Just Transition

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host Lonnie. [00:00:24] Speaker C: And I'm your other co host, Jaron. [00:00:26] Speaker B: And today we're kicking off our right Direction miniseries by exploring what it means to promote a just energy transition. [00:00:33] Speaker C: That's right, you may have heard the term just transition in the news or somewhere else and it often gets associated with the Green New Deal, but the concept itself actually goes back to at least the 1970s, maybe further back. [00:00:46] Speaker B: And this episode is just the first in our Right Direction miniseries where we will take a closer look at as some technologies like solar, wind, geothermal heat pumps that are helping us move in the right direction to address the climate crisis and environmental justice. [00:01:01] Speaker C: Yeah, we spend a lot of time talking about what we don't want, but not enough time talking about what we do want. And that's what this Right Direction miniseries is all about. [00:01:10] Speaker B: And we're super excited about all the special guests who will be joining us to dive into each of these topics over the next few weeks. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, Jaron, can you share WEAC's mission? [00:01:21] Speaker C: I sure can. WEAC's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices. [00:01:34] Speaker B: So as we mentioned before, our conversation today will focus on the concept of a just transition, or more specifically, a just energy transition. There's a lot to unpack there, but honestly, we could, we could do a whole miniseries just on this topic alone. But today we're joined by Shalonda Baker, former Director of the Office of Energy, justice and equity at the U.S. department of Energy, who now serves as Vice Provost for Sustainability and Climate Action at the University of Michigan. [00:02:00] Speaker C: Yeah, Shalanda Baker is definitely more of an expert on this subject than we are. She spent over a decade conducting research on the equity dimensions of the global transition away from fossil fuel energy to cleaner energy resources. And in our conversation with her, one of the things that she emphasizes is the need for collaboration between government, academia and communities to achieve a just energy transition. And more importantly, that just transition should create opportunities instead of replicating old systems of oppression for marginalized communities. [00:02:36] Speaker B: We don't want to give away too much, Darren, but I will add that we ACT is working on a lot of things that touch on different aspects of a just transition, and we'll get more into the weeds as we go through each of the episodes in our miniseries. [00:02:49] Speaker C: Thanks, Bonnie. So should we go ahead and jump into our interview then? [00:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah, let's go. [00:03:01] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Shalonda. Before we get too far into our questions with you and all of our fun topics, do you mind giving us just a brief introduction of yourself? [00:03:12] Speaker A: Sure. I'm Shalonda Baker, and my current title is the Vice Provost for Sustainability and Climate Action at the University of Michigan. I'm the inaugural Vice Provost in that role, and most recently I was the Director of the Office of Energy, justice and Equity and the Secretarial Advisor on equity at the U.S. department of Energy and the Biden Harris Administration. I think it's important to note that I'm also a lawyer. I've been called an activist. I love to let people know. I'm also a first generation college graduate. I'm a proud member of the LGBTQ community, and all of those pieces really inform how I enter spaces and how I do my work. [00:03:57] Speaker C: Thank you for that. We're so happy to have you on the show. We have lots of great questions that we wanted to dive into with you, and honestly, we're just excited to have you. I think we can jump into our first question, which is really just trying to unpack this term that gets used a lot and I think not often with a lot of clarity. And so just really want to get your perspective on what does a just transition mean for energy policy? What does it look like and what does that mean to you and the work that you've done? [00:04:26] Speaker A: Yeah, so my first encounter with just transition was really when I started an organization called the Initiative for Energy justice. And we were having the same issue, which is that people were beginning to use this term, energy justice, but there wasn't a lot of content within it, and there was just a use of it, but without a consistency and common understanding. We were putting together the Energy Justice Workbook, which was very much about defining the term based on scholarship and literature and research, but also based on how community members and advocates were using the term. But we use this frame as well of just transition, and the Climate justice alliance has a very comprehensive frame for that. Just transition is not only about specific jobs and making sure the fossil fuel industry workers have a place in the new economy, but it's about thinking holistically and transitioning all of our systems, our economy, our way of relating with each other. It's a way to kind of come into right relationship with the planet with its most vulnerable elements and humans, as well as just ensuring that we're Thinking about the whole thing, right. Health care, we're thinking about how we get food, we're thinking about our energy system. So what I have come to understand is that the systems that have produced