19 Jun BPC Action Applauds Bipartisan TREE Act in Energy and Environment

BPC Action supports the Tackling Residential Energy Burdens Efficiently (TREE) Act of 2020 and commends Sens. Booker (D-NJ) and Capito (R-WV) for its introduction. We are glad to see congressional support for innovative energy policies that recognize the multiple benefits of trees for reducing both emissions and residential energy consumption. 

The TREE Act establishes a Department of Energy grant program with the goal of planting at least 300,000 trees each year to increase community tree canopy cover, reduce residential energy consumption, and alleviate energy burden for households that pay a large percentage of household income spent on home energy bills. Trees and forests in developed areas of the U.S. are an important and sometimes overlooked domestic carbon sink that stores about 640 million metric tons of carbon (equivalent to about 2.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide).