7 Ways to Boost Sustainability by Cutting Rules

The conversation about putting the American economy on a more sustainable path often focuses on imposing new rules and laws, from how to power our homes and factories to what food we should eat. From the beginning, regulation has been a huge focus of the environmental movement, such as restrictions on pollution and land use. More recently, the switch to wind and solar power has gotten a boost from sweeping policy incentives.

But Washington politics isn’t a one-way street. Liberty and deregulation are powerful currents both in lobbying and in American history. They’re often viewed as at odds with the push for a more sustainable future, but do they need to be?

In launching a new sustainability beat at POLITICO, anchored by our weekly newsletter, The Long Game, we wondered: What if the opposite could also be true? Are there cases where scrubbing rules from the books could promote sustainability goals?

Over the last several weeks, I’ve asked POLITICO influencers and subscribers to weigh in on this. Many of their responses wouldn’t be obvious to those of us who aren’t well-versed in niche policy areas, such as urban planning, construction, transportation and agriculture, but could incite new conversations—and a way out of those often simplified into pro- and anti-regulation sides.

Here’s a highlight reel of our readers’ ideas. Please tell us your ideas as well, and we may feature them in future sustainability coverage!

America is the land of ugly suburban strip malls with sprawling parking lots that increasingly are sitting empty. This partly because many local governments require a minimum number of parking spaces be built alongside commercial and residential buildings, Al Beatty, a transportation planner in Philadelphia, told us. Some city council members until last year had pushed to increase quotas in Philly, but that fight appears dead for now after failing to secure enough support.

Buffalo, N.Y. in 2017 became the first major city to eliminate minimum parking requirements. Hartford, Conn., Minneapolis and San Francisco have since done the same, while dozens of others have either lowered the quotas or removed them for certain districts. Beatty said most of these mandates rely on outdated formulas that overestimate the number of spots truly needed. They raise home prices while encouraging private vehicle ownership and congestion, he added, and removing them would support more sustainable modes of transportation and land use.

Jacob Corvidae, principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute, says the Trump administration late last year expanded what is known as the Minimum Offer Price Rule, threatening state-level clean energy policy and distorting the market to the benefit of fossil fuels.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversees multi-state power markets, where the companies that generate energy make bids to sell it to utilities via an open auction. In December, FERC voted to impose a price floor for wind, solar and nuclear power plants that receive state subsidies in a market stretching from Illinois to Maryland. The approval will force renewable plants to bid into the market at prices higher than their costs, effectively blocking their participation and boosting coal and natural gas generators – which argue that state support for renewables unfairly reduce market prices.

New Jersey in April filed a lawsuit over the MOPR in the D.C. Court of Appeals, after the agency declined to review its decision.

Kurtis Fabela, a student from Upland, Calif., says municipalities should eliminate zoning that limits development to just single-family detached homes. That way, taller buildings can be constructed, also known as “up-zoning.” Fabela argues this would create denser, more walkable communities, reduce the need for cars – which account for one-fifth of America’s greenhouse gas emissions – and promote more socially equitable communities. Black, Latino and other people of color, due to racially discriminatory housing policies, have historically been denied home ownership and excluded from high-opportunity areas.

Zoning is a frequent target of progressive urban planners, who say it increases sprawl, drives prices up and ends up protecting homeowners at the expense of access and dynamism. Earlier this year, Sidewalk Labs asked 14 urban planners to debate the idea. Their pros list was similar to the points Fabela made. But some questioned whether up-zoning would really improve affordability or help low-income households move into better neighborhoods, and suggested that planners need a completely new model of development because ending single-family zoning “isn’t enough to change a century of entrenched land use patterns and cultural attachments.”

Public and private sector investors are increasingly trying to promote sustainability in corporate America through trendy new standards known as ESG, or environmental, social and governance. Elizabeth Beardsley, senior policy counsel at the U.S. Green Building Council, said the Labor Department’s latest rulemaking would limit pension fund managers’ ability to consider these goals over profits. The department, which is accepting public input on the proposal through July, directs pension fund managers (who control retirement assets valued at a whopping $28 trillion) to make investment decisions based solely on total financial returns and not any social or environmental impacts.

The rule would tie the hands of fund managers—and pension holders themselves—who see ESG-funds as a smarter investment in the long term, both monetarily and for societal good. “This kind of proposal encourages a false narrative that you need to choose between sustainability and profit and that these factors are at odds with each other and that’s just not true,” she said. “There’s plenty of evidence that show companies with better ESG characteristics performed better financially while those with poor records posed higher risks for themselves and investors.”

Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, in an opinion piece last month, said the proposal reminds pension fund managers that it is “unlawful” to sacrifice returns for the sake of social good.

Currently, twin trailers for trucks are limited to 28 feet each by the federal government. Changing that to 33 feet, which is already legal in some states, would lead to 18 percent fewer trips a year to move the same amount of packages, commodities and other goods, says FedEx’s Chief Sustainability Officer Mitch Jackson.

Double trailers may carry more freight, but they also raise concerns about road safety and whether they would cause greater wear and tear on the nation’s highways. Jackson argues the opposite, adding that fewer trips also means less greenhouse gas emissions, fuel consumption and congestion on the highway. So far, however, safety advocates, railroads, the Teamsters Union and some segments of the trucking industry have won the battle with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

When it comes to agriculture, Jason Weller — the vice president of Land O’Lakes sustainability business Truterra, and a former chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service — says regulations can backfire because a “command and control” system doesn’t work for farmers culturally, politically or financially. Instead, Weller points to a voluntary “regulatory certainty” program deployed in Minnesota five years ago aimed at improving water quality. (Land O’ Lakes is a partner in the program.)

Under the program, farmers get immunity from new water quality regulations for 10 years if their conservation practices are certified and maintained. That state allocates $3 million annually to help certify farmers, who often get federal grants to implement clean water practices such as planting cover crops and adding buffer strips between fields and waterways. The farms are audited randomly.

Brad Jordahl Redlin, manager of the certification program at the state department of agriculture, said the program has prevented more than 46,000 pounds in phosphorous runoff each year, a fertilizer chemical that pollutes waterways.

“The whole-system element of this is key,” Redlin said. “It’s an ecological system, so the idea of regulating that is almost self-defeating, because it leads to, ‘Here are three things I want you to do,’ but that might not fit on every farm.”

Corvidae of the Rocky Mountain Institute says large sums of taxpayer dollars are dedicated to energy efficiency programs, but many states prohibit these funds from being used to switch to another type of power. For example, replacing a gas-powered furnace with a more efficient electric air-source heat pump. These restrictions distort the market and prevent more efficiency upgrades, he says, yet they are applicable in almost every state.

“It’s incentivizing a poorer performer, pushing people toward something that's counter to what the market would support and what the incentives are meant to encourage,” Corvidae says.