Women’s History Month“Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion"In this last week of Women’s History Month, we are recognizing three of the AE2C women who are doing great things in the environmental justice space which fits well into the 2024 national theme - “Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” The theme recognizes women throughout the country who understand that, for a positive future, we need to eliminate bias and discrimination entirely from our lives and institutions. Jeanette Pablo Amethyst Roebuck As an illustration, All In Energy is a nonprofit whose mission is to accelerate the inclusive transition to a clean energy economy and to promote equal access to clean energy. Most of us tend to give more credibility and trust to someone who understands our plight culturally, socially, economically rather than to some ‘outsider’ even though these outsiders are well-meaning. All In Energy has partnered with MassSave utilities to train local persons within these historically underserved communities to provide outreach and education on what energy efficiency is and how these measures benefit them. Such grassroots efforts amplify, complement, and supplement a typical campaign of canvassing an area with pamphlets to encourage people to sign up for energy efficiency measures. This illustration highlights the work that is not only needed from the vantage point of building energy equity, but also the work of building relationships and nurturing trust between the community and a perceived omnipresent entity, in this case, a utility company.
Jeanette Pablo is the CEO of the Climate Equity Foundation and serves as the Vice President of the National Chapter of AE2C. Emily Chang currently serves as a program manager at National Grid, an investor-owned utility, in the role of a compliance liaison for federally funded awards under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Before this role, she worked in strategizing customer energy management solutions for commercial customers. Ms. Chang’s path to the energy sector and interest in energy equity began while pursuing math, studying systems engineering, and delving into societal impacts of biased mathematical algorithms which reinforced systemic inequality. Originally trained in classical music at Yale, from the beginning of her teaching career, she chose to work in disadvantaged communities with local non-profit agencies. Her vision remains focused on equity in all its systemic manifestations whether in education or energy. Ms. Chang is a member of the AE2C Massachusetts Chapter Steering Committee. Massachusetts Chapter -- We were 'Hopping" in 2023!by Puja Vohra, MA Chapter DirectorAfter launching the Massachusetts Chapter in November 2022, our first order of business was to establish a steering committee and start planning for 2023. Our Steering Committee members include Emily Chang, National Grid; Digaunto Chatterjee and Aiden Nyugen, Eversource and Puja Vohra, Slipstream. We appreciate all the hard work and dedication from the Steering Committee and look forward to seeing old friends and some new faces at our events in this Year of the Dragon! Massachusetts has been a leader in energy and environmental policies for several years with comprehensive programs and policies that will support its ongoing carbon reduction goals. Governor Maura Healey committed to making environmental issues top priority, calling for the state to “lead the world” in its response to climate change. In keeping up with these priorities, the AE2C MA Chapter’s 2023 theme focused on ‘equitable energy transition’ and hearing the voices of environmental justice communities.
Our first activity of 2023 was a webinar on the equity and energy transition with an international perspective. This session was moderated by Melita Elmore, a principal consultant in sustainability and an ISO lead auditor in energy, environment, health, and safety as well as labor and human rights compliance. Preety Bhandari, Senior Advisor in the Global Climate Program and the Finance Center at the World Resources Institute focused on the energy transition from the standpoint of COP27. She highlighted some key energy transition initiatives that are in progress or are being developed that may be replicated and/or scaled up in many developing countries in Asia. Anand Subbiah, AE2C Board member and Executive Director at McLean Development Group talked about addressing a just energy transition from coal plants to renewables in Asian countries. Transitioning countries away from coal is crucial to ensuring a clean energy future and to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Dr Andy Sun, an Associate Professor (with tenure) at MIT focused on decarbonization and optimization of the current and future grid and some key paths forward to balance renewable energy integration with optimizing the power grid.
For our in-person event in November, we invited leaders from Pan Asian communities in Massachusetts to participate in a panel discussion on what a clean energy transition means to their communities. We heard directly from these leaders about their communities’ needs and issues and the solutions they are seeking to increase their resiliency to withstand the impacts of a changing climate and ensure that they benefit from the workforce investments and environmental protection they deserve in a just energy transition in MA. This event was moderated by Jeanette Pablo, AE2C Vice President and Director of the Climate Equity Initiative at Clean Air Task Force, with three community experts from the local Pan-Asian communities: Fangxue Zheng, the Community Initiatives Lead at Quincy Asian Resources, Inc. (QARI), Minwah Leung of the Chinatown Land Trust & Chinatown Power and Anna Venderspek of Green Energy Consumers Alliance. The panelists shared the challenges of educating Asian communities about energy savings, especially renters. They emphasized that any outreach effort takes time because it’s all about gaining trust and dispelling the fallacies/urban myths, especially because most information is disseminated by word of mouth, and digital ‘word of mouth’ modes and can be misinterpreted or misstated. They also face challenges in permitting and logistics, to gathering the appropriate funding. Although some of these hurdles seem daunting, they are making progress and look to continue this rewarding work for years to come.
Massachusetts Chapter November Meeting Highlights
The DOE Clean Energy Corps InitiativeAE2C was honored to sponsor an event for select guests from diverse communities entitled “Special Briefing for Executive Champions” organized at the behest of the U.S. Department of Energy on its Clean Energy Corps hiring campaign in August of last year. This briefing educated participants on DOE’s campaign to recruit the hundreds of government staff needed to implement the then, newly enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Today we are still working with DOE and other entities to spread the news of the Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Justice40 initiatives.
Be sure to check out additional information at http://www.energy.gov/cleanenergycorps, Justice40 Initiative | Environmental Justice | The White House. |