Abstract
Environmental injustices have long been recognized as an important social dimension of energy systems. Like other kinds of polluting facilities, power plants, refineries, uranium mines, and sites of fossil fuel extraction, to name a few, are more likely to be located near the most vulnerable populations, usually communities of color or low-income communities. These facilities are frequently sited and built without the consent or even participation of the communities and individuals most affected by the facilities. And the extent to which emissions from energy facilities harm human health and the environment is a subject of on-going contestation, in which citizens struggle, often unsuccessfully, to have their insights into local impacts recognized by decision-makers.
Transitions to renewable and low carbon sources of energy promise to render obsolete many of the facilities that environmental justice activists frequently target, including oil refineries and coal-fired power plants. Yet replacing the most noxious energy facilities with greener sources of power will not, by itself, obviate the injustices that characterize our energy systems - namely, the inequitable distribution of environmental hazards, and the inability of communities to affect decisions with profound consequences for their environment and health. In fact, as they are currently being designed, the energy systems that appear most likely to succeed fossil fuel-based ones share key characteristics with their predecessors that raise similar environmental justice concerns - and present the possibility that we will reproduce old patterns of injustice even as we transition to new energy technologies.