The Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grant Program offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform disadvantaged communities across the United States into healthy, climate resilient, and thriving communities for their current and future residents.
The Community Change Grants will fund community-driven projects that address climate challenges and reduce pollution while strengthening communities through thoughtful implementation. The historic levels of support provided by these grants will enable communities and their partners to overcome longstanding environmental challenges and implement meaningful solutions to meet community needs now and for generations to come.
Competition Features
EPA anticipates awarding approximately $2 billion in funding through this NOFO, depending on funding availability, quality of applications received, EPA priorities, and other applicable considerations. EPA will consider applications under two separate tracks.
Track I applications – Community-Driven Investments for Change will focus on multi-faceted applications with Climate Action and Pollution Reduction Strategies to meaningfully improve the environmental, climate, and resilience conditions affecting disadvantaged communities.
Track II applications – Meaningful Engagement for Equitable Governance will facilitate the engagement of disadvantaged communities in governmental processes to advance environmental and climate justice.
Objectives
The Community Change Grants will support comprehensive community and place-based approaches to redressing environmental and climate injustices for communities facing legacy pollution, climate change, and persistent disinvestment. These concentrated local investments will fund community-driven, change-making projects that center collaborative efforts for healthier, safer, and more prosperous communities.
Designed with meaningful community, Tribal, and other stakeholder involvement, the investments EPA makes through the Community Change Grants are intended to achieve the following objectives:
Provide resources for community-driven projects to address environmental and climate challenges in communities facing disproportionate and adverse health, pollution, and environmental impacts, and suffering from generations of disinvestment.
Invest in strong cross-sectoral collaborations with partners who bring a robust commitment to working with and for communities with environmental and climate justice concerns.
Unlock access to additional and more significant resources to advance environmental and climate justice goals from across the federal government and other sources.
Empower communities and strengthen their capacity to drive meaningful positive change on the ground for years to come.
Strengthen community participation in government decision-making processes that impact them.
Track I Objectives
Track I is the primary emphasis for the Community Change Grants. These projects will be implemented through strong collaborations to achieve sustained impacts related to climate resilience, pollution reduction, community health, economic prosperity, and community strength. This approach catalyzes change by focusing on the following objectives:
Increase community resilience through climate action activities: Implement comprehensive Climate Action Strategies and infrastructure that build the resilience and adaptive capacities of communities, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and better prepare for and reduce the impacts of climate change.
Reduce local pollution to improve public health: Reduce and remediate quantifiable health-harming pollutants to improve public health.
Center meaningful community engagement: Conduct robust community engagement throughout the project – from design to implementation.
Build community strength: Develop strategies to increase the likelihood that benefits of the investments accrue to existing residents of disadvantaged communities, both immediately and sustainably beyond the grant period.
Reach priority populations: Support people within the Project Area who are acutely exposed to and impacted by climate, pollution, and weather-related threats, and/or who exhibit acute vulnerabilities to the impacts of environmental pollution.
Maximize integration across projects: Ensure that the projects and activities within the Project Area are integrated and complement each other to maximize benefits.
Track II Objectives
CAA provides that grants may be awarded for the purpose of “facilitating engagement of disadvantaged communities in State and Federal advisory groups, workshops, rulemakings, and other public processes.” Accordingly, Track II applications intend to build the capacity of communities and governments to evaluate and redress environmental and climate injustices by giving disadvantaged communities a meaningful voice in government decision-making processes. By supporting direct participation of disadvantaged communities in the development and implementation of solutions, policies, and programs, the Community Change Grants can help close equity gaps and redress environmental and climate injustices.
Track II applications should focus on breaking down systemic barriers to community participation in government processes impacting environmental and climate justice. This can be done by creating engagement and feedback mechanisms with two-way communications between community members and government decision-makers. Applications should focus on ways to provide disadvantaged communities with information about issues that directly impact them, while simultaneously creating mechanisms for the government to gather input to ensure community needs inform decision-making and are integrated into government processes and policies. Applications in this track should strive to enable communities to play a meaningful role in making and implementing decisions.
Track II Project Examples
Example 1: Educational and Training Programs
Example 2: Environmental Advisory Boards (EABs)
Example 3: Collaborative Governance Activities
Example 4: Participation in Governmental Funding and Budgeting Processes
Funding Information
Number and Amount of Awards
EPA anticipates awarding approximately $2 billion in funding through this NOFO depending on funding availability, quality of applications received, EPA priorities, and other applicable considerations.
Awards under Track I are expected to be between $10-20 million each and cannot exceed $20 million.
