Environmental Justice and the Energy Transition: How the Energy Industry Can Do Better

Abstract

Environmental justice (EJ) communities are defined as “a community with significant representation of communities of color, low‐income communities, or tribal and indigenous communities, that experiences, or is at risk of experiencing higher or more adverse human health or environmental effects.” As the energy transition to cleaner and greener forms of energy is accelerating, it does not necessarily mean the development of renewable energy projects will happen with little or no EJ conflicts. Just the opposite may occur, but in the name of fighting climate change.

Sprawiedliwie – co to znaczy? Transformacja energetyczna w Polsce na tle społeczno-przestrzennych konsekwencji nieukończonej elektrowni jądrowej „Żarnowiec”

“…W przypadku sprawiedliwości energetycznej często pojawiającymi się tematami są: kwestia energetycznego ubóstwa (Hiteva, 2013;Christman, Russell, 2016;Sovacool i in ., 2016;Samarakoon, 2019), oddziaływania inwestycji na środowisko (Walker, 2012;Ottinger, 2013;Russo, Martin, 2020) czy też na zdrowie i samopoczucie osób (Frankowski, Tirado Hererro, 2021;Liao i in ., 2021;Rao, Wilson, 2022) . Jednak, szczególnie w świetle podjętej w artykule analizy, warto rozważyć wpływ decyzji energetycznych szczebla centralnego na strukturę społeczną danego obszaru .…”

Energy Storage as an Equity Asset

“…Energy insecurity, or the inability to meet basic household energy needs, may lead vulnerable households to forgo essential needs such as food and medical care [16]. The distribution of technology siting is also a concern where majority of the clean energy technologies are located on predominantly low-income and vulnerable community geographies [17,18].…”

“…Fossil fuel extraction and production industries cause pollution with air quality and water quality effects. These same attributes have health effects on local communities [17,39]. Renewable energy resources have also raised questions about interactions in the siting process, around land use, avian species, and flicker effects, as well as supply chain sustainability [15••].…”