such devastating inequality and injustice and harm in terms of the environmental systems are not going to be the same systems that get us out of this. And so we need transitions across the board in order to move into a world that is sustainable and healthy for everybody. [00:06:17] Speaker B: I appreciate that. I'm curious, as you were talking, I was thinking about when we, when we think about things being like a just transition and we think about the energy aspect of that work, it kind of alludes to something. Something's already not right or something's a little broken. So we need to transition into something that is a little bit more. Just because you talked a little bit about some of the workers aspect to it, of those folks getting left behind as we go into more clean energy and how do we make sure we rectify that? What are some of the other things or systems specific issues that you see kind of past and current within our energy system that you think warrants a need for us to examine this a little bit further, to move into that kind of just energy, the just transition? [00:06:58] Speaker A: Sure. So in my last role, I had the opportunity to give a lot of talks. Like I gave talks, my gosh, sometimes two or three a week, over 150, I mean, easily in three and a half years. And I would introduce the structural problems with the energy system in a lot of those talks. And so there are a few elements. I mean, one, and we act knows this very well. We see the disproportionate sighting of polluting facilities, fossil fuel facilities, in communities of color, low income, black and brown communities. It doesn't matter what your income level is. If you're a black person in this country, you're still more likely to live in the shadows of fossil fuel generation and a polluting facility than your white counterparts and peers at the same income level. So we know that there are some environmental justice issues that we have to contend with in terms of how our energy system is designed and the siting of facilities. Then we turn to cost. And we have data produced by the Department of Energy that shows us that in this country, about 1 in 3Americans experiences what we call energy insecurity. And I grew up with this. So this is a household making choices about whether to heat or cool their home or eat, whether to buy food or medicine or keep the home at a healthy and safe temperature. This is energy insecurity it plagues one in three Americans. It plagues half of black Americans and households and almost half Latinx households. And we also know that in native communities, there's a problem with even accessing electricity and energy. So not only are these communities more likely to be housing polluting facilities, they're also energy burdens, which is to say many of these communities are also paying over 6% for their energy needs, which is leading to that energy insecurity, over 6% of their overall household income. There's an environmental justice issue, there's an energy insecurity issue that disproportionately impacts households headed by people of color, the root cause of which is this thing called energy burden, which is paying a disproportionately high amount of your overall household income to meet your energy needs. Then there's this thing called resilience. We know that in many cases communities of color and rural communities as well, they're more likely to experience outages and longer duration outages than other communities. Some of this is just because of the way the energy system is designed, where the distribution lines kind of make it into those communities that create some problems in terms of reliability. And so all of these dimensions are structural in nature. I mean, this is, these were choices that were made by policymakers in terms of siting. We have a utility system and a way that we price energy that has had disproportionate impacts on lower income individuals and certain communities. And then we have these resilience issues, which really are an outgrowth of how we built out the energy system as well. And so these are the issues. I mean, these are the structural problems. And then we turn to just transition questions. If we think solely about who's working in the industry, you lose sight of all these other structural pieces that we should be thinking about as we transition our energy economy. We should be thinking about how we're siting clean energy, right? Are we going to the same communities to site large industrial clean energy projects, or are we thinking about new democratic processes to site those facilities? How are we thinking about cost? Who has access to low cost solar? Who has access to resilience, backup power, batteries, all those things? Again, if we had a narrow focus on workers that precludes and doesn't allow us to think about all the other complexities that you raise in your question. L.J. we got to be thinking big picture as we think about the transition. