FREE Thoughts Blog

May 21, 2023

Climate policy despite federal inaction

How decentralized, polycentric governing has led to innovation and progress in the fight against climate change.

“The largest city in Massachusetts, Boston, has recently started its own community clean energy (CCE) and plans to build out 100 MW in solar installations to service its low-income community members”

Over the last two decades, one of the most frustratingly consistent aspects of federal climate change policy has been inaction.

The national Republican Party has set out to sow doubt and distrust among the public towards climate change, while stalling and ultimately stopping almost all meaningful climate policy.

This problem was exacerbated by a recent shift by the national Republican Party to actively dismantle climate research and aggressively block and ridicule any meaningful attempts at climate policy, notably pulling out of the Paris Agreement in 2017 and gutting the Clean Power Plan. The shift has raised the temperature and the resulting ‘hothouse’ climate politics produce
what appears to be inescapable political opposition to effective climate action.

Until summer 2022, the national Democratic Party, had largely failed to break through this Republican wall of opposition to major legislation. Even when in control of Congress or the
White House, Democratic efforts to pass climate legislation were often watered down in an attempt to gain Republican approval. Meanwhile, any successful policy initiatives had faced the
prospect of being removed in future political cycles by ardent political hostility.

And while the current Biden White House succeeded in passing a major climate policy inside the Inflation Reduction Act (2022), progress is limited when compared to state and local efforts.

The result of this conflict is a cyclical pattern of slow momentum towards inaction, leaving the U.S. behind when it comes to global climate policy.
FREE co-founder Dr. John Byrne, FREE research director Dr. Job Taminiau, and Dr. Joseph Nyangon of the University of Delaware, wrote about the pattern in their July 2022 article,
“American policy conflict in the hothouse: Exploring the politics of climate inaction and polycentric rebellion,” published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science.

“We have a repeating cycle in the U.S. case of Democratic Party attempts to fashion a national climate policy continually confronted by successful Republican Party assaults to prevent a
national policy from coming into being,” the authors write. “Unlike the envisioned power-sharing acquiescence under federalism, we recast the conflict as occurring inside a ‘hothouse’ where alarming increases in average surface temperature coincide, in the U.S. case, with loud vitriolic claims that a ‘greenhouse effect’ does not exist.”

Out of this cyclical conflict has emerged a third form of governing in recent decades – polycentricism.

In this decentralized form of governing, local leaders and municipalities negate national inaction and instead take it upon themselves to collaborate and create progressive climate policy.
Polycentricism occurs outside the federal government system, with decision-makers acting in a non-hierarchical manner with no central authority. The polycentric system also utilizes civic
groups with specialties in specific areas, promoting problem-solving and conflict resolution across multiple entities.

“A ‘polycentric’ strategy is developing a favorable politics and economics supporting greenhouse emissions constraint that is material and offers some hope of changing the
American policy landscape,” Byrne, Taminiau, and Nyangon write.

This glimmer of hope is apparent in some of the progress cities and states have made in recent years by coordinating efforts and pushing one another forward.

Competition between New York and California to decarbonize electricity generation has driven each to adopt increasingly more aggressive decarbonization targets. California’s 2015
announcement to generate 50% of the state’s electricity with renewable sources was quickly followed by New York’s 2015 announcement to reach 70% by 2030. In turn, in 2018, California
announced a 2018 goal for 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2045 which was followed in 2019 by New York’s new goal to reach 100% by 2040. The competitive back-and-forth has created a
cycle of rising ambition to the point where now 23 states, including New York and California, have adopted 100% renewable energy targets. As the Byrne-Taminiau-Nyangon paper indicates, progress has been seen at the city level as well.

For example, 468 U.S. mayors currently uphold the commitments outlined in the Paris Agreement, doing so even after Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2017 and before Biden reversed the policy.

In a federal system marred by distrust, vitriol, and overall inaction, a grassroots, decentralized form of governing has become the only way for leaders to make real progress on climate policy.
Byrne, Taminiau, and Nyangon estimate that the contributions of the ‘polycentric layer’ achieve a greenhouse gas emission trajectory that is 70% below a business-as-usual path.

“The formulation and roll-out of community-level action reveals a substantial contribution that is not only redirecting policy and constructing a new governance system, but is also expected to
contest injustice in the national political economy,” Byrne, Taminiau, and Nyangon write.

