Mitigation Research

Evergreen Collaborative: Top Climate Nonprofit Evaluation

In this document, we provide a descriptive overview of Evergreen Collaborative’s activities and assess the organization’s marginal impact. Based on our assessment, we believe that Evergreen Collaborative is cost-effective and will likely reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021 we focused our initial analysis on Evergreen Collaborative’s work on federal legislative advocacy given that the organization centered its 2021 and 2022 efforts on US federal climate legislation. Evergreen successfully advocated for many initiatives that were included in the IRA such as clean energy tax credits, the green bank, and environmental justice block grants. Following the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Evergreen Collaborative is now planning to work on implementing bills and state-level policy, and influencing the Biden Administration and federal agencies to take further action on climate. We are cautiously optimistic that Evergreen Collaborative will be impactful in these areas as well given the organization’s track record of success and emphasis on timing its work to what is most politically tractable. Based on Evergreen Collaborative’s accomplishments, organizational strengths, strategic approach, and cost-effectiveness, we classify Evergreen Collaborative as one of our top recommendations

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Disclaimer

This deep dive was last updated in November 2022, in advance of releasing the list of Giving Green’s 2022 top climate nonprofit recommendations, which included Evergreen Collaborative. Evergreen Collaborative was not included in Giving Green’s 2023 list of top climate nonprofit recommendations. That being said, it is our impression that Evergreen Collaborative continues to do strong work and has continued to produce impressive achievements. For donors interested in supporting US policy work, we still believe that Evergreen Collaborative would be an excellent choice.

The reason for removing Evergreen Collaborative from our 2023 list derives from a changing political landscape in the US and a shift in research priorities at Giving Green. We first recommended Evergreen Collaborative in 2021, primarily based on the strength of its contributions to federal legislation, during a time when Giving Green felt that there was a unique opportunity to pass federal climate legislation in the US. After the passage of major climate bills in 2021-2022 (IIJA and IRA), the legislative window for climate policy in the US seems to have mostly closed.

Therefore, many advocacy groups in the US (including Evergreen Collaborative) have shifted their strategies to center implementation, regulation, and state-level policy. While these are important activities, the landscape is different enough from federal legislation that evaluating effective nonprofits in this context would first require us to conduct new research to assess the general impact strategy. Although we considered conducting this research, our 2023 research prioritization moved us in a different direction, toward advocacy targeting specific sectors and technologies. Given that Evergreen Collaborative’s work does not fall into the impact strategies we prioritized in our 2023 research, we did not fully reassess it. Therefore, it was not included in our list of 2023 top climate nonprofits.

Timing policies to the political climate

Evergreen Collaborative’s strategy is to carefully time its policy communication to the political climate. For example, when President Joseph Biden won the White House and it seemed likely that Democrats would lose the Senate, Evergreen Collaborative released a list of President Biden’s proposed executive orders for combating climate change within days of the final election results. Evergreen Collaborative compiled these executive orders as a means to advocate for climate action outside of legislation; its work on calling attention to this path received media coverage through NPR’s Morning Edition. Additionally, Evergreen Collaborative developed lists of five key action items 21 different government agencies should each take on climate as the names of each agency’s potential appointees were released to the public. This was a gap in climate advocacy that other environmental groups had not filled. Evergreen Collaborative converted its original plan for a “100% Clean Energy by 2035” Clean Energy Standard (CES) into the CEPP when it became clear that given the Democrat’s very narrow control of the Senate would necessitate a structure that could pass through reconciliation. Although this particular piece of legislation was not included in the IRA, it helped set a benchmark for ambition and the level of spending in the electricity sector. Evergreen also advocated for initiatives that were included in the final bill such as EJ block grants, the green bank, and clean energy tax credits. Finally, Evergreen consistently helped shape the narrative in the media during the recent development of climate legislation as well as in response to other climate policy news. [1]

According to Evergreen, the organization will still be effective if Democrats lose the government trifecta after the 2022 midterm elections. This is marked by a change in strategy as Evergreen shifts its focus away from passing federal legislation and instead works on (i) IIJA and IRA implementation, (ii) executive actions, (iii) state-level policy and implementation, and (iv) opportunities for federal legislation like the 2023 Farm Bill.