Awards under Track II are expected to be between $1-3 million each and cannot exceed $3 million.
EPA expects to award approximately $1.96 billion for about 150 Track I awards, including those under the Target Investment Areas described, and approximately $40 million for about 20 Track II awards.
These amounts are estimates only, and EPA reserves the right to increase or decrease the total number of awards and funding amounts for each Track contingent on the quality of applications received, the amount of funds awarded to selected applicants, budget availability, and/or agency priorities and programmatic considerations.
Period of Performance
The period of performance of every grant funded under this NOFO cannot by statute exceed three years.
Climate Action Strategies and Associated Project Activities
Strategy 1: Green Infrastructure and Nature-based Solutions
Examples:
Building climate resilience and carbon sequestration through tree planting
Mitigate urban heat islands through reflective surfaces and shade trees or other vegetation, including preparing planting sites and establishing and caring for trees and other vegetation.
Plant trees in public spaces.
Multi-benefit stormwater projects
Construct permeable surfaces, collection basins, rain gardens, bioswales and other green infrastructure.
Restore and/or protect wetlands.
Public parks and open spaces
Create new parks or enhance/expand existing parks to provide climate resilience benefits like heat island reduction and flood mitigation or other demonstrable environmental benefits.
Green existing schoolyards to protect vulnerable populations by adding nature-based solutions.
Strategy 2: Mobility and Transportation Options for Preventing Air Pollution and Improving Public Health and Climate Resilience
Examples:
Construct new, expanded, or enhanced bikeways, walkways, or non-motorized urban trails that reduce vehicle miles traveled and related air pollution by providing safe routes for zero-emission travel between residences, workplaces, commercial and community centers, and schools.
Implement climate resilience measures on bikeways or trailways such as raising the elevation or installing permeable pavers to reduce flooding or increasing shade coverage to mitigate extreme heat.
Strategy 3: Energy-Efficient, Healthy, Resilient Housing and Buildings
Examples:
Install energy efficiency measures such as insulation, double or triple glazed windows, “cool roofs” that reflect sunlight, and energy management systems in public buildings.
Install ventilation systems to help improve indoor air quality during pollution-related events such as wildfires.
Strategy 4: Microgrid Installation for Community Energy Resilience
Examples:
Construct microgrid infrastructure.
Install microgrids with onsite renewable energy generation and storage.
Strategy 5: Community Resilience Hubs
Examples:
Assess the most acute climate risks facing a community (e.g., extreme heat, flooding, wildfire), identify where the community has gaps in its resilience strategy, then design a plan to mitigate specific risks by creating or upgrading community facilities to serve as resilience hubs that remain operable during an emergency.
Purchase and install backup power equipment such as generators or onsite solar and storage at one or more resilience hubs.
Strategy 6: Brownfields Redevelopment
Examples:
Build and/or upgrade existing structures and sites to improve community use while reducing GHG emissions and/or improving climate resilience.
Implement greening efforts (tree-planting, park construction or renovations, community garden developments, etc.) that mitigate GHG emissions and/or improve climate resilience.
Strategy 7: Waste Reduction and Management to Support a Circular Economy
Examples:
Implement a community-scale composting program to reduce emissions from food waste that includes an educational campaign to inform Project Area residents about climate benefits of reducing food waste.
Implement a community-scale recycling program.
Strategy 8: Workforce Development Programs for Occupations that Reduce GHG Emissions and Air Pollutants
This strategy allows applicants to propose workforce development programs that will help reduce GHG emissions and other air pollutants to benefit disadvantaged communities.
This strategy allows applicants to propose workforce development programs for employment in fields that will help reduce GHG emissions and other air pollutants to benefit disadvantaged communities. A wide range of occupations support the reduction of GHG emissions and air pollutants. Because EPA cannot provide an exhaustive list of such occupations, applicants should describe how their workforce development program will support the reduction of GHG emissions or other air pollutants.
Eligibility Criteria
Consistent with CAA §138(b)(3) and Assistance Listing 66.616, applicants eligible to apply and receive grants under this NOFO are (1) a partnership between two community-based nonprofit organizations (CBOs) as defined below, or (2) a partnership between a CBO and one of the following: a federally recognized Tribe, a local government, or an institution of higher education. These types of partnerships for eligibility purposes are known as Statutory Partnerships. Further eligibility requirements are described below.
Community-Based Non-Profit Organization (CBO)
Local Government (in partnership with a CBO)
Federally Recognized Tribe (in partnership with a CBO)
Institutions of Higher Education (in partnership with a CBO)
