Research Associate
Joohee Lee is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP) at the University of Delaware and Research Fellow at the Foundation for Renewable and Environment. She researches issues of energy justice, just energy transitions, climate-energy policy, and capability approach. Her dissertation proposes an expanded conceptual framework for understanding systemic injustice associated with large-scale and high-risk energy technologies. To demonstrate the utility of this new framework, two area-based assessment strategies are introduced and applied to South Korea’s nuclear power networks. The results reveal the country’s uneven geography of risk of harm associated with nuclear power generation and its relation to the socio-economic vulnerability of the hosting regions. Based on her dissertation research, Joohee co-authored two journal articles on systemic energy justice [1] and capability-based energy justice [2] and a book chapter on energy democracy [3]. She holds an M.E. in Urban Planning and Engineering from Yonsei University and a B.S. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering from Ewha Womens University in South Korea. Before joining CEEP, she studied at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan as a recipient of the Japanese Government Scholarship and worked as a researcher at the Korea Environment Institute in Korea.
Publications:
[1] Lee, J., & Byrne, J. (2019). Expanding the conceptual and analytical basis of energy justice: beyond the three-tenet framework. Frontiers in Energy Research, Article 99. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2019.00099.
[2] Lee, J., Kim, H., & Byrne, J. (2021). Operationalising capability thinking in the assessment of energy poverty relief policies: moving from compensation-based to empowerment-focused policy strategies. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 22(2), 292-315. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1080/19452829.2021.1887108.
[3] Lee, J., Byrne, J., & Seo, J. (Forthcoming in August 2022). Chapter 7: Re-imagining energy-society relations: an interactive framework for social movement-based energy-society transformation. In Majia Nadesan, Martin Pasqualetti, and Jennifer Keahey, eds., Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures. Elsevier.
Recent Work
- Metrics for evaluating energy and environmental sustainability: How to improve the current index systems
- Don’t make it history: Four years after Fukushima nuclear accident
- Energy dilemma of ethical cities and the solar city’s promise
- “One Less Nuclear Power Plant”: Seoul’s commitment to a low-carbon and non-nuclear city