This record of action moves the U.S. toward a climate justice future despite 20 years of federal policy inaction, according to the researchers who believe that while policy progress in the fight
against climate change is and can happen in the U.S. It’s up to local leaders and civil society to make sure it continues.

April 22, 2023

It’s Time for Transformational Climate Policy

The harmful effects of climate change are happening faster than expected. We need policies and initiatives that do more to keep up with the pace of change.

The evidence of the human impact on climate change is well-established. The challenge for policymakers now is to understand the true pace and consequences of that impact and how to combat it.

In the AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the panel indicated awareness that its reports understate the magnitude of the problem we face. Climate change is effecting the world at a more rapid pace than ever before, creating “climate surprises” that leave societies with little time to mitigate or adapt to their impact.

Without a full comprehension of the scale of the impact, key decision-makers are stuck in an incremental, “business-as-usual” way of thinking that deals with climate issues happening today, rather than planning responses based on long term threats.

FREE president Dr. John Byrne, Aalto University’s Dr. Peter Lund, and Dr. Job Taminiau recently explored the need to move past a business-as-usual policy mindset in their recent commentary published in WIREs Energy and Environment. They write:

“Commonly practiced “business-as-usual” (BAU) benchmarking and search processes to find least-cost options can only deliver out-of-date and mostly wrong characterizations of costs and benefits when the underlying process of climate change has advanced several iterations beyond BAU,” the authors write. “Policy research suffers from a deeply misguided understanding of its task as it scours the rear-view mirror of past change in hopes of finding the future.”

This backward-looking, reactive policy mindset is stymieing progress in the fight against climate change. As Byrne, Lund, and Taminiau write, the gravity of the threat of climate change demands a new approach. It is not enough to merely react to problems facing the world today.

Business-as-usual strategies hinge on the desire to create the least amount of social and economic disruption. This thinking falls into the trap of policy hesitancy, in which those in power become paralyzed by the fear of transformative change.

“The flaw of incremental climate policy-making and the research that informs it is now obvious: using the cost of mitigation and adaptation as the ranking principle to guide decisions is a formula for doing nothing or very little,” Byrne, Lund, and Taminiau write.

How decision-makers can create transformative change

So what does transformational policy look like in practice? In their commentary, Byrne, Lund, and Taminiau discuss multiple examples of this approach, including a shift to decentralize decision-making using a community-based model.

In such a model, local authorities place community stakeholders at the center of policy decision-making. For example, community-based utility agencies in California are offering a competitive alternative to traditional gas and electric companies, such as San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas & Electric. The community-based agencies now collectively serve more residents in California than major investor-owned utilities, according to the authors.

“Polycentric climate policy action where decision-making authority is redistributed and governance of energy is transformed has led to change that outpaces in just 5 years what conventional policy and market systems largely failed to achieve,” the authors write.

Lasting climate policy must reach further and be greater in scale than anything most policymakers currently consider. It must redefine “lowest cost,” instead investing when necessary to avoid billion-dollar disasters associated with threats such as rapid sea-level rise, increasingly intense and frequent high-energy storms, and irreversible biodiversity loss.

A key example of a transformative policy mentioned by the authors is the push among more than 600 global cities and states to switch to 100% renewable energy systems. This undertaking could have a dramatic impact on how these communities fight and prepare for the growing impacts of climate change.

“Achievement of 100% renewable energy requires planned policy and regulatory action in coordination with behavioral and social change to prioritize low-carbon options. Policy platforms of this kind incorporate a broad range of strategies to support change throughout society and the economy,” Byrne, Lund, and Taminiau write in their commentary.

This is just one example of what can happen when we replace traditional ways of thinking about climate policy with proactive, transformative planning. To do so on a large scale, researchers and experts need to help guide the way.

Organizations like FREE can play a pivotal role in helping to produce up-to-date research that assists national and community leaders in making informed decisions. FREE’s climate experts work across the public and private sectors to engage leaders in the realization of transformational policy.

Changing the way we approach and execute climate policy is a massive undertaking. It’s one that needs buy-in at all levels of society as community leaders contend with how such policies will change the lives of entire populations at the local, state, and country levels.

At a time when the impacts of climate change are outpacing collective knowledge, we need to design effective climate policy and demand more from decision-makers. Only then can we hope to see truly transformative change.

November 3, 2022

Simply Switching to Electric Vehicles Today is Not Enough to Address Climate Change

By: Deborah Bleviss

There is no doubt that purchasing an electric vehicle (EV) is quite chic right now, and it is indeed true that non-fossil-fuel-based vehicles will play an increasingly important role in achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Moreover, focusing on personal vehicles makes sense; they account for almost 60 percent of the GHG emissions from transportation today in the US, with transportation making up the largest sectoral share of US GHG emissions, 27 percent (EPA, Transportation GHG Emissions).

But simply buying and using EVs today is not enough. Here are the reasons why:

Electricity generation is still overwhelmingly from fossil fuels. Indeed, fossil fuels generated more than 60 percent of utility-produced electricity in 2021 (EIA, Electricity Generation by Source). Hence, EVs are not GHG free when tracing electricity back to how it is generated. But they are better than a fossil-fueled vehicle. A typical gasoline vehicle produces over 11,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalent emissions per year. In comparison, a fully electric vehicle produces less than 4,000 pounds, while a plug-in hybrid (runs on gasoline and electricity) produces less than 6,000 pounds. A typical fossil fuel hybrid produces not much more than a plug-in hybrid, just over 6,000 pounds of CO₂ equivalent emissions (DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center, Vehicle Emissions).

Electric vehicles remain outside the affordability scale for most Americans. Their prices continue to be higher than fossil-fueled vehicles. As of June 2022, the average cost of an electric vehicle was $54,000 compared with the average price of a fossil-fueled vehicle of $44,400; both have risen sharply since the beginning of the year, 22 percent for EVs and 14 percent for fossil-fueled vehicles (Inside EVs, EV Prices). Moreover, the dominant electric vehicle brand on the market today is Tesla, whose models all exceed the average price of a fossil-fueled vehicle, ranging from $47,000 to over $200,000 (Motortrend, Price of a Tesla). Hence, while demand for EVs has increased, they remain a small fraction of overall personal vehicle sales, estimated at just over 5 percent (Car and Driver, EV Sales ).

Price aside, electric vehicles have other issues that make their potential purchase a problem for would-be buyers. First, their ranges are generally less than for fossil-fueled vehicles, especially high-efficiency vehicles. Lower-priced EVs, in particular, tend to have lower ranges. Ranges for EVs today typically are 200 to 300 miles, with some still getting less than that and a few, generally with price tags over $100,000, getting ranges in the 400-to-500-mile range (Inside EVs, EV range). In contrast, the 2022 hybrid Toyota Camry LE, with a combined fuel economy of 52 miles per gallon, a base price just below $28,000, and a CO₂ equivalent emissions of 5,600 pounds per year, has a range of 686 miles (fueleconomy.gov). Added to this problem is the limited infrastructure enabling electric vehicle owners to fuel up when their fuel supply is low. There are 46,000 public EV charging stations in the US today, of which 41,000 are slow-charging level 2 chargers that can take 4 to 10 hours to charge a fully electric vehicle (US News, Charging Stations). In contrast, there are 145,000 fossil fuel service stations in the US, and refueling takes minutes (American Petroleum Institute, No. of Service Stations ).

Using electric vehicles instead of fossil-fueled vehicles in congested urban conditions does nothing to relieve the traffic congestion that exacerbates fossil fuel use and thereby increases greenhouse gas emissions. While EVs do not directly consume more fossil fuel in traffic congestion and do not add to local emissions, their usage in urban congested areas only adds to the number of vehicles in those areas. As a result, everybody slows down and is subjected to stop-and-go conditions that cause fossil-fueled vehicles to consume more fuel and emit more greenhouse gas emissions. Not using personal vehicles at all—electric or fossil fuel—in congested urban conditions and instead using public transportation is the best strategy for reducing GHG emissions in these areas. The National Academy of Sciences has recently estimated that a person taking public transportation results in a 55 percent reduction in their CO₂ equivalent emissions compared with driving or ride-hailing (NAS, Update on Public Transportation’s Impact on GHG Emissions ).

