5

Discussion of Pathways for the Energy Transition

People made policies—and people can also change those policies.

—McKenna Dunbar, Sierra Club¹

For the workshop’s final session, participants gathered for a structured discussion of pathways for the energy transition. Groups were divided by general topic areas aligned with the sessions earlier in the day: public health and resilience, jobs and workforce, equitable access to decarbonization interventions, and energy affordability and burden. These sessions allowed for participants to dig deeper into topics raised in the prior presentations and panel discussions, as well as raise useful examples and case studies that could inform the committee’s consensus recommendations (to release in mid-2023). Attendees first reported key take-aways from small breakout group discussions and then further expanded on their ideas and suggestions in a full group discussion.

SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION REPORT-OUTS

Committee Chair Stephen Pacala, Princeton University, noted that the committee has been charged with suggesting and implementing large-scale policies to help the United States achieve a fair and just transition. While there have been several successful small-scale projects tailored to specific communities, the challenge now is to create a national effort

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¹ McKenna Dunbar, Sierra Club, presentation to the workshop on July 26, 2022.

to make a broader impact where it is most needed. To help inform the committee’s thinking on future directions, he invited spokespeople from breakout groups to summarize the outcomes of their discussions, which focused on each of the four main workshop topics.

Public Health, Safety, and Community Resilience

Jonathan Patz, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Cynthia Harris, Environmental Law Institute; Leo Woodbury, Just Solutions Collective; McKenna Dunbar, Sierra Club; and Jenny Bradford, University of Wisconsin–Madison, summarized outcomes from their breakout group discussion focusing on public health, safety, and community resilience.

Many participants stressed the need to replace siloed approaches to health and energy with a broader, coalition-based approach in which groups share power, funding, and expertise. For governments, researchers, and other entities, this points to a need to establish meaningful partnerships and shared leadership with communities, whose rich expertise and actual needs are often overlooked. To do this effectively, participants underscored the importance of using decolonized and non-paternalistic language and advancing meaningful, intersectional, and substantive education and dialogue to match communities, agencies, and policymakers with foundations or programs that can offer resources and support. Finding pathways to identify, learn from, and scale up success stories can also help in these efforts.

Participants also pointed to a need for richer data to inform policy. This includes data to calculate true energy costs and burdens, better understand the nuances of energy use and needs in various communities, and examine the near- and long-term costs and health benefits of clean energy technologies across the entire life cycle, from equitable mining to generational impacts on public health.

Participants offered several concrete ideas for advancing these goals. First, some participants suggested program managers or bureaucrats should be required to liaise with community members to better understand their perspectives. For example, representatives from federal agencies could tour Southern communities to see firsthand the negative health and environmental impacts biomass wood pellet industry plants have had.² “Someone needs to get down on the ground [level] where they can see the actual problems that are going on and how communities want to address them,” Woodbury summarized. Second, participants suggested focusing on supporting the innovative solutions that emerge

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² Biomass pelleting plants process wood, agro-waste, and forestry residues like stalks and sawdust into pellets that can then be served as a substitute for fossil fuel combustion.

from community-based organizations, such as a program focused on installing water generators in churches to supply safe drinking water. As part of coalition-based efforts, governments and other entities can help to amplify the work of such groups, provide them with opportunities, and remove barriers such as funding and paperwork. Third, participants suggested that schools could better integrate advocacy and environmental stewardship into their curriculums, work to address climate anxiety among younger generations, and fund scholarships for future leaders.

Finally, participants suggested publicly addressing systemic negative practices through holistic conversations about equity, mental health, and environmental injustices at every age and policy level. By elevating community perspectives and acknowledging multiple viewpoints, these conversations can shape business and procurement practices, policies, technologies, and outcomes. “People made policies—and people can also change those policies,” noted Dunbar. Participants suggested that such conversations are most impactful when they intentionally center health, humility, and community engagement while addressing systemic inequalities and underserved communities through a change in day-to-day relationships that avoid exploitative practices and give underserved communities appropriate power and sovereignty to determine their own fate.

Jobs and Workforce Development Opportunities

Roxanne Johnson, BlueGreen Alliance; Rebecca DeBoer, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; and Paula Glover, Alliance to Save Energy, summarized their breakout group discussion on jobs and workforce development opportunities.

