Episode 03: Centering Energy Equity in Utility Regulation

Today’s guest, Melanie Santiago-Mosier, is an attorney whose career has centered on clean energy policy and regulation. Over the past seven years, she has focused on the field of energy equity and justice. She enjoys working with teams to embed equity principles into their work, with the goal of advancing a just transition to a clean energy future. Currently, she fills that role as the Equitable Energy Transition Advisor for The Nature Conservancy. She has led similar work at organizations like Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, Vote Solar, and others.

The episode walks through:

• What is energy equity and a just transition;
• How the existing energy system leads to chronically unjust processes and impacts;
• And key considerations, policies, and principles for supporting an equitable and just clean energy transition, including both procedural and energy regulation solutions.

Highlights:

• “Understanding how to support an equitable and just clean energy transition should involve learning and understanding the impacts of our current system, which are deeply inequitable, and then, from there, learning and understanding the principles for how to change course.”
• “Allies should approach this work with humility and authenticity. Allies, regulators, and policymakers should make it a practice to ask community leaders what their needs are and what their vision is for an equitable energy future. They should seek out the voices and perspectives of energy justice leaders on the front lines and be in listening mode.”
• “Energy equity is about hope. It’s about the opportunity to make our clean energy future just and inclusive. We have the opportunity right now to get this right, to not replicate the mistakes of the past.”
• “Just transition is a way to think about how a lot of different systems work together, and how to transition away from a system that supports an extractive economy and disinvestment in frontline, environmental justice, and communities of color, and toward a system that supports a regenerative economy—it’s about economic justice, environmental justice, energy justice, climate justice.”

Resources and Further Readings:

• The Justice40 Initiative is the first-of-its-kind federal program that requires “that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.”

• As part of Voices from the West, “The Nature Conservancy interviewed leaders from Tribal and Indigenous communities to learn about their experiences with energy development. The report provides a perspective on the importance of including Tribal voices in planning for energy and infrastructure.”

• The Initiative for Energy Justice has a suite of resources on energy equity and justice, from foundational definitions of key principles to scorecards, briefs, and toolkits.

• The University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability hosts the Energy Equity Project, which offers a “framework for measuring equity across energy efficiency and clean energy programs among utilities, state regulatory agencies, and other practitioners, while engaging and centering BIPOC and frontline communities.”

• The NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program offers a number of resources for advocates, regulators, and other stakeholders.

• Just Solutions Collective partners with communities disproportionately impacted by climate change to turn their priorities and ideas into policies and laws, and has many useful resources. 

• The Just Transition PowerForce, launched by Emerald Cities Collaborative and the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program collaborates in pursuit of a just transition from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy, and has a number of related resources.