US STIMULUS STRATEGY

The 'US Stimulus Strategy' report by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) provides four primary policy recommendations for a zero-carbon economic recovery in the United States following the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategy focuses on decarbonizing buildings and transportation, implementing debt forgiveness tied to emissions reductions, and establishing a federal Economic Recovery Facility to finance clean energy projects.

• RMI proposes a 'Build Back Better Buildings' program to catalyze residential and commercial retrofits. The program aims to increase the energy retrofit rate tenfold and could potentially improve 16 to 24 million residential units and 11 to 17 billion square feet of commercial space, creating between 1.9 and 2.8 million jobs.
• To decarbonize transportation, RMI recommends a strategy that prioritizes pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit over highway expansions, while simultaneously accelerating the electric vehicle (EV) market. This includes a proposed $20 billion investment in public charging infrastructure for personal and commercial vehicles and $17 billion for retooling automotive manufacturing facilities for EV production.
• The report suggests a debt forgiveness model where the federal government reduces the principal and interest of debt held by federal agencies or the Federal Reserve based on verifiable and additional emissions reductions. RMI estimates that debt relief of $10/tCO2e over 10 years could reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by up to 2 GtCO2e/y by 2030 at a cost of $200 billion.
• RMI recommends the creation of an Economic Recovery Facility, a federal 'green bank' to crowd in private investment for clean projects. Based on the Connecticut Green Bank model, RMI estimates that a $5 billion capitalization would leverage an additional $32.5 billion over eight years, creating 388,000 clean jobs and reducing energy costs for nearly 800,000 homes and businesses.

APA

Holland, B., Hopkins, G., Varadarajan, U., Campbell, M., Feldman, C., Whitney, A., Meisel, J., Lund, J., Sullivan, A., Corvidae, J., Mandel, J., Gross, B., Mullaney, D., & Frisch, C. (2020). US STIMULUS STRATEGY. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2020/06/US-Stimulus-Strategy-June-2020.pdf

Chicago

Holland, Ben, Greg Hopkins, Uday Varadarajan, Martha Campbell, Courtney Feldman, Angela Whitney, Julia Meisel, et al. US STIMULUS STRATEGY. RMI, 2020. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2020/06/US-Stimulus-Strategy-June-2020.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{holland2020stimulus, author = {Holland, Ben and Hopkins, Greg and Varadarajan, Uday and Campbell, Martha and Feldman, Courtney and Whitney, Angela and Meisel, Julia and Lund, Jessie and Sullivan, Annabelle and Corvidae, Jacob and Mandel, Jamie and Gross, Britta and Mullaney, Dave and Frisch, Carla}, title = {{US STIMULUS STRATEGY}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2020}, month = jun, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2020/06/US-Stimulus-Strategy-June-2020.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }