Energy and Equity: You Can't Have One Without the Other

As the nation's attention remains fixed in dismay and outrage about the widespread failures of the Texas energy grid --- the only state in the Union that has insisted on its own, insular energy delivery system --- the underlying political and social determinants that led to this outcome were already plain to see.

Three years ago the U.S. Department of Energy, commendably, dove into the lack of equity in the massive and lucrative energy industry. But its focus was on developing a more diverse workforce (great!) rather than the bigger crisis evident today --- that the industry can't reliably deliver energy to homes during an entirely predictable climate event.

It should surprise no one that when rolling blackouts were ordered this week amid a prolonged freeze, it was the poor who faced the consequences first and most disruptively.

The ongoing humanitarian damage of Texas utilities' perversely incentivized lack of attention to outlier weather events and other statistically inevitable disruptions should serve as a sobering reminder that industries of every type must drill down on diversity, equity and inclusion --- with real resources and a patient, top-to-bottom commitment throughout their leadership and workforces. (Not just glowing self-assessments in their annual reports.)

Power and fuel providers need to grapple not only with engineering and design inadequacies in their gas and electrical delivery systems. Refineries need to account for the disproportionate environmental injustice of major releases of chemicals when plants need to shut down, which settle on BIPOC neighborhoods and aggravate the day-to-day health impacts those residents already endure.

And relief and mitigation efforts from government agencies need to account for the nested, interlocking nature of the challenges the working poor experience during these episodes. Boiling water won't work when there is no water to boil and no gas to boil it with.

And not everyone can just jet off to Cancun when the house gets cold.