Supporting Frontline and Vulnerable Communities in a Green New Deal

Supporting Frontline and Vulnerable Communities in a Green New Deal

Sanya Carley, Caroline Engle, David Konisky, and Savannah Sullivan

The Green New Deal (GND) calls for an ambitious program to drastically reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.  Just as importantly, the GND emphasizes that the energy transition must be done in way that helps “frontline and vulnerable communities” (i.e., communities that are experiencing immediate disruption) cope with its economic, social, and cultural impacts. Building a new energy system to address climate change in a way that supports marginalized communities will require significant investments. Our prior research has provided a framework for understanding vulnerability to the energy transition, especially in places such as Appalachian coal country. This work has also emphasized that efforts to help communities hit the hardest by the transition are not well understood.

Energy Justice Programs

Through an extensive search of umbrella organizations, social media, local government websites, economic development organizations, federal agencies, and grant winners for relevant state grants, we identified 185 national, regional, and local programs, policies, or organizations in the United States that seek to support frontline communities by addressing burdens created through the energy transition. The efforts include energy justice programs that seek to broaden access to clean, affordable energy, to enhance participatory opportunities in energy-related decision-making, and to redress labor and economic disruption caused by the shift away from fossil-fuel sources. We do not claim this list to be exhaustive, but it does provide a useful sample from which we can draw preliminary observations.

Most of the initiatives we documented are regional or local in nature. Approximately 56% of them are state efforts or programs (e.g., Kentuckians for the Commonwealth’s Empower Kentucky plan) that extend across multiple jurisdictions within a state. Local, as simply defined as anything that is sub-state, initiatives (e.g., Seattle’s Community Power Works) account for 22% of the total, regional or multi-state initiatives (e.g., the RE-AMP network) account for 16%, and national programs account for 6% (e.g., Energy Efficiency for All). Not all of these programs were designed specifically to facilitate a “just transition,” but were initiatives aimed at perpetuating the energy transition more broadly, but with implications of justice and equity. Program timeline and creation date vary. Some programs are fairly recent but a few have been around much longer.

We classified the programs into one of five categories, with an example of each shown in Figure 1.

Assistance programs seek to improve energy affordability, extend access to energy technologies and services, and to generally target energy insecurity. Most assistance programs focus on providing support to low-income utility customers through direct bill assistance, upgrade assistance, and legal advocacy and support. Several of these programs are also designed to link the energy and housing sectors, and to reduce energy costs to benefit all customers.

Collective action programs seek to educate community members, and leverage large groups of people via networks, collective action, and political pressure to shift decision-making power and resources toward marginalized groups who are not often represented in energy and climate decisions. Most collective action programs focus on community education, awareness, and action for energy transition, a “just” economic transition, energy and climate justice, and more equitable climate and energy policy.

Democratization programs seek to broaden participation in energy decision-making and increase opportunities to take advantage of clean energy. Most of these programs aim to amplify the voice of consumers, workers, and other marginalized groups in energy decision-making (e.g., rate decision-making cases), or to advance locally-owned, community-based, and shared energy projects such as community solar.

Infrastructure expansion programs seek to build new renewable infrastructure or energy efficiency upgrades, and specifically to extend the access and benefits of renewable and energy efficiency infrastructure to low-income and other marginalized groups.

Finally, Workforce/Jobs efforts are those that address and provide support for workforce training, development, and regional economic transition. Most workforce/jobs organizations are dedicated to sustainable economic development in communities that have lost or are set to lose important energy industries, such as coal mining or production, and creating opportunities for displaced workers. In some cases, these programs target explicitly renewable energy technologies and industries, such as solar photovoltaic installer workforce training.

These data reveal that collective action is the most prevalent type of program and democratization the least. This difference could be due to collective action efforts often being dedicated to shorter-term goals such as time-bound campaigns, whereas democratization initiatives are longer-term efforts. In addition, participation and ownership-related efforts typically require more intensive organizing from leadership and more significant buy-in from participants.

Figure 1. Five Energy Justice Program Types with Example Initiatives

Geographically, we identified fewer initiatives in the Great Plains. Given that the bulk of the initial search was completed online, this may be due to organizations in this region having little to no online presence. Potentially, fewer organizations were observed in this region due to the smaller presence of large urban centers compared to other regions. Workforce development related initiatives are mostly located in Appalachia, and specifically Appalachian states such as West Virginia.

Linkage to Public Administration

This preliminary research is an initial step in creating an inventory of current programs that are designed in some fashion to achieve energy justice goals. What remains unknown is the degree to which these programs are effective, and this is where public administration—and other related fields of inquiry—are critical.

The Green New Deal calls for massive government investments to ensure that the benefits of the energy transition are distributed equitably. Academic research can help be sure that such investments are directed toward evidence-based and cost-effective solutions.

Public administration scholars with expertise in governance, collaboration, policy networks, public and nonprofit management, and policy analysis can play an important role in understanding which types of programs, and under what type of conditions, are more likely to succeed. This type of research is essential for providing useful advice to policymakers that may be tasked with implementing any climate policy or program that intends to work toward an energy transition that seriously addresses equity and inclusion.

Sanya Carley and David Konisky are Professors at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Caroline Engle and Savannah Sullivan are Masters students at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington.