An official website of the United States government
Ensuring an equitable energy transition requires models and tools that can account for equity and energy justice goals. Power system models (PSMs) are widely used throughout industry, government, and academia to simulate or optimize the operations and planning of current and future electricity systems under different scenarios, parameter assumptions and policy frameworks. These models are important tools that allow users to understand how the power system may evolve under different future conditions, but importantly, they are also used to inform policy implementation and investment decisions across all aspects of the power system. However, existing models seldom include energy justice considerations and therefore energy justice priorities are not reflected in the policies and other decision-making processes that are informed by these models. The purpose of this review is to provide a framework that energy modelers can draw upon to integrate energy justice and equity goals into PSMs. To this end, 99 papers that examine the intersection of energy justice and power system models are summarized and ten core aspects of the power system that can impact energy justice outcomes, and therefore require new modeling approaches, are identified. This review then establishes key current practices, challenges, and opportunities associated with capturing energy justice considerations in power system models across these ten aspects. This review concludes by proposing four key research directions that should be pursued to improve the representation of energy justice and equity in power system modeling. Finally, this review also addresses challenges raised by United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7, which aims to ensure affordable energy access to everyone and Sustainable Development Goal 13, which aims to take urgent action to address climate change.
more »
« less
Equitable infrastructure: Achieving resilient systems and restorative justice through policy and research innovation
Abstract Recent major investments in infrastructure in the United States and globally present a crucial opportunity to embed equity within the heart of resilient infrastructure decision-making. Yet there is a notable absence of frameworks within the engineering and scientific fields for integrating equity into planning, design, and maintenance of infrastructure. Additionally, whole-of-government approaches to infrastructure, including the Justice40 Initiative, mimic elements of process management that support exploitative rather than exploratory innovation. These and other policies risk creating innovation traps that limit analytical and engineering advances necessary to prioritize equity in decision-making, identification and disruption of mechanisms that cause or contribute to inequities, and remediation of historic harms. Here, we propose a three-tiered framework toward equitable and resilient infrastructure through restorative justice, incremental policy innovation, and exploratory research innovation. This framework aims to ensure equitable access and benefits of infrastructure, minimize risk disparities, and embrace restorative justice to repair historical and systemic inequities. We outline incremental policy innovation and exploratory research action items to address and mitigate risk disparities, emphasizing the need for community-engaged research and the development of equity metrics. Among other action items, we recommend a certification system—referred to as Social, Environmental, and Economic Development (SEED)—to train infrastructure engineers and planners and ensure attentiveness to gaps that exist within and dynamically interact across each tier of the proposed framework. Through the framework and proposed actions, we advocate for a transformative vision for equitable infrastructure that emphasizes the interconnectedness of social, environmental, and technical dimensions in infrastructure planning, design, and maintenance.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10504959
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PNAS Nexus
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2752-6542
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
As electric power grid critical infrastructure grows increasingly heterogeneous, a key question is how to encourage and ensure relatively equitable access to the energy it supplies. With diverse socio-economic regions linked to the grid and various generation types, achieving equitable access to clean energy, as outlined in initiatives like DOE’s Justice40, remains an important aspirational goal. Building on previous work, this paper describes our investigation of a heterogenous grid modeled on the Alaska Railbelt, allowing us to explore the intrinsic inequities and possible mechanisms to enhance the equity across regions. We apply risk and equity metrics to different regions to examine how penalties which change the cost can impact the equity as well as the overall grid’s risk and dynamics.more » « less
-
As electric power grid critical infrastructure grows increasingly heterogeneous, a key question is how to encourage and ensure relatively equitable access to the energy it supplies. With diverse socio-economic regions linked to the grid and various generation types, achieving equitable access to clean energy, as outlined in initiatives like DOE’s Justice40, remains an important aspirational goal. Building on previous work, this paper describes our investigation of a heterogenous grid modeled on the Alaska Railbelt, allowing us to explore the intrinsic inequities and possible mechanisms to enhance the equity across regions. We apply risk and equity metrics to different regions to examine how penalties which change the cost can impact the equity as well as the overall grid’s risk and dynamics.more » « less
-
While equity in climate adaptation is increasingly recognized, university-based research can inadvertently reinforce inequities. This paper examines a partnership between Homies Helping Homies, a South Philadelphia mutual aid organization, and university researchers to document climate impacts on low-income and marginalized communities. Inequities often arise when research fails to engage communities, overlooks relevant concerns, lacks trust, or misinterprets responses due to insufficient cultural understanding. Mutual aid organizations, inherently community-based, foster resilience and solidarity, addressing unmet needs while building collective trust. Anchored in Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), we adopt a reflexive, co-produced approach that foregrounds positionality, reciprocity, and shared decision-making. This approach transformed the researcher-community relationships, leveled hierarchies, and addressed the gaps in familiarity among researchers and other actors. By centering everyday experiences of heat, flooding, and resource scarcity, the collaboration revealed how local knowledge and trust networks shape risk perception and adaptive behavior. The case demonstrates how mutual aid organizations can serve as both community resilience infrastructure and methodological partners in producing usable, justice-oriented climate knowledge. We argue that embedding research within reciprocal, care-centered relationships enhances the legitimacy, ethics, and transformative potential of climate risk management, particularly in urban contexts marked by systemic inequity.more » « less
-
Abstract To meet the challenges of hazards impacting coastal communities, demand is growing for more equitable coastal natural hazard adaptation and disaster mitigation approaches, supported by co-productive research partnerships. This review paper outlines contemporary advances in hazard adaptation and disaster mitigation with attention to how an equity and justice framework can address the uneven impacts of hazards on marginalized and underserved communities. Drawing upon the allied concepts of distributive, procedural, systemic, and recognitional equity and justice, we illustrate how these concepts form the basis for equitable coastal resilience. To demonstrate how equitable resilience can effectively advance contemporary adaptation and mitigation strategies, we present two vignettes where collaborative partnerships underscore how equitable coastal hazard planning and response practices complement these processes in coastal zones subject to large earthquakes and tsunamis. The first vignette focuses on disaster response and takes place in the Tohoku region of Japan, with diverse gender and sexual minority community members’ experiences of, and responses to, the 2011 Tohoku disasters. The second vignette centers on hazard planning and takes place on the U.S. Pacific Northwest coast along the Cascadia Subduction Zone to demonstrate how principles of distributive, procedural, systemic, and recognitional equity can inform the co-production of alternative coastal futures that prioritize equitable resilience. From this discussion, we suggest applying an equity lens to research processes, including alternative futures modeling frameworks, to ensure that the benefits of hazard adaptation and disaster mitigation strategies are equitably applied and shared.more » « less