So what should consumers, businesses and governments do to reduce greenhouse gases in personal travel?

Buying energy-efficient fossil-fueled cars is a good short- to medium-term strategy. As already noted, a fossil fuel hybrid produces half of the emissions of a typical fossil fuel car. Purchase and use of these vehicles will buy us time to address the price, range, infrastructure, and fossil fuel electricity generation problems facing today’s electric vehicles.

To the maximum extent possible, leave your personal vehicle behind—fossil fuel or electric–and use public transportation if you are traveling in an urban area. It is indeed true that public transportation does not function well in some parts of the country. This makes advocacy for investing in functional public transportation systems critical. It is essential to ensure that public transportation systems are inter-connected in an urban area (for example, buses and rail transit systems) and that public transportation users can access this type of transportation from the first mile of their commute to the last.

With public transportation so crucial in reducing GHG emissions, prioritize converting public transportation vehicles totally off fossil fuels. Already the percentage of electric buses worldwide, estimated at 13 percent in 2018 (Bloomberg, Electric Buses ), substantially exceeds the percentage of personal vehicles globally that are electrified, estimated at 1.6 percent at the beginning of 2022 (IEA, Electric Vehicles). Being able to plug electric buses into renewably generated electricity goes one step further. Montgomery County, Maryland, is leading the way here, having just started a program that enables county electric buses to recharge through electricity generated by a solar microgrid (Montgomery County, Solar Microgrid for Electric Buses ).

Be strategic in driving electric vehicle prices down, including a focus on fleets. Increasing the volume of electric vehicles sold is critical to driving down costs. Focusing on fleets to do this, owned by governments, private companies and car sharing companies such as ZipCar, makes sense. They can purchase en masse rather than buying one at a time. The US federal fleet is under a mandate to green its vehicles and hence can be an important source for increasing the size of the EV market. And among private car-sharing companies, we are already seeing many engaged in demonstrations in cities globally where EVs are among consumers’ choices.

Similarly, think creatively about how to increase the range of electric vehicles, not only through better batteries but also by using renewable technologies in the vehicles to capture energy for usage by the vehicle. These may include solar panels on vehicle roofs and wind turbines that capture the energy of air blowing through vehicle grilles. Indeed, Toyota has been testing a rooftop solar system on its Prius Prime since 2019.

Invest in solar photovoltaic arrays and potentially other renewable technologies that can directly charge personal EVs. This avoids the usage of the fossil-fuel-intensive electricity grid. These types of investments can start with demonstration programs, potentially in cities with extensive roof infrastructure upon which solar panels can be placed. While these panels should first be used to provide needed energy services for the buildings on which they are placed, by improving the energy efficiency of these buildings, there is the potential for these solar panels to generate more power than is needed for the buildings, power that can then be used to charge EVs.

Set clear goals and timelines for converting the electric grid away from fossil fuels across the country. Ultimately, the electric grid will probably remain the major source of electricity for charging electric vehicles. Hence, it is essential that the grid move as quickly as possible to generate electricity from non-fossil sources. This also benefits decarbonization efforts in other sectors that use electricity. But for electric vehicles truly to be fossil fuel-free, the electricity they use must not be generated from fossil fuels.

Keep the door open to using other fossil fuel-free fuels for personal vehicles. The most likely alternative fuel is hydrogen-based fuel cells, which both Toyota and Hyundai are seriously exploring. But biofuels may have a role as well, for example, in a country like Brazil, which already has substituted a substantial biofuels/fossil fuels mix into fuels for its personal vehicles.

Transportation will be one of the hardest sectors to move off fossil fuels, if for no other reason than this sector is almost exclusively dependent on these fuels. If we are to be successful in decarbonizing the transportation sector, it is important to recognize how challenging this will be and not leap to simplistic solutions. Electric vehicles have an important role to play, especially in the future, but they are far from the predominant solution today.

July 27, 2022

How can U.S. climate action equalize the wealth gap between white and black American families?

Income disparity (Getty Images/Hyejin Kang)

By Robert Ddamulira, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

“The racial wealth gap in the United States is shocking, the average wealth of a white American family is $170,000, nearly 10 times that of the average wealth African-American family,” observes Kedra Newsom Reeves, consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Climate change impacts are posed to tilt that imbalance even further. More than 1 in 2 black families live in areas that are worst hit by the observed and expected impacts climate change in America. Oftentimes, black families also have little access to risk mitigation mechanisms such as insurance for property or personal health to mitigate against climate risks. Consequently, climate disasters are likely to further erode the limited black family wealth even further.

