Energy Justice and Equity: Applying a Critical Perspective to the Electrical Power Grid for a More Just Transition in the United States

The Electrical Power Grid, Including the national electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) network, is a massive network of infrastructure that most scholars and practitioners treat as disconnected from energy justice concerns. But underlying this infrastructure are a series of unseen justice dimensions. For example, stronger and more resilient distribution lines are located in more affluent neighborhoods, which results in disparities in incidence of blackouts. Furthermore, both grid vulnerability and expansion have important implications for future generations. As another example, the siting and permitting of grid infrastructure, including infrastructure that serves as a nuisance, is uneven across geography. In this article, we define an energy justice taxonomy and discuss how the grid can potentially contribute to four different types of injustice: sociodemographic, spatial across urban and rural locations, temporal, and interspecies.