Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: energy ethics
- All Subjects: environmental justice
- Creators: DesRoches, Tyler
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
City governments have an opportunity to address historic environmental injustices through the management of their urban forests. When applying environmental justice to the management of urban trees, the common approach is to plant new trees in areas with high proportions of underserved residents and low tree canopy. This is the approach taken by many programs, such as the MillionTrees programs in Los Angeles and New York City. However, these initiatives do not always result in just outcomes and, in some cases, exacerbate existing inequities. This suggests the need for a model of urban tree canopy (UTC) justice that encapsulates distributive, procedural, and recognition justice. In this thesis, I suggest such a model of UTC justice that incorporates ecosystem services and disservices to understand resident satisfaction with neighborhood trees. I then apply the model to the case of the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area by assessing local UTC plans for mentions of environmental justice. Finally, I use multiple regression analysis to identify the relationship between neighborhood tree canopy percentage and resident satisfaction with neighborhood trees. Results indicate that tree canopy is a statistically insignificant determinant of resident satisfaction in 23 of 30 models. This supports my model of UTC justice in that it suggests that there is a confounding variable between UTC provisioning and resident satisfaction. This thesis culminates in recommendations for city governments, including the use of longitudinal socioecological surveys to evaluate the need for and success of UTC plans for environmental justice.
ContributorsCrichlow, Timara (Author) / DesRoches, Tyler (Thesis advisor) / Coseo, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Melnick, Rob (Committee member) / Pataki, Diane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Societies seeking sustainability are transitioning from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources to mitigate dangerous climate change. Energy transitions involve ethically controversial decisions that affect current and future generations’ well-being. As energy systems in the United States transition towards renewable energy, American Indian reservations with abundant energy sources are some of the most significantly impacted communities. Strikingly, energy ethicists have not yet developed a systematic approach for prescribing ethical action within the context of energy decisions. This dissertation reinvents energy ethics as a distinct sub-discipline of applied ethics, integrating virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism with Sioux, Navajo, and Hopi ethical perspectives. On this new account, applied energy ethics is the analysis of questions of right and wrong using a framework for prescribing action and proper policies within private and public energy decisions. To demonstrate the usefulness of applied energy ethics, this dissertation analyzes two case studies situated on American Indian reservations: the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Navajo Generating Station.
ContributorsBethem, Jacob (Author) / DesRoches, Tyler (Thesis advisor) / Pasqualetti, Martin J (Committee member) / Graffy, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019