According to official U.S. Census records, the Black American population currently stands at over 15% of the total population but is growing rapidly. It has increased by over 80% since 2010. Over 55% of this population however lives in the America’s Southern states – these are the same regions that have also been worst hit by billion-dollar climate disasters as illustrated below;

Overall, the historical coincidence of high concentrations of black American families within the areas that are hit hardest by climate change disasters presents enormous challenges. However, hidden within those same climate challenges could be important opportunities for the U.S to equalize the elusive wealth gap between its white and black families. But where could these opportunities for equality be at the state and federal levels?

Opportunities to Equalize Wealth through Climate Action:

Abundant opportunities exist at the state and federal levels to equalize wealth, particularly through supporting better education and career outcomes for black families; this is a fail-safe solution. A report by Genesis (2014) estimated that 50% of the jobs we will need in the next 10 years do not exist today; whatever those jobs will be, America will be stronger and more resilient if those jobs incorporate the best and latest climate scientific knowledge and innovation. Therefore, education on climate solutions and career support on the same can be a powerful means of developing an African American workforce that is best suited for a future where climate change will be a decisive factor in successful employment and job outcomes. Support in education and career opportunities at federal and state levels can take many forms. Still, it could include, among others, proactive internships, scholarships/fellowships, and career pathways that seek to equalize the training of a well-qualified black workforce, which will be effective in deploying the innovative climate solutions that Americans need today and in the foreseeable future. Several climate resilience sectors could be helpful in this regard, including, among others, renewable energy services, energy efficiency, circular economy reforestation programs, and other nature-based solutions at home and abroad. These new jobs will also require the creative application of artificial intelligence and social and emotional intelligence.

Federal and state affirmative action policies can go a long way toward expanding opportunities for young black Americans to choose and stay in well-paying careers that at the same time address climate change. Black families and the black community at large have a role to play, too. Black parents must take a more proactive role in encouraging their children and young members to select careers directly linked to the climate solutions sector. At the very least black families should encourage their young members to incorporate a climate lens to whatever career they choose.

It is evident that how the U.S. responds to the climate challenge could strongly affect how the world addresses climate change globally. The same climate solutions sector that has over time concentrated wealth within its white citizens and deprived black families of similar opportunities can serve as a lever to correct historical and structural inequality. Through education coupled with proactive action among black families at the individual and community level – the U.S. can transform climate change into an engine of opportunity and advance social equity.

Robert Ddamulira, Ph.D., is the CEO & Founder of GreenPesa LLC.

July 5, 2022

Environmental Justice and Renewable Energy

By Thomas S. Benson

According to a March 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans favor the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050, with 69% calling for the U.S. to prioritize the development of alternative energy, such as wind and solar, and 31% calling for the U.S. to phase out the use of fossil fuels completely. But what is environmental justice, and what relationship does it have, if any, to renewable energy?

Defining Environmental Justice

To the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), environmental justice is the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.” On Earth Day 2022, President Biden announced that environmental justice is about “addressing the disproportionate health, environmental, and economics impacts that have been borne primarily by communities of color – places too often left behind.” The disproportionate impact of environmental harms and ills felt by minorities and people of color forms the driving force and crux of the environmental justice movement that continues to shape federal, state, and local policy in the U.S. today.

A Transition in Reocognizing Environmental Justice

Regulatory agencies, such as the EPA, have not always recognized the disproportionate impact. Notably, a former assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response of the EPA stated in 1987 that the “EPA deals with issues of technology, not sociology.” [1] Systemic racism in environmental policy has meant that, historically, the formulation of such policy has been premised on notions that “environmental protection is colorblind,” and that the EPA is a “science agency,” not an agency that deals with social issues. Additionally, the eventual recognition of environmental justice has led to what some scholars have referred to as “procedural justice” that solely consists of “more community involvement” and “box-checking exercises” but with “no changes in outcomes.” [1]

However, a transition is taking place to move beyond these box-checking exercises to collect quantitative and qualitative environmental justice data and display them in a transparent, digestible manner. For example, environmental justice mapping tools CalEnviroScreen and EJSCREEN combine numerous indicator data sets and assist in generating insights about environmental risk and impact that are “critical for decision-making purposes” and shed light on “systemic inequities” and “unfair treatment”—the disproportionate impact on low-income communities and people of color, among others. [1] In turn, there has been a call for climate solutions that address social and economic inequities and distribute the benefits, and one such solution is renewable energy.

