Public value mapping to assess and guide governmental investments in energy and environmental justice_ Studying the United States Department of Energy.pdf

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 188 (2023) 113765

Available online 14 October 2023

Public value mapping to assess and guide governmental investments in

energy and environmental justice: Studying the United States Department

of Energy

David Oonk

, Mokshda Kaul

, Ben Maurer

, Darshan M.A. Karwat

School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University, PO Box 87600, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA

National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 15013 Denver West Parkway, Golden, CO 80401, USA

The Polytechnic School, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, 7001 E Williams Field Rd, Mesa, AZ 85212, USA

ARTICLE INFO

Keywords:

Energy justice

Environmental justice

Energy technology

Marine energy

Hydropower

Just technology

Energy policy

ABSTRACT

If the U.S. federal government is going to successfully advance the causes of energy and environmental justice

(EEJ) as recent policy has pushed for, how might federal programs and investments be assessed through the lens

of these values beyond standard econometric ones? Federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

play a signicant role in setting long-term strategies and investments for energy technologies, but they generally

use technocentric approaches and metrics, such as reductions in levelized cost of energy, to evaluate success.

Understanding strategies and investments across a portfolio through the lens of EEJ requires novel approaches.

We deploy a rst-of-its-kind public value mapping focused how past programs in the DOE Water Power Tech-

nologies Ofce (WPTO) align with EEJ. By analyzing several thousand pages of congressional statutes, docu-

mented administration policies and executive orders, agency and ofce reports and publications, and semi-

structured interviews of DOE staff and project collaborators, we focus on evaluating research, development,

deployment, and commercialization activities promoting legacy (hydropower) and emerging (marine hydroki-

netic) renewable energy technologies through the lens of EEJ. Our results provide a baseline according to which

future programmatic efforts promoting EEJ in WPTO, DOE as a whole, and beyond can be compared. Our work

provides a foundation for tools and processes that can be embedded into day-to-day staff actions that can guide

federal investments related to EEJ and push for a more just and sustainable future.

Oonk, David: Conceptualization, Research Design, Methodology,

Data Collection, Data Analysis, Lead Manuscript Authorship and Revi-

sion. Kaul, Mokshda: Methodology, Data Collection, Data Analysis,

Supporting Manuscript Authorship. Mauer, Benjamin: Conceptualiza-

tion, Supporting Manuscript Authorship and Revision. Karwat, Darshan:

Conceptualization and Research Design Supporting Manuscript

Authorship and Revision.

1. Introduction

Several critical questions arise when thinking about the role energy

and environmental justice (EEJ) can play in creating a more sustainable

future founded on new technologies. One set of questions concerns the

role that government agencies can play, particularly as it is govern-

mental investments in research and development that guide the engi-

neering, scientic, policy, and governance enterprises so central to

supporting and changing energy infrastructure and technological

systems.

While discourse around energy justice in the U.S. federal government

is fairly new, the efforts to institutionalize environmental justice in the

federal government go back to at least the early 1990s. In 1994, U.S.

President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, which formally

recognized environmental justice and directed agencies to develop

strategies to identify and address disproportionate impacts on low-

income and minority communities [1]. Executive Order 12898

“emphasized the need for widespread public participation to tackle both

procedural and recognition justice issues concerning the environment,

to include activities and decisions by the Department of Energy” (pg.

215 [2]). The promise of this order, however, was followed with

discouraging results. Over the years, agencies have had internal orga-

nizational resistance to environmental justice [3], and have used

restrictive and narrow denitions of environmental justice that limit the

* Corresponding author. School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University, PO Box 87600, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.

E-mail address: [email protected] (D. M.A. Karwat).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2023.113765

Received 29 July 2022; Received in revised form 18 July 2023; Accepted 18 September 2023