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Utility justice and energy justice are directly connected to housing justice and stopping evictions-- sometimes inability to pay utility bills can be the reason that people are evicted from their homes.
Investor-Owned Utilities display extreme earnings, similar demographics, and have a vested interest in maintaining control over the electrical grid. These entities distribute 72% of the country’s electricity. Their monopoly has led to a faltering grid infrastructure, which leads to more frequent blackout events and increased costs for developing community solar farms, which are, themselves, capable of improving grid resiliency. Utility service to communities of color is often disproportionately lacking due to the marginalized location of many of these neighborhoods and their presence within areas that are more prone to natural disasters; this elevates the risk of these grid investments. When blackouts hit, like the PG&E shut-off in 2019’s fire-season that cut power for 800,000 homes, those that can’t afford backup generators and batteries are left in exceedingly dangerous situations. These types of events are unfortunately becoming more likely and will undoubtedly have unequal effects across the impacted areas.
Energy Democracy Project
Join Yesenia Rivera, Solar United Neighbors, and Nora Elmarzouky, Centennial Parkside CDC to learn more about the playbook and how you can use it to expand energy democracy in a community near you. Hosted by RE-AMP Network.
Last Week Tonight
Watch John Oliver discuss the incredible power of utilities and how corrupt the government and commissions that 'regulate' them are.
Energy Democracy Project
Have you ever wondered who is in charge of your electricity? And why? Read the People’s Utility Justice Playbook co-anchored by Energy Allies’ Executive Director Yesenia Rivera to answer these questions.
Energy Democracy Project
This brief timeline tries to put the different institutions and infrastructure that make our energy system today within the context of political and power struggles. How our energy system runs or is governed is not a given. It is the product of over one hundred years of political struggle.
Greentech Media
Unjust practices by for-profit solar companies and negative experiences with utilities create an environment where low income households are wary of commitments with third party energy entities.
Chisholm Legacy Project
This report demystifies who controls critical energy decisions that directly impact our environmental and economic health and displays the inadequacy of racial and gender representation in utility governance.
Energy and Policy Institute
How policymakers can protect customers from being forced to fund utilities’ political machines.
Center for Biological Diversity, Energy and Policy Institute, Bailout Watch
How Utilities Drive Shutoffs and Energy Injustice - an ongoing project tracking utility service disconnections and corporate profiteering
CNN
Power outages to prevent fires in Northern California may continue for a decade.
Energy bills are 3x higher in climate-impacted communities.
A movement to decentralize the energy system by centering communities.
The empirical and qualitative measurement of access to the energy system to prioritize the inclusion of climate-impacted communities.
Achieving just social and economic participation in the energy system, while remediating social, economic, and health burdens in climate-impacted communities.
A set of social, economic, and environmental principles established at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit.
A vision of quality, safe, and affordable housing combined with social programs to address houseless experiences to ensure everyone has a home, regardless of race, income, or citizenship status.