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Alachua County, Florida is committed to transitioning to renewable energy in order to address the climate crisis and secure energy justice for low-income and underserved communities. Alachua County's community-led Project EMPOWER (Energy Modernization for People, Opportunity, Work, Equity, and Renewables) is focused on making the clean energy transition fair and equitable for everyone, and is partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy's Communities LEAP (Local Energy Action Program) Pilot.
The near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists is that the massive burning of gas, oil, and coal is having cataclysmic impacts on our atmosphere and climate. These climate and environmental impacts are particularly magnified and debilitating for low-income communities and communities of color. Energy democracy tenders a response and joins the environmental and climate movement with broader movements for social and economic change in this country and around the world. Energy Democracy brings together racial, cultural, and generational perspectives to show what an alternative, democratized energy future can look like. The book will inspire others to take up the struggle to build the energy democracy movement.
This thesis presents an investigation of equity and environmental justice implications of the transition to clean energy in the United States through a series of analyses of current and future energy systems. In the first chapter we set the groundwork for the dissertation and emphasize the need for rapid decarbonization of the global energy sector while taking into account inequities in our current energy system. In the second chapter we discuss the distribution of health damages associated with electricity consumption and the role of electricity trading. In the third chapter we estimate the health, climate, and environmental justice benefits of freight truck electrification. In the fourth chapter we identify policy strategies that would allow California to meet its climate goals and assess the air quality and environmental justice impacts of each policy. In the fifth chapter we discuss the distribution of electric vehicles and allocation of electric vehicle rebates in California across the state and in formerly redlined neighborhoods and provide an assessment of justice in the state's transition to electric vehicles. In the final chapter we present an overview of the findings and highlight three key takeaways: i) the existence of viable climate solutions; ii) the importance of considering the electric sector and transportation as coupled systems when looking at transportation electrification as a means for decarbonization; and iii) the importance of taking into account sub-national and local inequities to achieve a just transition to clean energy.
In 2017, the city of Kingston, New York,committed to meet 100% power consumption with renewableenergy sources by 2050. Leading by example, Kingston hadalready made significant strides in energy efficiency in citybuildings; however, meeting the new, ambitious goal meantthat maintaining energy and housing affordability would be achallenge. The poorest residents of the city face a significantenergy burden, spending up to a quarter of income on powerand heating bills.
While technologies are clearly instrumental in transitioning away from fossil fuel-based energy and toward a decarbonized economy, decisions about which technologies are prioritized, how they are implemented, and the policies that drive these changes will have profound effects on people and communities, with important implications for equity, jobs, environmental and energy justice, health, and more. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Accelerating Decarbonization in the United States: Technology, Policy, and Societal Dimensions was tasked with assessing the broad range of technological, policy, and societal dimensions of decarbonizing the U.S. economy. The committee produced a 2021 report that provides the U.S. government with a roadmap of equitable and robust decarbonization policies. The next report of the committee will address the broader range of policy actors who play a role in equitable energy transition. To inform its deliberations, the committee hosted a 1-day workshop on July 26, 2022 to discuss critical issues of equity and justice during the energy transition. The goal of the workshop, titled Pathways to an Equitable and Just Transition: Principles, Best Practices, and Inclusive Stakeholder Engagement, was to move beyond energy technologies and elicit ideas and insights to inform the development of principles, best practices, and actionable recommendations for a broad range of policy actors and stakeholders in order to fully operationalize equity, justice, and inclusion. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.
This paper explores the opportunities for a 'just transition' to low carbon and sustainable energy systems; one that addresses the current inequities in the distribution of energy benefits and their human and ecological costs. In order to prioritize policies that address energy poverty alleviation and sustainability concerns, national action and higher levels of international cooperation and coordination are required to steer public policy towards a broader range of public interests. This also implies re-directing the vast sums of private energy finance that currently serve a narrow set of interests. This paper considers how national and global energy governance must adapt and change to ensure a just transition to low carbon and sustainable energy systems. Creating a low carbon and sustainable energy transition will face significant challenges in overcoming opposition from a broad array of interest groups. The challenges of guiding a just transition are amplified by the relinquishing of government control over the energy sector in many countries and the current weak and fragmented state of global energy governance. The necessary changes in energy decision making will entail complex trade-offs and rebound effects that make strong, participatory and transparent institutional arrangements essential in order to govern such challenges equitably. In this respect, procedural justice is critical to achieving distributive justice and to creating a simultaneously rapid, sustainable and equitable transition to clean energy futures.
For decades, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been a leader in applied clean energy research. We put proven, reliable solutions into practice in partnership with thousands of communities and organizations throughout the United States and around the world. Uninterrupted access to energy is, for many people, an issue of life or death. For most, it is an essential contributor to quality of life. NREL's vision is a clean energy future for the world. As such, we focus on developing and delivering solutions that enable all people to participate in and benefit from the transition to sustainable energy. We seek to achieve equity in both the social and economic participation in the energy system, while also remediating social, economic, and health burdens caused by the energy system.
This dissertation proposes clean energy justice that links energy justice to clean energy access and vulnerable communities in terms of geographic distribution (distributional justice) and community attributes with respect to places, people, and equality (recognition justice). The first study of this dissertation argues that adoption attributes are different by communities and technologies. In particular, I find that rooftop solar adoption is strongly associated with housing variables and communities with lower adoption rates. On the other hand, I find that electric vehicle (EV) charger adoption is additionally and strongly associated with economic variables. Furthermore, communities in Seattle present higher variations in rooftop solar adoption than in EV charger adoption. The second study proposes that energy vulnerability can be characterized by energy resiliency associated with rooftop solar adoption and energy dependency related to energy burden. I find that city-level variations of rooftop solar adoption and energy burden are obvious even after controlling for community attributes. Furthermore, rooftop solar distribution in the Pacific Northwest major cities -- Seattle, Bellevue, and Portland, presents significant spatial lag effects while energy burden shows a higher city-level variation. In addition, I identify vulnerable communities in terms of energy resiliency and energy dependency. In the third study, I introduce four energy justice domains in terms of two driving forces -- technology development and equitable policies. Based on inequality and inequity associated with distributional and recognition justice, I quantify clean energy access in terms of four indices in three cities. I find that inequality and inequity of rooftop solar distribution and adoption have increased across communities in the cities over time. In conclusion, I discuss implications for future research and advocate for implementing tailored support to local communities based on the identified attributes.
Sierra Club Florida's "Clean Energy for All" campaign helps communities in Florida transition to 100% clean energy. The organization sought the help of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) analysts to achieve to achieve two goals: (1) create a Clean Energy Toolkit to help communities in Florida and across the country find data and and analysis to achieve clean energy goals, and (2) provide direct analysis of local clean energy potential for two Florida communities, the cities of Tallahassee and Sarasota.