Session: 01-01 A Just Transition to a Sustainable Future

Paper Number: 111263

111263 - Just-R Metrics Framework for Integrating Energy Justice Into Early-Stage Research 

Energy justice aims to address and prevent inequities associated with the current fossil fuel-based energy system and inequities that may arise with the transition to a clean energy economy. However, energy justice principles are currently lacking in technical research and literature, causing researchers and engineers to rely on the same principles that created the unjust practices and outcomes we find today.

The lack of tools to consider energy justice are particularly substantial for early-stage research, which leads to late-stage consideration of justice. This late-stage integration of energy justice leaves us susceptible to identifying negative impacts of energy technologies only after significant time and funding have been spent on their research and development (R&D), often with limited remaining options to address them. To fill this gap in energy justice resources for early-stage researchers, we introduce a metrics framework that can be applied by an individual researcher or project team on an immediate timescale.

The Justice Underpinning Science and Technology Research (JUST-R) metrics framework includes 30 metrics from across energy and sustainability literature and 20 new metrics developed to fill gaps in applicability to early-stage research. The framework maps metrics along responsible research and innovation dimensions and distributional, procedural, recognition, and cosmopolitan principles of energy justice. The JUST-R metrics framework enables researchers to better measure and manage energy justice considerations starting from the earliest stages of R&D.

This metrics framework was evaluated across research projects at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. A key outcome of this case study was that decision-maker values drive how these metrics are used. Importantly, for early-stage research, equitable deployment and use of the future technology is an extremely long-term reward, typically years or decades away. We expect that the short-term rewards provided by institutions, and thus institutional values, will have a greater impact on how these metrics are applied and their effectiveness.

Presenting Author: Bettina Arkhurst Georgia Institute of Technology

Presenting Author Biography: Bettina Arkhurst is a Ph.D. candidate in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and an energy equity intern in the Accelerated Deployment and Decision Support Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). She holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech. Her dissertation research seeks to understand how concepts of energy justice can be applied to renewable energy technology design to better consider marginalized and vulnerable populations. Bettina is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Alfred P. Sloan Scholar, Novelis Scholar, and Georgia Tech Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems Graduate Fellow.