Consideration of Environmental Justice in the US EPA’s Regulatory Analyses: A Review and Assessment

Increasingly, governments around the world have been interested in evaluating the environmental justice (EJ) implications of new regulations and policies. However, there have been few systematic reviews that gauge the extent and quality of these analytical efforts. We inventory and evaluate EJ analyses for all economically significant final rules issued by the US EPA between 2012 and 2024. We find that three-quarters of these rules include an EJ analysis, two-thirds of which are at least partially quantitative. The proportion of rules that include an EJ analysis increased from about 60 percent in 2012 to more than 90 percent in 2021–2024. Although many of the quantitative EJ analyses only examined baseline issues, some recent assessments used more nuanced methods to assess differences in vulnerability, cumulative impacts, and climate risk. Three EJ analyses also considered the incidence of costs (i.e., who bears the burden of costs). While recognizing differences in budget, data, and modeling constraints across regulatory contexts, we emphasize the need to consider EJ at the early stages of the analytical process. We also discuss important gaps in data and methods that are key to examining the underlying heterogeneity in pollutant concentrations and health risks, EJ impacts of regulatory options, regulatory costs, and net benefits across demographic groups. Although these conclusions derive from past US experience, they are likely applicable in other country contexts as well.