Energy Justice in a Climate-Changing World (Climate & Democracy)

Hybrid Event: In-person and online. Zoom link sent to registered attendees.

CLEAN AND RENEWABLE ENERGY, like that from dirty sources, requires significant technological infrastructure, with potentially deep impacts on the wellbeing of surrounding communities and ecosystems. In this conversation, leading energy justice thinker BENJAMIN SOVACOOL (Boston University) grapples with the economics, politics, and environmental tradeoffs of energy production. He considers how and why any energy transition must account for social and multispecies justice. How can we conceptualize energy justice? What does it look like on the ground? And what cross-sector alliances can achieve clean energy transitions without perpetuating dirty energy injustices? Moderated by SANYA CARLEY (Kleinman Center for Energy Policy).

BENJAMIN SOVACOOL is the Director of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS) and a Professor in the Department of Earth & Environment. He works as a researcher and consultant on issues pertaining to global energy policy and politics, energy security, energy justice, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation. More specifically, his research focuses on renewable energy and energy efficiency, the politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, the ethics and justice of energy, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change.

Climate and Democracy is hosted by the Andrea Mitchell Center and Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and sponsored by the Environmental Innovations Initiative.