For this week's episode, host Daniel Raimi sits down with David Konisky, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, to reflect on the release of Konisky’s new book, Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition, which Konisky wrote with Sanya Carley. Unlike previous calls for innovation-forward research on the energy transition, Konisky proposes a people-centered approach that includes examining the uneven benefits and costs that get distributed among communities that host or otherwise are affected by clean energy development. Konisky underscores that a close-up look into communities at the front lines of the energy transition can provide a heightened awareness of the local impacts of energy infrastructure and potentially facilitate sound and equitable decisions in federal energy policymaking.
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For this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi sits down with David Konisky, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington, to reflect on the release of Konisky’s new book, Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition, which Konisky wrote with Sanya Carley. Unlike previous calls for innovation-forward research on the energy transition, Konisky proposes a people-centered approach that includes examining the uneven benefits and costs that get distributed among communities that host or otherwise are affected by clean energy development. Konisky underscores that a close-up look into communities at the front lines of the energy transition can provide a heightened awareness of the local impacts of energy infrastructure and potentially facilitate sound and equitable decisions in federal energy policymaking.
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Notable Quotes:
- It pays to be inclusive in the energy transition: “While there are certainly normative reasons why we as a society might want to help lower-income or historically disadvantaged communities access these technologies, it’s also imperative from a climate-mitigation standpoint … If we’re serious about addressing climate change, we need to decarbonize people’s homes, and we need to do it broadly across the country. In this way, helping people overcome these barriers to accessing new technologies has enormous positive spillovers.” (9:22)
- Communities should not shoulder economic burdens alone: “While much of the country has enjoyed the benefits of the cheap energy that these communities have provided, the burdens fall disproportionately on these communities and these workers. As we move away from these particular energy sources, they’re going to feel those burdens in really significant ways.” (11:40)
- Better awareness makes for better policy decisions: “Most public policy comes with trade-offs, and those trade-offs raise really important questions around fairness and equity. The main purpose of the book is not to tell people what to think or how to resolve those trade-offs, but to be more aware of them. Hopefully that pushes policymakers and advocates to be more mindful of those trade-offs and to perhaps craft policies that address them.” (28:22)
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