Coordinating efforts with other climate organizations

Evergreen Collaborative coordinates multiple actors by acting as connective tissue between diverse environmental organizations. For example, it has worked on the big picture of climate policy with the Big Greens and has also collaborated with the Sunrise Movement on developing a Civilian Climate Corps. It is also involved in an electrification coalition alongside other groups such as RMI, Rewiring America, and various environmental justice groups. Importantly, Evergreen led weekly calls on the CEPP with approximately 50 attendees from various groups, including large national organizations such as the League of Conservation Voters, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund in addition to regional groups such as the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Although the CEPP did not pass, the coalition that Evergreen built evolved into an ongoing 100% clean energy network that continues to push for shared power sector goals.

Evergreen Collaborative reduces GHGs from the atmosphere by influencing policymakers and regulators via its policy workstream and coalition building. We illustrate a simple theory of change in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Our take on Evergreen Collaborative’s theory of change

Inputs

Evergreen Collaborative pushes climate policies forward by designing policies, strategically communicating its work, and coordinating advocacy efforts. Evergreen Collaborative’s policy work includes writing policy proposals and model bills and also strategizing ways to advance its proposals. In terms of coordination, Evergreen Collaborative works with organizations across the climate movement, including Big Greens. By working in consortium with like-minded organizations, Evergreen Collaborative helps the organizations share their expertise with one another and coordinate their efforts around policy development and advocacy. This in turn helps inform parts of Evergreen Collaborative’s own policy workstream. Ultimately, Evergreen Collaborative uses its advocacy and the advocacy of its partner organizations to apply pressure on Congress, the Executive Branch, and states to take climate action.

Additionally, Evergreen’s 501(c)(4) arm directly lobbies members of Congress, the Biden Administration, and states to advocate for policies that would combat the climate crisis. It is also responsible for Evergreen’s email program and social media.

Groups

Evergreen Collaborative advocates for certain policies based on the political climate. It therefore focuses on influencing different branches and levels of government (e.g. federal versus state) depending on what is most tractable at the time. Before the passage of the IRA, Evergreen Collaborative mostly focused on federal legislative outcomes. With the passage of the IRA, Evergreen now plans to focus less on legislative policy and more on bill implementation, executive actions, and state-level work.

Outputs

While we recognize Evergreen’s contributions to the IRA, we think it is highly unlikely to expect another broad, climate-focused package in the coming cycle. By continuing to apply pressure to federal legislators, Evergreen Collaborative can improve the likelihood of Congress passing further climate legislation, even if that comes in the form of smaller climate provisions in larger bills. Upcoming opportunities include potential climate provisions in the 2023 Farm Bill.

Evergreen also applies pressure to the Biden Administration and federal agencies; these efforts are among Evergreen’s priorities moving forward. In this way Evergreen can ensure that bills are implemented effectively and also encourage agencies to commit to climate action steps. Evergreen can also encourage the President to take climate action through executive orders. Evergreen has done some of this work already through its “46 for 46” report as well as its paper 6 Ways President Biden Can Use Executive Action to Take on the Climate Crisis, which detail various executive actions President Biden can take to fight against climate change.

In addition, Evergreen plans to expand its work to the state and regional levels. [6] It plans to support state and localities in navigating climate funding opportunities within the IIJA and IRA including the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. We believe that its direct connections to governors’ offices in several states will increase the likelihood that Evergreen can substantially influence state-level policy and implementation.

Below, we discuss and evaluate the main assumptions related to Evergreen’s theory of change. For each of the assumptions, we rank whether we have low, medium, or high certainty about the assumption. Our assessment is based on both primary and secondary evidence, as well as our general impression of the plausibility of the assumption. [7] Importantly, a number of the stages of Evergreen’s theory of change may not be amenable to easy measurement or quantification, are not supported by a robust evidence base, or are expected to occur in the future but have not occurred as of yet.

