Energy infrastructure development has historically benefited some communities while burdening others. In our latest white paper, Community Benefits Policy and Energy Justice, IEJ explores how local, state, and federal policies can redirect the benefits of energy infrastructure investments to underserved and overburdened communities. These policies can create a robust platform for advancing energy justice initiatives such as labor agreements, pollution reduction, and energy democracy. However, to fully realize the potential of these policies, further interventions are needed to increase community control, governance, and democracy. Without these, we risk perpetuating the same inequitable structures and distributions of benefits and harms in our current energy system.
We are providing a toolkit to accompany the release of our Community Benefits white paper. Please use it to share our findings and amplify the report. Use this link to access the toolkit.