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one thing, it's hard for some people, even layperson, even me, doing this work, to kind of really understand the magnitude of energy and energy policy and how complex and complicated it is and all the different factors that go into it. So I definitely kind of appreciate that kind of holistic look of if we're going to do a trust transition, we have to think of it in all these different factors in these different sectors. Because a lot of people just think of energy as, as I flip on a switch or I plug something in and I pay a bill. Right. That's the extent that most people think is going on. But there's so many things going down that are often top down that influence someone being able to flip a switch and pay a bill or not be able to pay a bill. [00:11:53] Speaker A: I just want to say for me, the folks who taught me about that complexity were in Hawaii. So I also, I'm a professor as well, and one of my most informative teaching experiences was at the University of Hawaii, where I was at the law school. But I also formed an organization called the Energy Justice Program specifically because in Hawaii the energy transition was being looked at through a purely technical lens. So purely through electrons, how they move through the grid, as well as how we get more solar on the grid. Regardless of how we were doing that, the methods, the processes. I had the opportunity to talk to so many people in Hawaii who were in positions of power about the energy transition. And I was like, so what are, how are we thinking about communities? How are we thinking about, you know, justice? And they would like push back and say the energy transition is about flipping the lights on. So when you mentioned that it was like a trigger because they only saw it through that narrow lens. And I said, look, the energy transition is actually about cost, it's about siting, it's about all these other pieces. And so we need a justice framework where we're involving communities in the policy making piece in order to have a successful transition. [00:13:10] Speaker C: Yeah. And I appreciate you touching it. I feel like we're slowly building out all these pieces of the just transition framework. This throughout our conversations talking about, we obviously touched on the jobs piece, which I think is probably the first thing that comes to mind for most folks talk about the siting of clean energy facilities. I think kind of embedded in what you were saying there a little bit too, is thinking about the role that environmental justice community members play and some of the more procedural justice pieces and thinking about how does this concept of a just transition create an opportunity for us to change the way that community members are involved in the process so that there's more of a meaningful engagement piece. I think that's something we've touched on in previous episodes, talking about, what does that look like? And how, you know, as we're creating, you know, creating new systems and changing the way that our energy system works and looks. How can we also change the way that community members provide input and are engaged in the process and have a say over the process and have ownership over the process? So just curious, you know, what are your thoughts about how that kind of fits into this just transition framework? [00:14:09] Speaker A: Well, the community piece has to be there. I mean, it's essential. When we think about energy justice from a scholarly standpoint, we think about the types of justice that go into it. So procedural justice is definitely the first piece where it's communities having a seat at the table. The second is distributive justice and ensuring that what we design actually has equitable impact so that the benefits and the burdens are equitably shared across the society. We also think about recognition justice, which is basically recognizing that every single person who comes to the table, every community that comes to the table, has a different situation and is differently situated vis a vis the energy system and vis a vis the policy design. And then fourth, I always, and I always talk about this, think about restorative justice and how we can use policy making as a site for healing and a site for producing love and producing things that, like, people don't often think about when they're thinking about policy. I mean, so many of these communities that are environmental justice communities have experienced 150 years, you know, and in some cases, if you think about black people in this country, 400 years of oppression, structural racism and inequality. And so we have to think about healing through the new systems that we produce and design through policy. So that's the justice framework. But I do also just want to say that one of the frustrating things about all of this as a policymaker is that the terms of the debate and the terms of engagement are also predetermined. And so one of the things I want to do in the next stage of my life as a leader in this field is think about how communities themselves define the terms of engagement. They're defining the what. So often when you think about procedural justice, the what has already been determined. We're going to possibly site this facility. We're going to generate electricity or energy using this. Tell us what you think. We're do it. We're creating justice by putting a seat, putting a seat at the table for you. But what if the community said, hey, we want to create a resilience hub, or we want to create a, you know, Afro futuristic community model here in the Bronx or wherever. Right. So now we're inviting you to our table. We're setting the table. We're creating our own vision, our own futures. That's. That's justice. Right. And so the terms of debate had been so narrowed, and when I was in the administration, I was constrained by a predefined game, a predefined system trying to create space within it for community, which was radical in and of itself because that system was never designed for community input. But yet we were limited in the first instance because the debate was already set. And so we as people within the movement need to create new terms of engagement, need to create new stories, new futures, new new ideas. And then we invite those into our space and spaces for engagement. That's