Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Energy Justice
- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Creators: Klinsky, Sonja
- Creators: Graffy, Elisabeth
- Creators: Singh, Kartikeya
Description
Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of anthropogenic climate change have called into question the efficacy, efficiency, and equity of energy systems. People committed to renewable energy transitions, and those who defend fossil-based systems, are simultaneously envisioning energy futures and seeking to build them. In the process, they are changing both energy technologies and how social life is organized around them. In this dissertation, I examine how ideas and materialities around distributed solar power become inscribed into energy policies, etched into urban landscapes, and embedded into city life. These processes engender particular kinds of embodied communities, which I define as solar communities. I study the visual and affective dimensions of emerging solar communities in Arizona and Italy using the qualitative methods of semi-structured interviews, photo-documentation, and observation. The dissertation consists of three papers. In Chapter 2, I explore how rooftops are constructed as newly productive sites for electricity generation through economic, legal, cartographic, and political negotiations, and how they become sites of struggle over who has access to them. I describe a case study in Phoenix about a proposed change in compensation for residential rooftop solar customers and the affective dynamics of a protest around it. In Chapter 3, I examine how a variety of photovoltaic applications are appearing in urban landscapes in Treviso, Italy and Flagstaff, Arizona. I investigate how aesthetic and environmental values are imbued in the physical forms those installations ultimately take, and the role that in/visibility plays in shaping these decisions. I use photography to document these emergent solar communities and argue that there is value to seeing photovoltaics in your city. In Chapter 4, I describe a workshop I led on the human dimensions and ethical trade-offs of renewable energy transitions using interactive activities and case studies from Ethiopia and Appalachia. I show how decisions about energy transitions have far-reaching impacts on people’s lives, health, the way they work, and geopolitical relationships. Together, these chapters begin to form a picture of the governance around, and visuality of, photovoltaic designs that emerge as fixtures of both landscape and society, which in turn inform solar communities.
ContributorsFuller, Jennifer Lynn (Author) / Miller, Clark A (Thesis advisor) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Graffy, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Climate adaptation has not kept pace with climate impacts which has formed an adaptation gap. Increasingly insurance is viewed as a solution to close this gap. However, the efficacy and implications of using insurance in the climate adaptation space are not clear. Furthermore, past research has focused on specific actors or processes, not on the interactions and interconnections between the actors and the processes. I take a complex adaptive systems approach to map out how these dynamics are shaping adaptation and to interrogate what the insurance climate adaptation literature claims are the successes and pitfalls of insurance driving, enabling or being adaptation. From this interrogation it becomes apparent that insurance has enormous influence on its policy holders, builds telecoupling into local adaptation, and creates structures which support contradictory land use policies at the local level. Based on the influence insurance has on policy holders, I argue that insurance should be viewed as a form of governance. I synthesize insurance, governance and adaptation literature to examine exactly what governance tools insurance uses to exercise this influence and what the consequences may be. This research reveals that insurance may not be the exemplary adaptation approach the international community is hoping for. Using insurance, risk can be reduced without reducing vulnerability, and risk transfer can result in risk displacement which can reduce adaptation incentives, fuel maladaptation, or impose public burdens. Moreover, insurance requires certain information and legal relationships which can and often do structure that which is insured to the needs of insurance and shift authority away from governments to insurance companies or public-private partnerships. Each of these undermine the legitimacy of insurance-led local adaptation and contradict the stated social justice goals of international calls for insurance. Finally, I interrogate the potential justice concerns that emerged through an analysis of insurance as a form of adaptation governance. Using a multi-valent approach to justice I examine a suite of programs intended to support agricultural adaptation through insurance. This analysis demonstrates that although some programs clearly attempted to consider issues of justice, overall these existing programs raise distributional, procedural and recognition justice concerns.
ContributorsLueck, Vanessa (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Eakin, Hallie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
As India expanded its grid infrastructure, decentralized renewable energy technologies, such as off-grid solar, also emerged in parallel as an electrification solution. This dissertation critically examines the role of off-grid solar in facilitating rural electrification efforts in India. Specifically, it applies the frameworks of the multi-level perspective, capabilities approach, and energy justice to achieve three objectives: (1) trace the evolution of off-grid solar in India; (2) understand the role of solar micro-grids in improving household capabilities and well-being; (1) examine whether and how community-scale solar micro-grids can operate as just means of electrification. This research relies on qualitative case-study methods. The historical research in Paper 1 is based on published policy documents and interviews with energy experts in India. It finds that landscape-regime-niche actor relations and politics were crucial in shaping off-grid solar transition outcomes. There is also a narrative component, as the key narratives of energy security, environmental degradation, climate change and energy for development converged to create spaces for state and non-state interactions that could nurture the development of off-grid solar. The community-level research in Papers 2 and 3 analyze a local energy initiative of community operated solar micro-grid using semi-structured interviews and participant observations from three villages in Maharashtra. Solar micro-grids play an important part in expanding people’s choices and opportunities. The benefits are not uniform across all people, however. Increases in energy-related capabilities vary by economic class and gender, and to some extent this means certain biases can get reinforced. In addition, the inability of solar micro-grids to keep up with the changing electrification landscape and daily practices means that the challenges of affordability, reliability and community engagement emerged as important concerns over-time. Empirically, this dissertation finds that off-grid energy initiatives must be carefully designed to be in alignment with local values and realities. Theoretically, it adds to debates on justice in energy transitions by showcasing the regime-led innovations, and temporality elements of energy justice local energy initiatives.
ContributorsRajagopalan, Sushil (Author) / Breetz, Hanna (Thesis advisor) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Singh, Kartikeya (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021