The $421-million grant will fund 21 implementation-ready projects planned by the Atlantic Conservation Commission, a four-state coalition focused on the protection and restoration of coastal, peatland and forest land. Participating entities include the North Carolina Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources, South Carolina Office of Resilience, the Maryland Dept. of the Environment and Virginia Dept. of Water Resources.

The projects will restore coastal habitats and forests through reforestation, land revitalization and plantings to enhance natural carbon sinks. They include shoreline and habitation restoration efforts as well as projects to reduce soil runoff and nitrogen pollution to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. 

“Renewable energy in the power sector and [electric vehicles] on the road get most of the headlines and attention when we’re talking about carbon reduction, and it’s important for us to keep doing these things,” Cooper said, “but it's been estimated that this grant will have the equivalent carbon reduction of taking 6 billion gas-powered cars off the road.”

The projects will, according to EPA, protect and restore 33,000 acres of carbon-rich peatland and coastal wetlands in North Carolina and Virginia, plant 217,700 trees and 4.8 million native wetland species in Maryland, reforest 55,000 acres in North Carolina and improve management of 93,000 acres in the Appalachians and bottomland forests of South Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. 

“These grants present historic opportunity for communities to chart their own path forward towards a cleaner and more resilient future and opportunity for all levels of government to develop and implement climate solutions that address the needs of local communities and opportunity to give communities, particularly overburdened and underserved communities, a seat at the table while fighting climate change,” Regan said. 

Around the globe, peatlands, like those that exist at Green Swamp Preserve, store twice as much carbon as the world’s forests, Regan said, meaning when destroyed or burned they release huge quantities of climate pollution, threatening biological diversity and ecological health as well as the health of surrounding communities. 

Regan, the former secretary of North Carolina’s Dept. of Environmental Quality, called the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program “one of the most innovative and exciting programs.”

“How sweet it is,” said Katherine Skinner, executive director, North Carolina, for the Nature Conservancy. Groups are “ready to go” on the projects, she said, thanks to the decades of work put in by environmental groups and to Cooper, who she said got on the phone with the governors of the other three states to line up the coalition.

Funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the grant is intended to be used for the implementation of community-driven solutions tackling the climate crisis, to reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice and accelerate the country’s clean energy transition. 

The EPA, which expects to announce another $300 million in selections under the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program later this summer, selected 25 winning projects through a competition that received nearly 300 applications. The $4.3 billion in awards is the second phase of Climate Reduction Grants program, which awarded a quarter-billion in its first phase.

As ENR reported earlier this month, the Atlantic Conservation Commission award joins two dozen others in 30 states and Tribal territories, cumulatively expected to reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 148 metric tons by 2030 and 971 million metric tons by 2050, the same as is generated by 5 million homes each year for 25 years. 

The ACC project itself is expected to cut 3.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2025-30, and a total 28 million metric tons between 2025-50.