Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. She is the coauthor of Energy-Based Economic Development: How Clean Energy Can Drive Development and Stimulate Economic Growth. David Konisky is the Lynton K. Caldwell Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, where he researches US environmental and energy politics. He has authored or edited six books, including Cheap and Clean: How Americans Think about Energy in the Age of Global Warming.
They applied the "Page 99 Test" to their new book, Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition, with the following results:
Page 99 of Power Lines comes toward the end of a chapter that discusses the challenges many Americans have in affording energy for their homes. Among the challenges for low-income populations is accessing energy assistance programs.Learn more about Power Lines at the University of Chicago Press website.
The first full paragraph reads:A final important barrier is that many people distrust the government officials that implement energy assistance programs; that distrust may extend to the companies contracted to install energy efficiency upgrades in people’s homes. This distrust is reflected strongly in figure 4.3, which shows that only 6 percent of all low-income households called their utility company when they were struggling to pay their energy bills, and only 11 percent sought government assistance.The Page 99 Test works reasonably well for our book, as it highlights a key theme of Power Lines that energy-related disparities – in this case, access to affordable and reliable energy utility services – are not merely a function of income, but also broader factors such as how people feel and interact with public and private actors. Energy assistance programs are poorly funded and only reach a fraction of the people that need them. On page 99, we demonstrate that the limited reach of these programs, in part, results from people not trusting government agencies and utility companies.
The overall argument of Power Lines is that the ongoing clean energy transition, despite its overall benefits, will create challenges for many people, including higher energy prices, job displacement, and burdens from living near new infrastructure. None of these challenges are reasons to reverse the transition. The urgency of the climate crisis means we need to accelerate the transition to cleaner sources of energy (e.g., wind, solar) and new, more efficient energy technologies (e.g., electric vehicles, heat pumps). At the same time, we need to devise public policies and programs to assure that all Americans will benefit from this transition.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
