James Gall, "From Local to Global, Past to Future: Deriving Entanglements of Energy Vulnerability from Energy Justice as an Interscalar Vehicle", Energy Research Network, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, (June 9, 2020).
This PECE essay will explore energy justice and the importance of recognizing the entangled nature of the concept. It can be better understood by applying the STS theory-concept of interscalar vehicles coined by Gabrielle Hecht. This will allow the essay to travel forward and backward temporally, as past events have shaped the energy landscape on the global scale and impacted the environment and climate. It will also allow us to further understand the prospective futures and consider the impact that current energy poverty concerns will possibly have if we do not change our energy distribution tactics and procedures required to produce and disseminate energy resources.
Energy justice as an interscalar vehicle will allow us to also see the impact that current injustices have on the global scale through environmental racism and food resource depletion. These inequalities feed into spatial injustices that allow this concept to travel through space and time. While tying energy vulnerability to the broader social and political processes causing discrimination through a variety of practices and procedures to extract, produce, transport and dispose of energy byproducts as well as on the user-end regarding the unjust resource distribution on the global scale.
This essay’s goal is to utilize energy justice to explore the ideas we have surrounding what actors are deserved to have access to such resources. By tactfully navigating the landscape regarding the development of new ways of thinking about energy rights as a ‘basic human right’ we can identify ways to uphold a more just and equitable world framework. By exploring these concepts, we will develop arguments to cultivate a justice framework that includes perspectives from human to nonhuman actors, thereby exemplifying the impact that these entangled assemblages surrounding energy vulnerability impact the Anthropocene.
Overall, the intention is to decenter human-centric ways of thinking and bolster a more inclusive overarching perspective to situate our understanding of the health of the world we live in broadly. By bringing new ways of relating to the people, places, perceptions, and plethora of agential factors impacted by energy use and its production, we will have the chance to identify and imagine new ways of thinking that incorporates sociotechnical frameworks that champion difference and diversity, to create a more accepting and inclusive justice-oriented environment.
Image from Cover of the following Report:
Sari, Ramazan & Voyvoda, Ebru & Lacey-Barnacle, Max & Karababa, Eminegül & Topal, Cagatay & İslambay, Demet. (2017). Energy Justice: A Social Sciences and Humanities Cross-cutting Theme Report. 10.13140/RG.2.2.33861.35043.
This academic report was published by Shape Energy, receiving funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program through a grant. Cross-cutting three disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, it provides a critical analysis of topics of energy justice to...Read more
This Bill of Rights for energy consumers was drafted by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. The document is a resource to inform consumer households of information regarding their rights and responsibilities in relation to energy justice. This documents applies to all consumers of energy...Read more
This mind map of concepts and artifacts related to energy justice guides our exploration. Situating it as an interscalar vehicle to guide "objects and modes of analysis... permit[ting] scholars and their subjects to move simultaneously through deep time and human time, through geological space and political space" (Hecht, 2018).
Through the analysis of responses to the Energy Vulnerability Lab's 2020 Energy Vulnerability Survey COVID-19 response we have the capability to analyze perspectives of 74 respondents to a survey regarding their capability to access energy resources during the global pandemic. This survey covers a variety of questions regarding their ability to obtain energy resources, as well as how the pandemic has impacted their households' living situation. By analyzing the second to last two question on the survey which is "What do you think your energy rights are?" This question gives us the ability to feel the pulse of how survey participants are thinking about energy justice and the way they are perceive energy as a resource. that should be distributed accross the population and avaiable to all.
Of 74 respondents 36 or about 66% of them believed they had a right to electricity. When analyzing the comments that go along with this question it becomes apparent that some individuals believe that anyone in should have energy resources as "basic energy right." A respondent claimed,
Well...I think that everybody...no matter their income or economic status should be given the basic energy...should be provided with the basic energy assistance...ummm....yeah"
This shows an example of a progressive and forward thinking perspective surrounding energy access. Values within the current economic system seem to often value the cost of energy resources. Due to the capitalistic perspectives around cost and benefits and these resources being tied to resource scarcity there is a common thread of understanding that claim that resources should be available to those who can pay. One example of this would be,
It depends where they're getting the energy from- if it's costing money to create the energy then no I don't think I have the rights. I think water should be free for everyone. With solar and wind, someone needs to pay for the construction and maintenance. I believe that people have the right to have access to energy but not entitled to it."
This quote describes the sentiment that if people cannot afford the construction of energy producing utilities, or have the capability to access energy through capital they may not have rights to these neccessities. Although the respondent then discusses that we have 'rights' that are not necessarily "entitled" to such rights.
