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EPA's State Energy and Environment Guide to Action

January 17, 2023

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s updated State Energy and Environment Guide to Action (Guide) offers real-world best practices to help states design and implement policies that reduce emissions associated with electricity generation and energy consumption.

Last updated in 2015, this is a comprehensive EPA resource designed to help state energy, environmental, and utility officials draw insights from other states’ experiences and policy innovations as they develop, implement, and evaluate their own programs. Each Guide chapter covers a unique policy topic, provides descriptions and a regulatory landscape of the featured policy, explains its environmental, energy, health, and equity benefits, highlights how states have approached key design and implementation issues, and shares best practices based on state experiences. EPA is updating the Guide in phases, with each updated chapter reflecting significant state regulatory and policy developments since the 2015 edition. To date, seven chapters have been released:

Forthcoming chapter updates will include appliance standards, clean generation requirements, and lead by example policies, among others on buildings and equitable policies. Please click here to be notified when future chapters are released.