Lucas Stephens

The Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) is the Midwest’s leading public interest environmental legal advocacy and eco-business innovation organization, and among the nation’s leaders. It develops and leads strategic environmental advocacy campaigns to improve environmental quality and protect our natural heritage. Transportation use and technology are changing rapidly with the advent of electric vehicles, ride-hailing applications, driverless cars, and car sharing, and public transit ridership is declining as a result. Public policy needs to keep pace with these changes in order to address climate change, land use, and equity challenges. The Senior Research Analyst helps guide public policies to encourage these innovations to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, support clean power generation by using car batteries as grid-level power storage, and expand the reach of public transit. The analyst researches the quickly changing, interrelated fields of vehicle technology, power grid storage, vehicle ownership/use, and land use policy to help ELPC identify and execute opportunities to advance environmental goals in this field before city, state, and federal regulatory agencies, including public utility commissions and the US Department of Transportation.