The Unspoken Truth: Economic Policy is Environmental Policy

Economic development projects shape the landscape and everyday life, influencing air quality, traffic, stormwater flow and local jobs. While development can bring big benefits, it also creates social and environmental “externalities” like abandoned mine drainage polluting waterways, coal plant closures that cost jobs and toxic emissions that degrade air quality and accelerate climate change. These harms often hit historically underinvested, low‑resource communities and communities of color hardest.

Our culture often refuses to tally the health costs of pollution or the value of clean water and open space, but PennFuture’s new report, Economic Policy is Environmental Policy, shows why we must. It explains how Pennsylvania’s fossil‑fuel‑focused economic policy led to projects like an ethane cracker plant that failed to deliver promised jobs and repeatedly violated air pollution permits. As market forces shift, other industrial states like Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and Wyoming are pivoting to renewable energy and cleantech manufacturing, proving that economic development and environmental protection can go hand‑in‑hand.

The report urges policymakers to reform the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) so it prioritizes high‑growth industries that decarbonize and diversify the economy, such as battery manufacturing, energy efficiency and renewable deployment. It calls for climate accountability measures in funding programs, restructuring Pennsylvania’s energy economy program, and building strategic partnerships—starting with reforming Team PA and creating an interagency Clean Energy Working Group—to plan an equitable transition that lifts up vulnerable communities. By embracing forward‑thinking economic policy, Pennsylvania can create a stable, modern economy that supports workers and protects our air, water and land. Read the full report and support PennFuture’s sustainable economic development work.