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A guaranteed income program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provided 130 single caregivers who made below 80% of the local median income with $500 cash payments, no strings attached. The 18-month program, Cambridge Recurring Income for Success, helped participants increase their savings, cover emergencies, and spend more time with their children.

Utility companies across the United States are using virtual power plants to meet electricity demand, access backup power, and lower the electric bills of participants. To make these power plants work, the utilities use energy from the battery storage systems of customers who have home solar arrays.

Following the passage of the Climate Change Act, the United Kingdom created a Climate Change Committee to oversee the country’s efforts to reach net-zero emissions. The committee acts as a watchdog by analyzing ways to decarbonize the economy and publishing information that can be leveraged by policymakers, non-governmental organizations, and private sector industries. Its model has since been replicated around the world.

State governments in the United States are implementing Extended Producer Responsibility laws to fund recycling programs. The laws impose a fee on the manufacturers of products that become recyclable waste. The money earned is designated for projects that increase recycling rates.

After the Oregon Legislature voted to reverse a law decriminalizing drug possession for personal use in response to a spike in overdoses, advocates attributed the legislation’s failure to poor implementation, complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and inadequate time to produce results.

Communities in the United States are slowly replacing small culverts that alter the flow of streams and block the paths of migratory fish species with wider culverts and bridges, allowing the ecosystems to recover.

The “In Her Hands” program from The Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund provides about $850 per month for two years to 654 women living below the federal poverty line with no strings attached. Guaranteed income programs like this fight poverty and help people see benefits like having access to funds to care for themselves and their children, pursue higher education, pay off debts and catch up or get ahead on bills.

The city of Denver, Colorado, is encouraging its residents to reduce their transportation emissions with an incredibly popular e-bike rebate program. Several times a year, the city offers a set amount of income-based vouchers on a first-come, first-served basis that cover up to $1,400 of an e-bike purchase.

After extreme flooding damaged homes, the energy efficiency utility Efficiency Vermont offered emergency flood rebates to those impacted. Recovery teams helped people plan and find funding to repair and replace energy systems and appliances with more efficient models that will help them reach their decarbonization goals. In this circumstance, exceptions were made to include rebates for high-efficiency fossil fuel systems, too.

After Alaska and Maine implemented ranked-choice voting, which allows citizens to rank candidates in the order of their preference, voters reported feeling more engaged in the process and noticing less extreme rhetoric among politicians running for office. Despite efforts to repeal the system on the basis that it is confusing, about 70 percent of voters ranked more than one candidate on their ballot.

Chicago’s federally-funded Asylum Seeker Emergency Rental Assistance Program is helping migrants move out of shelters by covering six months of rent.

Despite soaring housing costs, the city government in Paris aims to achieve mixité sociale. That essentially means it's preventing economic segregation to ensure residents from a broad cross-section of society reside in the city and own businesses there. It’s doing so by nabbing real estate to create public housing and providing real estate subsidiaries for small businesses.

Utah has universal vote-by-mail, in which every eligible voter receives a ballot in the mail ahead of elections. Even as other Republican-led states have placed more restrictions on voting by mail, Utah legislators have rejected proposed changes, and roughly three-quarters of likely voters in 2024 say they think the process produces “fair outcomes.”

Dairy digesters are oxygen-free systems that break down organic material like manure and turn methane into “biogas,” which can be used to generate electricity or processed into transportation fuel. Once heralded and championed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture as one of the most cost-effective emissions reductions programs, new research shows the real cost is up to 17-times more than what state and industry officials have publicly claimed.

An artificial intelligence model developed by researchers at Standford University analyzes aerial photographs to detect fields with manure illegally spread on them in the winter. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources can use that information to manually check fields for compliance with regulations that are meant to prevent water contamination.

Researchers and conservationists in European countries like Finland are buying obsolete dams and dismantling them to allow river ecosystems to recover and fish to travel freely.

After Colorado limited tax deductions for high earners to help fund free school meals, participation in breakfast programs rose 35 percent, while schools saw participation in lunch programs increase by 31 percent. However, the tax changes did not provide enough revenue to fully cover the cost of the free meals, and lawmakers are now considering whether to limit eligibility for the free meals.

In response to Israel’s war on Gaza, student activists at the University of California Davis helped draft and campaign in support of a bill demanding that the university divest from corporations “complicit in human rights violations against Palestinians,” drawing hundreds to speak before the student government. The student senate ultimately passed the bill by a vote of 12-2 and is now in the process of implementing it.

The United States’ Saving on a Valuable Education plan bases enrolled borrowers’ student loan payments on their monthly discretionary income to help lower the rate. The federal government covers any interest above the minimum monthly payments, which can be as low as $0, and some of the debt will be forgiven.

Since Arkansas does not allow online voter registration, Get Loud Arkansas collects voters’ information via an online form and then submits the registration paperwork for them, helping reach residents who are less likely to register in person via paper applications. So far, 358 people have registered using the organization’s online system, and nearly 80 percent of those were people under 20.

The Netherlands built nearly 3,000 wildlife crossings over and under roads, railways, and waterways to reduce habitat fragmentation, allowing wildlife to roam freely without becoming roadkill.

After a badly needed road construction project was abandoned by officials and contractors, community members banded together to pool their resources and build wooden bridges that made the road passable again.

With the new statewide Medicaid expansion, the Department of Adult Correction is working to ensure fewer people reenter society after incarceration and enter a healthcare coverage gap by helping people apply for Medicaid before release. With the Medicaid expansion, 80% of the 15,000 people released from prison each year are now eligible for coverage, and prison staff submit about 100 Medicaid applications each week.

Connecticut and several other East Coast states are implementing baby bond programs to help children in low-income families generate wealth. The programs create trust funds for babies born into families on public health insurance that are managed by the state until they turn 18.

Moms for Housing reclaim vacant homes owned by investors to provide a place for single mothers to live. Advocating for housing as a human right, 13 organizers are currently living in these unoccupied houses and through civil disobedience, managed to negotiate temporary housing as they continue fighting for permanent solutions to the area’s housing crisis.