justice. [00:17:27] Speaker C: That's so much more than I was even hoping for. That was a beautiful answer. [00:17:30] Speaker B: How do you respond to that? [00:17:32] Speaker C: It's like I set you up for an alley oop and you like, did the backflip and dunk. Like, wow, okay, great, awesome. [00:17:39] Speaker B: I definitely know that the work that we do here at we act, that frustration is definitely echoed oftentimes in communities as well. I guess my kind of follow up question to that is how do we rectify the desire to want people to come to the table that we're setting? Right. But also knowing that we don't always have the complexity of the complex knowledge of how to do certain things or I know that's something that people hear all the time. It's like we have a vision, we know what we want as a community, but we don't understand how the electrons are moving through a system to make that happen. So kind of can you talk or speak to a little bit about that? Kind of like, not, I don't want to say it's tension or friction, but like more so of how do we get everyone to be at the same place, but also kind of respecting each other's knowledge and what they bring to the table? [00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh my gosh. The question just opens up so much for me because, you know, going back into my time in Hawaii, I'm sort of accidental in all this. Like, I just do what I do and then I see something that needs to be done. And so I'm like, well, we have to do that now because, you know, it needs to be done. And so in Hawaii, I didn't know I was going to start an energy justice program, but what I was seeing was that the technical dimensions of the transition actually were creating social outcomes and environmental outcomes. And I was thinking, oh my gosh, these technical pieces can be used as levers actually to create justice, to create a whole new economy. Community owned energy, right? Like feeding resources back into community through them selling their power, like it could be a source of empowerment. And so that said, though I knew the exact thing that you're saying. Communities didn't have the technical expertise and knowledge to actually engage and understand where within that process, process they needed to insert themselves and how and what the asks were. And so, you know, fast forward 10 years or so and now I see such a role for the academy to play, meaning, you know, academics to play in this broader transition to help facilitate and support a community's vision of its future. And so I think if we are going to actually make progress on climate change, we have to figure out how communities are armed with what they need so that they are in support of this transition, but also leading it. Where I sit now as the vice provost at University of Michigan, I have this perspective in this view where I'm like, hey, we have some of the best scholars in the world on these issues. How do we translate that knowledge so that it's not only making it to policymakers, but it's making it to community members so that they can then say, okay, well let's move in this way, let's create this design. Because right now what's happening is as we've been talking about, we have a whole system that's being designed and then communities are invited to the table. And so they really have no agency, there's no self determination as they're creating the energy future. So we have to rethink how communities are being informed and how the academy is actually in partnership with community. I know one of my dear friends, Diana Hernandez, is a great partner to we act. And she gets that right. She's bringing her top line Ivy League research enterprise to the movement and helping you all understand some of the dimensions and just bringing that research so that you can utilize it. And that should fundamentally be the role, I think, of the academy. It's not only about working with policymakers, because that's where people often gravitate. It's about making sure the movement and communities have everything they need. And the problem is not only is the academy not designed for that, but researchers are not incentivized to do that. Because when I was doing it in Hawaii and I was organizing, knocking on doors, handing out flyers as a law professor, my colleagues were like turning up their nose at that because they're like, this is not research, this is not scholarship, this is not scholarly. And so there's a bias against being in partnership, providing information that is digestible for community so that they're armed with what they need. We need to shift that. And that's been my work over the last 10 years or so, 15 years. [00:22:04] Speaker B: I think this is also a great. Because as you're talking about kind of like the vision and building that up in the future and currently what's going on, I think this is a great segue to kind of ask a little to ask you. We did a series last year with a mini series about the wrong direction or false solutions that are usually put out by fossil fuel industry to obviously prolong their lifeline as well as, you know, create more profit. And obviously the antithesis to, to adjust transition and often using greenwashing tactics to kind of to push those through as these are the ways that we should go, this is the direction, this is the solutions that we should have. Kind of like in your thoughts and like kind of the work that you've done for you, what are actual green equitable solutions? Like, what do they look like and where in the process of energy, whether it be production or what am I thinking of transmission and other kind of aspects of energy and