PNNL

Abstract

The U.S. government has made addressing energy equity a key objective of its decarbonization efforts. While energy equity has been studied for decades, equity research in the U.S. has only very recently focused on impacts specific to decarbonization. To guide the implementation of new federal funding for clean energy investments in disadvantaged communities, federal agencies are relying on national-scale socioeconomic and demographic tools to define disadvantaged communities and energy equity metrics. We assert that a universal energy equity framework for decarbonization, while necessary for large-scale policymaking, may not be sufficient to identify and address the diversity of concerns present across disadvantaged communities. Through an analysis of the energy equity literature and recently developed tools and frameworks, this paper provides the first comparison of national versus subnational perspectives on defining disadvantaged communities, their energy equity concerns, and relevant metrics in the context of decarbonization. Our findings show that national- and subnational-scale approaches to defining disadvantaged communities have significant differences, and that energy equity issues are interwoven with community-specific challenges that cannot be addressed by top-down approaches.