Policies that Evergreen Collaborative introduces enters the public discourse and are debated as parts of potential bills, regulations, and executive and state-level actions (high certainty).

Evergreen Collaborative has a track record of developing policy proposals that gain traction. For example, both the CEPP and Civilian Climate Corps were co-developed by Evergreen Collaborative and have been widely covered in the media.

2. The policies that Evergreen Collaborative develops and advocates for will pass in the House and Senate (medium certainty).

Evergreen has had mixed results. One of its main policy initiatives, the CEPP, was not included in the IRA as it was not palatable to more moderate members of the Democratic party. Evergreen successfully advocated for many initiatives that were included in the IRA such as clean energy tax credits, the green bank, and environmental justice block grants.

In response to the passage of the IRA and the expectation that the political environment will be less amenable to further climate-focused legislation, Evergreen will no longer focus on federal legislation in the coming cycle. However, we do think it is possible that Evergreen may successfully influence the inclusion of climate provisions into broader pieces of legislation such as the upcoming Farm Bill.

3. Evergreen Collaborative can successfully influence the Biden Administration and federal agencies (medium certainty).

Evergreen Collaborative wrote a plan for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to take action steps such as standardizing definitions of Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG). Since then, the SEC has developed a task force that will identify ESG-related misconduct; however, the role that Evergreen Collaborative had in this task force’s development is unclear.

Evergreen also released a report card for the EPA identifying where the agency is falling behind on climate and air quality regulations as well as 6 Ways President Biden Can Use Executive and Legislative Action to Take on the Climate Crisis.

4. Evergreen Collaborative can successfully influence states (medium certainty).

We are less familiar with Evergreen Collaborative’s work with states. Evergreen has committed much of its focus in the coming cycle to state-level initiatives. While Evergreen in its present form does not yet have as robust a track record on the state level, members of the team have worked on state-level policy and have maintained connections especially through governors’ offices.

5. After legislation is enacted, Evergreen Collaborative is an effective force for ensuring that it’s implemented in a meaningful way (medium certainty).

As far as we know, Evergreen Collaborative has not yet conducted a significant amount of work on implementation of enacted legislation. However, this will become one of its main priorities over the coming cycle. We believe that Evergreen Collaborative will be successful given its depth of policy knowledge and experience, connections to federal and state-level policymakers, and strong media and social media presence.

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The cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) from 2021 (included in the Appendix) was based on the CEPP and CEAA. While many provisions from the CEAA were included in the IRA, the CEPP was not included. In addition, moving forward we project Evergreen’s main contributions to come from the implementation of the IRA. Given this, we do not find the 2021 CEA to remain relevant. Instead of entirely updating this analysis, we have made a back of the envelope calculation to estimate Evergreen’s cost-effectiveness in the context of IRA implementation. We have low confidence in the ability of this model to estimate Evergreen’s general cost-effectiveness due to uncertainty regarding the scope and efficacy of Evergreen’s influence on IRA implementation; as a result we had to use many highly subjective guess parameters.[8]

Overall, we think Evergreen Collaborative could plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation.[9]

Cost-effectiveness of the IRA (estimate). We estimate the cost-effectiveness of the IRA to be about $60/tCO2e given that the climate provisions within the IRA constitute about $369 billion of investment and are projected to influence a cumulative ~6.3 billion tons of emissions reductions over the next decade.
Evergreen’s influence on IRA implementation (guess). We then aggregate the provisions in the IRA that we believe Evergreen will attempt to impact (around $180 billion) and guess Evergreen’s level of influence on this amount.
Cost-effectiveness of Evergreen. By projecting an annual budget of $7.5 million dollars, we estimate that $3.75 million dollars will go toward IRA implementation (since 2 out of 4 of Evergreen’s priorities are related to bill implementation) each year over the next decade. Choosing a conservative parameter for Evergreen’s probability of influence, we conclude that Evergreen’s cost-effectiveness, $4.88/tCO2, is within the range of our most cost-effective options.

