Resources and Examples

Key takeaways:

• Targeted universalism includes setting universal goals pursued by targeted processes. Strategies developed to achieve goals are based on how different groups are situated within structures, culture, and across geographies. 
• This approach is useful for policy practitioners interested in solutions that serve all residents and address the unique situations faced by underserved communities.
• Five steps are identified to implement this process: establish a universal goal, assess performance relative to goal, identify differences between the goal and overall population, assess and understand structures to change, and develop and implement targeted strategies.  
• To achieve the universal goal, a diversity of implementation strategies is required. The Targeted Universalism framework provides implementation strategies capable of that.

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Key takeaways:

• The authors review more than 180 publications to assess the 2019 energy burden landscape and opportunities to relieve it and provide a high-level overview of equity literature. 
• Energy burden is higher among low-income households compared to other income groups. It is not declining and is compounded by other socio-economic factors like race and location. 
• Many policies and programs that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy are inaccessible to low-income households.
• Most low-income funding focuses on short-term energy insecurity and not long-term solutions to reduce energy burden. Additionally, promising technologies are not well integrated in low-income programs.

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Key takeaways:

The authors identify six dimensions of equity and propose methods for evaluating them as they related to energy efficiency.

Historical Legacies: Identifying cases in which the energy institution itself played a role in creating disparity.

Awareness of Populations: A historical review of energy services will ideally identify populations that have been underserved or negatively served.

Inclusion of Other Voices: The demographic representativeness of professional program staff, program consultants, supply chain providers, and leadership is one method for assessing equity from the standpoint of public perceptions and potential bias.

Access Discrimination: Programs could review the eligibility requirements and procedures by which they currently market, solicit, recruit, and process applicants to identify potential differences in program experience.

Output Differences: An assessment of participation rates across all interventions.

Disparate Impacts: Measuring the expected objectives across the service population against the overall eligible population is a way that disparate impacts can be studied and eventually reduced.

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Subscribe to the US EPA State and Local Energy and Environment Program email updates that may include environmental justice grants and programs.

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The Value of Adding Home energy Score to Low-Income Energy Efficiency Programs

Providing a home energy label to participants of low-income energy efficiency programs allows them to include the value of energy efficiency in future real estate transactions.

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Blue Solutions

Blue Solutions offers electric ridesharing and has worked with Los Angeles and Indianapolis to create a membership option for people with low incomes. You can find out more in the webinar recording from the NASEO Transportation Committee meeting on May 9, 2019. The presentation begins at 26:51.

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Designing Equity-Focused Stakeholder Engagement to Inform State Energy Office Programs and Policies

This paper proposes a 10-step process to design and implement equitable stakeholder engagement:

1. Determine stakeholder engagement goals using the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership.
2. Identify the current approach to engagement.
3. Identify the need for change using the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership to create an evolution plan.
4. Build support in the office.
5. Establish foundations of engagement to ensure respect and openness during gatherings.
6. Identify stakeholders using tools like Low-income Stakeholder Analysis Template from US DOE to expand stakeholders beyond the usual suspects.
7. Consider options for participant support like compensation for time and convenient logistics. 
8. Communicate intentions with the community and ask for feedback, identify opportunities to build trust, and ask if organizations are interested in engaging.
9. Evaluate engagement activities.
10. Execute, review, and conduct ongoing engagement.  

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The Energy Justice Workbook

The Scorecard asks five key questions of policymakers formulating energy equity policies:

1. Have marginalized communities participated meaningfully in the policymaking process with sufficient support?
2. Does the policy aim to remedy prior and present harms faces by communities negatively impacted by the energy system?
3. Does the policy center the decision-making of marginalized communities?
4. Does the policy center economic, social, or health benefits for marginalized communities?
5. Does the policy make energy more accessible and affordable to marginalized communities?

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How High Are Household Energy Burdens? An Assessment of National and Metropolitan Energy Burden across the United States

• Low-income, Black, Hispanic, Native American, older adults, and renters all experience disproportionally high energy burdens compared to similar groups, which shows that energy costs are not distributed equitably.
• Energy burden inequities are present nationally, regionally, and across all the metro areas, with one-fourth of all US residents experiencing a high energy burden (> 6%) and two-thirds of low-income households experiencing a high burden.
• Energy efficiency is a promising long-term solution to lowering high energy burdens, and we estimate weatherization can reduce low-income energy burdens by 25%.
• The report includes energy burden data at the national and regional levels and in 25 major metro areas as well as recommendations on how to improve and expand low-income energy efficiency programs through increased investment, more equitable design, and incorporation of best practices into program design, delivery, and evaluation.

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