Published
April 22, 2024
Protecting the environment and advancing sustainability requires a critical partnership between government and the private sector. In the wake of historic government investments through the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the clean energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the private sector responded by committing and investing hundreds of billions in projects that can accelerate the development and deployment of everything from electric vehicles and batteries to innovative new energy technologies.
To help turn this promise into reality, the Chamber’s sustainability program is designed to support these efforts by identifying policies that encourage and facilitate private sector investment, highlighting leadership in the business community, sharing best practices, and bringing more voices into the conversation. In today’s highly charged and uncertain political landscape, sustainability policies have the opportunity to forge bipartisan consensus.
In June, the Chamber’s second annual Sustainability and Circular Economy Summit will bring together corporate leaders, government officials, and non-profit and academic voices to focus on what businesses are doing to promote sustainability and to identify policy opportunities to advance sustainability goals.
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The Sustainability and Circular Economy Summit will feature leading voices in the sustainability space, including Alexandra Cousteau, an award-winning advocate for ocean restoration and Co-Founder of Oceans 2050.
The opportunities we will highlight at the Summit include:
Streamline Federal Permitting: The window for leveraging funds made available by Congress through recent infrastructure investments is closing. These transformational laws could help build modern, resilient infrastructure and accelerate the clean energy transition, but that will only be possible by modernizing our outdated permitting process. Learn more about the Chamber’s Permit America to Build campaign.
Accelerate Innovation: Innovation can help unlock decarbonization, improve water stewardship, create a circular economy, and meet many other sustainability objectives. The federal government can help accelerate innovation through funding and policy incentives, such as tax credits or risk assurance programs.
Grow the Hydrogen Economy: Effective and appropriate incentives are needed to fully realize the clean hydrogen economy in the U.S. and abroad. Recent U.S. Treasury tax credit guidance, however, is too restrictive and will stifle opportunities to advance a promising technology to decarbonize energy-intensive industries.
Expand the Path to Decarbonization: Decarbonizing the economy will require technology-neutral policies and an all-of-the-above approach. We will need all the tools in our technology toolbox to succeed. Technologies such as battery storage, carbon capture, utilization and storage, digitization, renewables, hydrogen, and small modular nuclear reactors are all necessary to decarbonize our economy.
Foster Regenerative Agriculture: Investments in regenerative agriculture in the U.S. are well underway and can be fostered through continued public-private partnerships. One example is USDA’s support of climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices through $19.5 billion in IRA funds to farmers, ranchers, and forest owners implementing conservation programs nationwide.
Promote Circularity: The circular economy is critical to climate progress, and laws such as IIJA and IRA can greatly accelerate the deployment of waste-preventing technologies, from product design to collection, sortation, and recycling. Federal incentives and funding for recycling infrastructure create additional demand signals for recycled content and encourage widespread uptake of recycled materials.
Invest in Resilience and Disaster Mitigation: Help bring together federal, state, and local leaders and private sector resources to build or rebuild infrastructure that will protect health, safety, and property and prepare ahead of the next crises. We developed our Small and Disadvantaged Community Water Funding Roadmap to compile public and private technical assistance resources to help access IIJA water and resilience funding. FEMA’s recent designation of Community Disaster Resilience Zones will help direct resources to the most vulnerable and at-risk communities. We strongly support this effort.
Being good stewards of the environment and promoting sustainability are not only the right things to do, but they are also good business. The private sector is leading with investment and innovation. We look forward to working with our government partners and other stakeholders to advance this discussion at our summit and throughout the year.
About the authors
Chuck Chaitovitz
Chuck Chaitovitz is vice president for environmental affairs and sustainability at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