From the perspective of workforce development, participants stressed the need for retraining to create opportunities for long-term career transitions; a commitment to fostering diversity; and improved worker support and protections, including through unionization, wage and work standards, unemployment insurance, and strong retirement and relocation packages. To inform efforts to accomplish this, participants suggested a need for a central, cohesive entity to house and share best practices and existing tools; grassroots-led local and regional entities to bridge legislative gaps and create connected, broad-based coalitions; and structured and meaningful stakeholder engagement, input, and shared decision-making processes that incorporate stakeholder feedback, including a focus on renters and disadvantaged, fenceline, and Indigenous communities. Participants also noted the importance of removing or adjusting policies or industry subsidies that directly conflict with just transition goals.

Participants suggested several specific strategies for increasing job opportunities during the energy transition. For example, participants

pointed to opportunities to create clean energy jobs around energy efficiency enhancements and climate mitigation and resilience strategies, such as weatherization and fuel-switching efforts. Participants also highlighted the value of creating interdisciplinary teams to study workforce outcomes and suggested partnering with K–12 schools to support a strong workforce pipeline.

Although speed is important, several participants underscored that “just” is the priority. Considerations for a just transition are often interconnected with broader issues, such as unionization, health care, and education. As such, participants underscored the importance of ending the exploitation of workers and vulnerable communities as part of a just decarbonization transition.

Equitable Access to Transition Technologies, Infrastructure, and Programs

Jason Beckfield, Harvard University, summarized three main points emerging from the discussions the breakout group on equitable access to transition technologies, infrastructure, and programs. First, it is critically important to think more about what is being transitioned to, and less about what the transition is away from. The answer will be different depending on the region, but solutions have to both scale up to be applicable to larger areas, and scale down to be relevant, helpful, and even joyful in the context of people’s lives. Looking forward can inspire visions that are creative, affirmative, concrete, and local.

Second, participants stressed the importance of focusing on people’s lived experiences, specific barriers, and technological needs by asking them what problems they are trying to solve and what they need in order to solve them. For example, Beckfield said, “When you’re carrying a heavy load in your life already, you can’t focus on doing an EV loan. This is very insightful, I think, and goes to the point that oftentimes community members don’t have really the capacity to be aware of how they might benefit from different programs, or they may face very different kinds of barriers.” Solving real problems requires embracing the ups and downs of trial-and-error, helping community organizations build capacity, creating financial innovations and targeted needs-based programs that avoid stigma, and helping with new technology maintenance. All of this in turn will also increase trust.

Third, politics is important and cannot simply be ignored. Navigating different communities’ priorities can be polarizing, especially when an issue is framed around morality or notions about which groups or people are most “deserving” of solutions or assistance.

Energy Affordability and Burdens

Brent Heard, National Academies, summarized the breakout group discussion focusing on energy affordability and burdens. One key need the group identified is that both public and private utilities should cultivate a culture of embracing meaningful change. As part of this, participants suggested utilities should strive for more authentic engagement with communities and customers and better communication with customers about usage and assistance. The group also identified key data needs, including more refined air quality and location data, better measurements for a household’s true energy burden, and a better understanding of how much energy people would consume in a more just world. Participants also suggested it would be valuable to analyze equity implications, accessibility, and quality-of-life outcomes as part of the planning and rollout of particular technology deployments.

Participants in this group posited that utilities and governments could combine assistance programs to reduce administrative burdens. For example, households qualifying for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits could automatically be enrolled in utility assistance programs. Similarly, if someone has a health diagnosis that requires electrical medical equipment, an assigned case manager, perhaps working out of a local resilience hub, could file for utility shutoff protections or connect them to a community microgrid.

FULL GROUP DISCUSSION

In a final open discussion, committee members, speakers, and workshop participants explored the connection between the energy transition and other social issues and suggested several ideas for future learning opportunities.

Energy Transition and Social Issues

Pacala asked about the relationships between the energy transition and other social issues. Johnson stated that decarbonization and other problems are fully intertwined, and in order to gain support for the energy transition, people first need to feel secure in their communities and their lives. Romero-Lankao agreed, noting that energy is embedded in every aspect of society. In Los Angeles, for example, the city must account for renters, who make up 62 percent of the population, in any effort to increase building electrification. Krieger also agreed, adding that people engage with multiple ecosystems and infrastructures simultaneously—rather than segregating different aspects of their lives

into different sectors—and successful discussions and solutions must acknowledge that fact.