Key open questions and uncertainties

Given that Evergreen has mostly focused on federal legislative policy development and advocacy, we are uncertain about its efficacy regarding bill implementation especially on the state level.
Through conversations with Evergreen and other policy experts, we have understood small size and relative agility to be important traits behind Evergreen’s efficacy. We are uncertain if, or how much, growth of the organization will affect its nimbleness.
Permitting reform has emerged as a contentious issue among climate advocates, and we are uncertain as to where Evergreen stands on the issue generally. While Evergreen came out strongly against Manchin’s permitting reform proposal, it is unclear whether Evergreen opposes that specific proposal or permitting reform more generally.[10]

Conclusion

Based on Evergreen Collaborative’s accomplishments, organizational strengths, strategic approach, and cost-effectiveness, we classify Evergreen Collaborative as one of our top recommendations. Regarding Evergreen’s cost-effectiveness, we acknowledge that this is neither guaranteed over time nor over its portfolio of work. Namely, it is unclear to us how Evergreen’s work moving forward (e.g., bill implementation, regulation, state policy) will compare to its legislative work in terms of impact and cost. These are aspects that we would like to explore further in the future. Nonetheless, we believe that Evergreen is a promising organization given its track record, agility, policy knowledge, sphere of influence, and emphasis on calibrating its work to the political climate.

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Overview

We developed a simple CEA model that estimated Evergreen’s cost-effectiveness in reducing GHG emissions. Our model centered on the CEPP and CEAA tax credit extensions because of (1) Evergreen’s advocacy for both the CEPP and clean energy tax credits and (2) the combined proposals would help the US power sector reach close to Evergreen’s goal of 80% clean energy by 2030.

Although Giving Green is only considering the 501(c)(3) Evergreen Collective for a recommendation, our CEA model is based on the combined activities of Evergreen Collective and the 501(c)(4) Evergreen Action. This is because the activities were interlinked, and both contribute to the impacts on climate, so it would be hard to model them separately. We modeled three scenarios (i.e. Pessimistic, Realistic, and Optimistic) that varied in terms of how much influence Evergreen has in getting a bill passed with either the CEPP or the CEAA tax credit extensions included.

Based on how much CO2e it would reduce between 2022 and 2030, Evergreen is predicted (in expectation) to reduce emissions at a cost of about $0.54 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) under our Realistic scenario. In other words, our Realistic scenario predicts that Evergreen will reduce GHGs at a cost of about 1.9 metric tons of CO2e per dollar. These results should be viewed as rough, indicative estimates given the uncertainty in our different model inputs.

Overall, our results suggest that Evergreen could be highly cost-effective in reducing GHG emissions. However, we do not believe that its cost-effectiveness is guaranteed. First, there are major points of uncertainty in our model, such as estimating Evergreen Collective’s influence on getting the CEPP and CEAA tax credit extensions passed, as well as the provisions’ ultimate impact on emissions. Also, our model only considers the current moment and Evergreen’s influence on Congress will likely be significantly reduced in years where Congress is not under Democratic control; this would in turn reduce Evergreen’s expected value. Finally, our model is not all-inclusive. Namely, we do not have cost-effectiveness estimates for Evergreen’s work on influencing the Executive Branch and regulators. We would like to investigate this further in the future. Regardless, we are cautiously optimistic that Evergreen will remain cost-effective in the future given its track record of success and its emphasis on timing its work to the political climate.

Methods

Background

Both the CEAA and CEPP are policies that are intended to make the power sector cleaner. The CEAA is expected to bring the power sector to 69% clean energy by 2030. Combining the CEAA and the CEPP is expected to lead to 78% clean energy by 2030. Evergreen Action has played a pivotal role in developing the CEPP. It has played a much smaller role in advocating for the CEAA and tax credits in general. We use Resources for the Future’s (RFF) projected emissions for our CEA model.

Overview

We illustrate our CEA’s steps in the flowchart below (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Flow chart of Evergreen’s cost-effectiveness analysis model. Yellow, blue, and green rectangles represent inputs, outputs, and outcomes, respectively.

Our model inputs included Evergreen’s spending on the CEPP and CEAA; reductions in power sector emissions because of the CEAA and CEPP; and the change in probability of a bill passing with either CEAA or CEPP due to Evergreen. We computed Evergreen’s expected value by multiplying either provision’s CO2e reduction relative to BAU by the change in probability of a bill passing with the provision due to Evergreen. We then used Evergreen’s expected value and its spending on the CEPP and CEAA to determine the cost per change in metric ton of CO2e. We used the reciprocal of this value to estimate the change in CO2e per dollar.

We also input our CEA into a Guesstimate model, which allows us to set ranges for each input and uses a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate cost-effectiveness. Each metric included 5,000 samples. This simulation enabled us to account for uncertainty in each parameter by predicting many thousands of potential futures.

Detailed overview

Evergreen’s spending on the CEPP

Evergreen estimates that it spent around $2 million to develop and advocate for the CEPP. We understand that around $500,000 of the spending was used on TV advertising from its 501(c)(4), and the remaining amount was from its 501(c)(3) fund and was used to model the CEPP, pay staff and consultants, and support digital advertising. We are unsure how much Evergreen spent on lobbying, which would come from its 501(c)(4) fund. Evergreen also spent $500,000 on advocating for clean energy tax credits and used both its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) accounts for this.

Power sector emissions

We used a CEPP and CEAA model developed by Resources for the Future (RFF). The model’s 78% clean energy by 2030 plan was closely aligned with Evergreen’s plan for 80% clean energy by 2030 and 100% clean energy by 2035. Estimates for CO2e emissions from the RFF model were similar to other CES/CEPP models analyzed by NRDC/EDF and other researchers.

We focused on emissions from between 2022 and 2030 because (1) we believe that a bold climate provision such as the CEPP can only be passed while Democrats hold a government trifecta and (2) Democrats have held a government trifecta about once every ten years over the past four decades. Based on this pattern, we assumed that a proposal similar to the CEPP would not be proposed again until 2030 at the earliest. We used a range of eight years to be conservative in our estimates. Although RFF’s projected data extends to 2040, we do not consider emissions data past 2030 because we are unsure what BAU would look like so far out in the future; it seems plausible that the rising impacts of climate change would alter the US’ BAU strategy.

Change in probability of a bill passing due to Evergreen

The change in probability of a bill passing with the CEPP due to Evergreen was one of the most difficult values to estimate and is highly subjective. Because we were unsure how much Evergreen changed the likelihood of a bill passing with the CEPP, we examined three different scenarios that varied in probability (i.e., Pessimistic, Optimistic, and Realistic). To estimate our cases’ probabilities, we first assumed that Evergreen would have a positive impact on getting the bill passed and that its impact would be relatively small given the number of organizations that have been involved in developing and advocating for the CEPP. We therefore assumed that the Realistic case had a probability of 1% and used that value to anchor our estimates for the Pessimistic and Optimistic cases, which we set as 0.5% and 3%, respectively.

We assumed that the probability of a bill passing with the CEAA due to Evergreen would be less than the probabilities we selected for the CEPP. This is because Evergreen put less emphasis on the CEAA relative to the CEPP. Ultimately, we selected probabilities that are a tenth of what we used for Evergreen’s influence on the CEPP; we used 0.05%, 0.1%, and 0.3% for the Pessimistic, Optimistic, and Realistic cases, respectively.