This entry shows an example of the discordance that many people experience when discussing rights and justice related concepts. When we discuss rights, we often refer to them as a concept to be upheld and demanded, as we have the right to freedom or nonviolence. The concept of rights in the neoliberal and capitalistic political and economic system we live in often ties rights to entitlements that are inversely situated through economic capital, thereby stating if you do not have the money, or ability to contribute to the system through work then your rights are not worth upholding.
The perspective that we have do not have entitlements to a right to uphold our wellbeing through extractions from the commons, that should be considered a public good, describes our inability to separate entitlements to necessary resources that are, in essence availble to all because of their status as a resource found in the natural world, then we cannot be entitled to the right that we deserve. As common human subjects that should have equitable access to justice, we beleive that these rights are often tied to capital in such a way that we must participate in this social agreement that is the traditional economy to be accepted by the broader social system and recognized as a human.
By making energy a resource that is capitalistic in nature we are able charge for resources that come naturally in the world that we must excavate. It is understood that these shared land resources that are nonrenewable such as oil wells, natural gas resources, and coal mines provide a resource that much be extracted and processed to produce energy, it makes sense to us that they cost money.
With new renewable energy resources being used on a broad scale to produce energy it becomes less and less enticing to logically support that we need to charge money for electricity production, energy resources, and other necessities like water. These resources, when put into the economic world, begin to fetishize and attribute cost to resources that are produced in the world through natural processes. They should be considered a common good because the less physical labor and intellectual work put into extracting such resources through the logic of capitalism, then the less the commodity should cost. Once they are in place and maintained they are less cost intensive to collect energy resources and the price should reflect that.
One example of a response that a participant made was,
Like in a different reality, if we did have those things? "yeah" OK, I think... everyone should have access to things that energy fuels like good transportation in their area or a car, everyone should have at least a basic level of heating and cooling so they can be safe and healthy, the rights to food and energy are combined, so they should have the right to food to fuel their bodies, people should be hungry or cold or lacking medical care or not being able to get to work."
It is this line of thinking, the idea that the alternatives to current ways of receiving and accessing energy are illogical at this point in time because our current way of economic and political organization would not condone it, allows us to question whether these social structures are the best way to uphold equity and justice. Justice pertins to upholding our rights through procedural justice and distributive justice. It is my belief that the formation of justice under positive freedoms, for exmample 'freedom to exercise religious freedom,' reduces justice to the other from their perspective. By relegating rights to an individual in a social agreement that uses negative freedoms to maintain justice, for example 'freedom from persecution and discrimination' we see the rights of individuals much more equitably distributed across the population.
This can be applied to energy justice circumstances, as we currently see a system of procedures of energy distribution that situates individuals to "have the right to pay for energy" but it we reframe the way we think about energy resources as a basic human right we then can transform that positive freedom to a negative freedom that states, "we have the freedom to not go without basic human necessities and needs" these would pertain to energy resources related to our basic human needs. We would be able to distribute equitably the through our right to live, the needs which are: air, heat, water, shelter, and food. We can see that these needs must be met for humans to survive and should become basic human rights. By translating these need into rights, it becomes essential to uphold justice and equity globally.
Procedural justice refers to the idea of fairness in the processes that resolve disputes and allocate resources. It is a concept that, when embraced, promotes positive organizational change and bolsters better relationships. Procedural justice speaks to four principles, often referred to as the four pillars:
This policy document lays out practices for the preservation of cultural resources and artifacts. It was approved and certified by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to support national legislation to preserve and protect historical and archeological sites related to Native...Read more
Like procedural justice, this type of justice is pursued in every constitutional democracy, and it pertains to the government’s enactment of laws to distribute benefits to the people under its authority. Distributive justice certainly is achieved when equals receive the same allocation of benefits
This report was published by the World Bank through the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program. The World Bank is a global partnership fighting poverty through sustainable solutions. This report addressed matters of energy vulnerability by identifying contributing factors and highlighting...Read more
This fact sheet lays out the benefits of the Weatherization Assistance Program in the United States through the Department of Energy. The fact sheet is an example of distributive justice through benefits. It lays out the way that low income Americans are affected by poor weatherization measures...Read more
This scholarly research article written by Stefan Bouzaraovski and Neil Simcock from the Department of Geography at University of Manchester in the UK establishes a spatial justice framework for energy justice to address energy vulnerabilities more adequately. The article is a meta-analysis...Read more
This scholarly journal article synthesizes the mechanisms required to bolster a more inclusive energy landscape. These concerns lay out the core elements attempting to eliminate energy vulnerabilities by identifying the root of these injustices.
The framework utilizes encompassing factors...Read more