Localize Energy Systems
The sun has been shining quite brightly here in Northern California over the past week, and spring flowers are in full bloom. Basking in this warmth, it’s hard to keep in mind that it was only days ago that an unusually brutal deep freeze gripped much of the US and left millions in Texas and Oregon without power and potable water for days, and resulted in the death of more than 30 people.
But the truth is, we are still discovering the full extent of the disaster, and, as is the case with other crises, we are also learning that communities of color were the first to bear the brunt of blackouts and are likely to have a harder time getting help or recovering financially.
This comes atop the pandemic, which has already put hundreds of thousands of families, again mostly from low-income Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, at risk of utility shutoffs due to the economic downturn.
Gets more than a little old, doesn’t it?
The prolonged outages also highlight just how ill-equipped power grids in the US — including in Texas, the single largest energy producing state in the country — are to handle extreme weather events that are set to get worse in coming days. (The sun may be pleasant now, but a record-hot California summer that will strain the grid here as well is only months away.)
Do we really need things to get worse than this to understand the urgent need to decentralize our energy grids and usher in a just transition to cleaner, more equitable energy systems? There are enough examples of how we can make that happen, as we show in at least two articles in the Journal’s upcoming Spring 2021 issue. (Watch out for them next month.)
Last week, some 26 conservation and energy justice organizations wrote to Congress urging it to support energy justice spending in the next infrastructure package. That would be as good a place to start as any.
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo by: Bob Wick / BLM
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