sources of clean energy.

Jasia Smith, Mike Williams

No More Reacting: An Argument for a Clean Industrial Policy—and Against Competitiveness as an Organizing Economic Principle Report
Workers walk past the construction site of an offshore wind project in New London, Connecticut, on August 25, 2025.

No More Reacting: An Argument for a Clean Industrial Policy—and Against Competitiveness as an Organizing Economic Principle

Moving beyond the failures of the Trump administration, the United States will need to embrace a strategy for fighting the climate crisis that prioritizes values such as support for working people and establishes a precedent for international collaboration.

Mike Williams, Ryan Mulholland

Load More

Default Opt Ins

Variable Opt Ins

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.