energy policy? What are some actual solutions that you believe should be pursued or are actively being pursued? [00:23:12] Speaker A: So let me just say there's no silver bullet. We now know, even when you're thinking about things like wind and solar, the critical minerals required to build those facilities at scale are wreaking havoc in sub Saharan Africa, in Chile. I mean, they're just, you know, we're thinking about batteries and the, the components, you know, the component parts to that, to batteries, they're deeply problematic. And so we absolutely need to think about efficiency. So we need less energy. Like full stop. Like, efficiency is not as sexy. I mean, you know, like no one wants to talk about it, but we have an opportunity to reduce our footprint, our energy footprint through efficiency measures. So those things need to be brought to scale when you think about. So I have lots to write about and talk about. I'm not going to give it all away here in this podcast, but when you think about how the bipartisan infrastructure law was designed, which was supposed to be this massive climate bill, obviously billions and billions of dollars there, 60 billion of which went to the Department of Energy, but only a small portion of it went to energy efficiency programs. The weatherization assistance program, which has some problems, has significant problems but is one way to reduce our energy footprint in low income communities and households. We need to figure that out. We need to be able to bring programs like that to scale in a way that's effective. You also have the job creation that happens through that, where people are learning trades and skills, underemployed people to be able to do that again at scale. But I think what you're kind of asking about is the things like solar and wind. Obviously there's tremendous promise in deploying those types of technologies at a different scale. But we immediately run into issues, not only the supply chain issues related to the critical minerals and other things that go into making those things, but you also run into issues on siting and you run into issues on shared benefits. So not everyone can have solar on their rooftop. Think about New York City for example. And so you do need large scale facilities outside of town. But the question is not only how you engage the folks where that large scale facility is going to be housed, but what are the real benefits that are going in. And I think we need new business models to be able to bring those things to scale. So again, it's community driven, where the community says, hey, we have this land. Should we just, should we create a facility and then sell it back into the grid? Sell the energy that is produced back into the grid. So that's how we're going to actually win on this. It's not going to be necessarily through corporations that are knocking on doors and saying, we want to build a facility, going to be based on community saying, hey, we have these resources. These are owned in common. These are our community resources. How do we use these resources to fight the climate crisis and actually also gain economic benefits? So things that are working, I mean, I know I didn't give you like a very positive answer because I think there are problems with even what we see as traditional clean energies. But we should also be focusing on efficiency and bringing those things to scale. We should be thinking about how to make the production of wind turbines and solar panels more sustainable and more equitable so that we're not harming our brothers and sisters in Africa and Latin America. There's a lot to focus on. Let us not get too distracted by some of the other stuff. Let's focus on some, the other hard stuff as well. So that's my, my answer there. But also happy to talk about all the harder things that I know have been a subject of your, your podcast as well in the past. [00:27:21] Speaker B: No, I think that was, that was great. I feel like that's just a really, just a love, a nice, honest, candid answer of just saying, like, there's still, there's a lot of work to do everywhere. I definitely think we, we recognize that here as well as Jerry and I were doing that Wrong Direction series, a lot of it centered. There's a lot of things that were just focused on the idea that, you know, communities weren't involved and communities weren't leading that vision. And I think you kind of hit that multiple times. I think that a piece here is part of the solution here is how are we benefiting? How are communities benefiting? But then also how are we protecting communities that we may not see or we not may be a part of in other parts of the world? As you mentioned, in our process to have a just transition, we also have to make sure it's just for everyone along the entire line. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out our next episode in the Right Direction miniseries coming out on April 28th, where we'll talk to Steven Roundtree from Vote Solar about what's going on with solar energy in New York and how it can help address the state's climate goals. [00:28:28] Speaker C: I can't wait. And if you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. And if you have thoughts, we encourage you to reach out to us with your thoughts and suggestions at. [00:28:38] Speaker B: Podcasteact.org can also check out react on Facebook @react4ej. That's W E a C T F O R E J on Instagram x bluesky and YouTube at weact4ej. That's W E A C T number 4ej. And check out our website weact.org for more information about environmental justice. Till next time. [00:29:00] Speaker C: Till next time. [00:29:02] Speaker A: Bye.