Results

The cost per change in CO2e is predicted to be $1.08, $0.54, and $0.18 for the Pessimistic, Realistic, and Optimistic scenarios, respectively. In terms of change in CO2e per dollar, this is about 0.93, 1.9, and 5.6 metric tons of CO2e per dollar. Per our example run of our Guesstimate model, the distribution of cost per change in metric ton of CO2e is right-skewed across the thousands of simulated futures (Figure 4). The mean and median cost per change in CO2e are $0.46 and $0.42 per metric ton of CO2e, respectively. In terms of change in CO2e per dollar, the mean and median are about 2.6 and 2.4 metric tons of CO2e, respectively. The 5th and 95th percentiles are about 1.2 and 4.6 metric tons of CO2e per dollar, respectively (Table 1).

Figure 4: Histogram of cost per change in metric ton of CO2e. Values along the horizontal axis indicate the cost to remove one metric ton of CO2e from the atmosphere. The horizontal axis is truncated to the 1st and 99th percentiles.

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Table 1: Percentiles for change in CO2e per dollar

Evergreen Collaborative is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization in the United States. As Giving Green is part of IDinsight Inc., which is itself a charitable, tax-exempt organization, we are only offering an opinion on the charitable activities of Clean Air Task Force, and not on CATF Action. This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

[1] “The analysis, which was conducted by the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, examined whether the EPA is on track to finalize 10 power-sector regulations before the end of President Biden's first term.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/05/epa-is-falling-behind-power-plant-rules-report-says/

[2] According to an outside expert we spoke to, Evergreen played a role in getting the CES on President Biden’s campaign agenda. Namely, Governor Inslee’s staffers (now Evergreen) influenced Governor Inslee’s climate platform, which influenced Senator Bernie Sanders’ platform, which later influenced President Joe Biden after he spoke with Senator Sanders’ team about developing consensus positions on climate change during the 2020 presidential race.

[3] “Among the many funding measures included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) (P.L. 117-169) that are geared toward combating climate change is the inclusion of $30 billion in clean energy tax credits for resources such as solar and wind energy and battery storage.” https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/clean-energy-tax-credits-get-a-boost-in-new-climate-law

[4] “This is, I think, one of the most exciting and transformational investments and programs in this new law,” said Sam Ricketts, co-founder of the climate group Evergreen Action. “The importance of a national clean energy accelerator is that it’s a national entity, with a national mandate to finance these projects in every state.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/11/green-bank-clean-energy-climate-change

[5] “The Inflation Reduction Act includes historic investments in environmental justice, including establishing several new environmental justice grant programs.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/17/fact-sheet-inflation-reduction-act-advances-environmental-justice/

[6] The pivotal role for states in implementing the IRA. https://www.evergreenaction.com/blog/pivotal-role-for-states-in-implementing-the-ira

[7] We describe our certainty as low/medium/high to increase readability and avoid false precision. Since these terms can be interpreted differently, we use rough heuristics to define them as percentage likelihoods the assumption is, on average, correct. Low = 0-70%, medium = 70-90%, high = 90-100%.

[8] We describe our confidence as low/medium/high to increase readability and avoid false precision. Since these terms can be interpreted differently, we use rough heuristics to define them as percentage likelihoods our takeaway (i.e., [not] plausibly within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider recommending) is correct. Low = 0-70%, medium = 70-90%, high = 90-100%.

[9] As a heuristic to guide our research prioritization, we consider something to plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation if its estimated cost-effectiveness is within an order of magnitude of $1/tCO2e (i.e., less than $10/tCO2e).

[10] https://www.evergreenaction.com/press/evergreen-statement-on-permitting-reform-proposal

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Evergreen Collaborative: Top Climate Nonprofit Evaluation

Disclaimer

Overview

Giving Green's Research

History of Evergreen Collaborative

Historical Perspective

Evergreen Collaborative’s Organization

Budget and room for more funding

Evergreen Collaborative’s Tactics

Evergreen Collaborative’s Activities and Outcomes

Our Take on Evergreen Collaborative’s Theory of Change – In Depth

Examining the Assumptions behind Evergreen Collaborative’s Theory of Change

Evergreen Collaborative’s cost-effectiveness

Appendix: 2021 Cost Effectiveness Analysis

Endnotes

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