Khalil Shahyd, National Resources Defense Council, also emphasized that climate change and social issues are fully intertwined and cautioned that people can be put at risk when arguments for expediency are used to argue against social justice. Most nations must simultaneously address climate change and social issues, but this requires deep conversation and cooperation—not only technical solutions. However, Shahyd suggested that the current political climate in the United States makes this level of cooperation nearly impossible. The decarbonization paths the United States takes can influence other nations, and Shahyd cautioned that if the United States emphasizes technology over social issues, the ripple effects could be devastating to the entire world’s access to transportation, housing, and food.

On the other hand, Beckfield suggested that tying decarbonization to other political issues also has its downsides. He suggested that a just transition could be achieved faster and more effectively if it draws on the decades-long wealth of expertise, creativity, and problem-solving skills developed through the environmental justice movement and successful transitions seen in some former fossil fuel communities, rather than striving to tackle all interconnected problems simultaneously. When Pacala asked if there was a middle ground between technological solutions and massive social change, given that the seriousness of global warming warrants great urgency, Beckfield replied yes—pragmatist social mechanisms can be employed to solve real, day-to-day problems creatively and in ways that can scale up.

Jobs are also a critical social issue. Romero-Lankao stated that U.S. fossil fuel work is not being replaced with jobs of comparable quality—a serious problem that cannot be ignored in a just, equitable transition. Another participant agreed, noting that an unjust transition is already under way. To help workers feel an increased sense of agency and safety in their lives, the participant suggested that assistance programs should combat weak union power and labor laws by offering income, health insurance, education, and retraining opportunities for high-quality jobs. The participant cautioned that if decarbonization is pursued without justice, it can create new problems. In addition, Woodbury noted that a just transition must also help those communities burdened with a legacy of poverty, pollution, and powerlessness. Pacala agreed, adding that fossil fuel workers and disadvantaged communities are two very different populations, and a just transition will include separate policies to address their very different needs.

Learning Opportunities and Ideas

Krieger named the COVID-19 pandemic—in which critical failures resulted from an overemphasis on technical solutions like vaccines, paired with a lack of attention to and skill in addressing the social issues—as a cautionary tale of what happens when health justice concerns are not centered during a crisis. Instead, she said that technical and social problems must be resolved together—through meaningful engagement with other communities—to avoid pushing groups further apart. “We as humans, as people among other organisms on this planet, don’t separately decide that this is a workplace issue … this is a residential issue … this is a transportation issue,” Krieger said. “We embody all of that at once.”

Cody TwoBears reminded participants that native communities are sovereign nations that do not have to wait for critical legislative votes; they can create their own laws and policies. One benefit of this is that they can recreate the success stories that surfaced during the workshop almost immediately and demonstrate that just transition is possible and worthwhile. Tribal nations are ready for this work, have land, and are connected to the U.S. power grid, but need support because they lack infrastructure to share information widely and spread these ideas. “We’re ready, we’re willing—I just wanted to shoot that out there to everybody to let you know that we just need the resources to be able to put these game plans in place,” said TwoBears. “Let’s show these examples in Native country so we can be a good example for the rest of the United States to follow.”

Nock agreed that Indigenous regulatory structures are very different and pointed out that communities and structures across the United States also vary widely. In addition, different communities and people of color are not a monolith, and people experience a wide range of energy and affordability challenges. Science and engineering reports often push for objective studies, but she cautioned that seeking objectivity can also mask problems; for example, research demonstrates that the definitions of “affordable” and “vulnerable” are subjective.

A final idea raised by a participant was to push energy efficiency regulations onto manufacturers instead of low-income homeowners or renters, who should benefit from targeted programs and not be burdened by expensive regulations. This change could create momentum toward a more holistic shift in energy use, because energy is so central to people’s lives. For example, utility access and affordability can have serious consequences for lower-income families, who could lose their children if they lose access to water or power. Pacala added that increasing the efficiency of lower-income homes was a significant but important task for the energy transition.

CLOSING REMARKS

Closing the workshop, Pacala reflected on several common themes that emerged from the breakout discussions. One key consideration is the need for more streamlined policies to address workforce issues, public health, and energy affordability challenges. For example, in some cases there may be opportunities to combine entry points for multiple programs into one application or criterion to reduce siloing, red tape, and fragmentation that communities frequently encounter when they try to solve multiple interconnected problems.

Another common theme was the need for more and better data—data to capture energy use, needs, and burdens from multiple angles and to understand how different technologies or policies might play out differently in various types of households, communities, and locations.

Finally, a critical theme underlying the whole workshop was the need for authentic stakeholder and community engagement, including in-person community visits to understand lived experiences and help community organizations build capacity, overcome barriers, and access resources. “There is no justice unless people have a say,” said Pacala.

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