Environmental Racism

Deploying renewable energy in these historically burdened and under-served communities comes against a backdrop of being subject to environmental racism through redlining and the intentional siting of harmful incinerators, landfills, chemical plants, refineries, and fossil fuel extraction beside these communities. Combined with a lack of resources to hire lawyers to challenge the granting of permits or violation of standards, these communities were left with little to no choice. This situation reflects a concept now known as environmental blackmail, where poor people are forced to choose between unemployment and a job that may threaten their “own health, their families’ health and the health of their community.” [2] One example of this depleted level of citizen power includes Cancer Alley in Louisiana, where nearly “every household has someone that has died from cancer.”

Equitable Deployment

But is renewable energy the solution? Yes, with strings attached. Renewable energy must be deployed equitably, and this means not harming the same communities and minorities that have been disproportionately subject to environmental harm emanating from siting facilities that are detrimental to human health and communities. Without acquiring consent or participation from communities affected by the adverse effects of renewable energy, these communities will remain in a cycle of abuse that capitalizes on their poor health and cheap labor. [3]

For example, as wind turbines grow in size, alongside their corresponding effects, it must be asked what impact these will have on the communities that are integrated into—forcefully or consensually. In practice, this means not only assessing effects on the aesthetic pleasure of the landscape or potential damage to a local ecosystem, such as loss to avian creatures, but also wind turbine syndrome, which has been known to cause “nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, sleep disturbance, and headaches.” [3] As previously mentioned, engaging local communities in a meaningful manner can generate positive community and environmental change. In turn, environmental hazards can be minimized and distributed fairly in proportion to benefits, and protective environmental regulations can be established and enforced with the same vigor for all communities.

One other solution, created from the bottom-up, is the establishment of community energy choice organizations, otherwise referred to as community choice aggregations or community choice energy. These organizations seek to remove the middle-man—the investor-owned utilities—and run community-scale renewable energy projects that decentralize power and reinvest profits from renewable energy generation into local communities. [3] Examples of re-investment include the development of further renewable energy projects, electrification of local bus networks, energy efficiency programs, scholarships for students, and the implementation of electric vehicle charging stations.

Conclusion: A Just Renewable Energy Transition

Overall, renewable energy—as fantastic as it might appear—is not a solution in and of itself. Environmental justice remains very relevant in deploying renewable energy, and local communities must be meaningfully engaged before decisions are made. Where communities do not or cannot create bottom-up organizations like community energy choice organizations, they ought to be brought into decision-making processes that can benefit businesses, government, and citizens alike. And there is evidently bipartisan support for renewable energy, with a majority of Democrats and Republicans supporting the expansion of solar panel farms (84%) and wind turbine farms (77%), according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2021.

The deployment of renewable energy does not need to be an all-or-nothing approach. Instead, by ensuring sufficient stakeholder and community engagement, the U.S. can enhance its prospects of a just and sustainable transition to a low-carbon economy—to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and meeting public demand for renewable energy. This transition to a low-carbon economy will also ideally fulfill the EPA’s goals of environmental justice, which means that everyone enjoys the “same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards” and has “equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.” The means to achieve this shared vision for the future is already here and is underway, but it must be done equitably to ensure the benefits and hazards of renewable energy are shared.

[1] Lee, C. 2021. “Confronting Disproportionate Impacts and Systemic Racism in Environmental Policy.” Environmental Law Institute: pages 2-4, 10.

[2] Bell, K. 2014. “The Causes of Environmental Injustice.” In Achieving Environmental Justice: A Cross-National Analysis. University of Bristol: Policy Press, chapter 3, page 34.

[3] Ottinger, G. 2013. “The Winds of Change: Environmental Justice in Energy Transitions.” Science as Culture 22(2): 222-229.