Power Lines is a sweeping portrait of American energy in the twenty-first century, rendered in terms of its increasing—and inevitable—human costs. Coal miners in West Virginia lose their livelihoods as energy markets change. Historically marginalized households cannot easily access new technologies. Children in “sacrifice zones” adjacent to mineral-mining sites suffer health problems and limited resources. Cities and towns are burdened from the production of alternative energies.
Sanya Carley and David Konisky show current challenges and an uncertain future of America’s greatest policy imperative. The result is not only sobering but also essential for planning and pursuing a clean-energy transition that improves on the errors of the past.
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Award winning! Power Lines is the winner of the 2026 American Political Science Association: Don K. Price Award
This sobering look at the current state of energy goes beyond recent weather-related headlines to dig into the realities of unequal access to everyday power and connectivity. They concentrate on real impacts felt by real people, whether West Virginia coal miners, Detroit autoworkers, or e-waste contamination containment workers in Africa. Their cultiminating recommendations urge a return of energy supply choices and control to local communities; multi- and cross-sectional partnerships with equal investments in resilience, adaptability, and sustainability; and increased decarbonization. As policymakers look to the future, the authors suggest they disassociate energy decisions from technology and economic concerns and reframe actions through environmental and human justice lenses. Thoughtful, persuasive arguments.
The U.S. energy transition represents a fundamental restructuring of power relations that will either entrench or ameliorate existing inequalities. This is the sobering premise of Carley and Konisky’s Power Lines, a comprehensive review of how the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy will create winners and losers across American society...The book’s most compelling contribution lies in its focus on human experience across the energy lifecycle...The authors’ documentation of energy insecurity or energy poverty — affecting one in four American households, with African American households three times more likely to face disconnection (p.3) – transforms abstract policy debates into urgent moral imperatives.
Power Lines [presents] stories of individuals and communities on the front lines of the energy transition in the United States, focusing on hardships that these individuals and communities face in transitioning to clean energy...Outlines a blueprint built on the principles of energy injustice that can guide policy, community, and industry priorities going forward..
Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition by Sanya Carley and David Konisky is a timely contribution to energy justice and energy transition scholarship. Drawing on their many years of research, Carley and Konisky present the complexities of an energy transition away from fossil fuels. As Carley and Konisky argue, there is no guarantee that transitioning to renewable energy will free underserved communities from living near energy production facilities nor is there any guarantee that these communities will receive the benefits of an energy transition...There is no doubt that an energy transition is necessary to stop the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but as Carley and Konisky argue, there are difficult tradeoffs that must be understood and addressed.
