Links to donate, petitions, and anti-racism resource guides can be found at the bottom of this post.

The widespread activism and collective organizing in the United States, Canada, and now globally over the past several days has brought racial injustice to the forefront of digital media and discourse. This movement is not new: Black activists and organizations, particularly young people, have been organizing for decades to dismantle and rebuild inherently racist and unjust legal, educational, and governance systems that give rise to police brutality and state violence. However, this moment calls for all organizations regardless of sector to learn, support and amplify movements led by Black activists, and to encourage their network to do the same.

While systemic racism and police violence in the United States may dominate news media coverage, we cannot ignore that systemic racism and state violence are prevalent in Canada as well. Ongoing violence against Black and Indigenous communities in Canada is something we must address even after this moment, even in spaces or situations where it may not be comfortable to do so.

In the energy industry and in the energy and climate advocacy space, there is an underlying, and often unnamed issue: While some organizations do advocate for justice and equity as an integral part of a sustainable energy future, there are countless others whose advocacy is limited only to technological and policy solutions to reduce emissions and achieve economic growth. These incomplete approaches aim to address the climate crisis without explicitly addressing the systemic racism and injustice present in the energy system, in the climate crisis, and in the environmental movement. As Student Energy’s vision is to empower young people to create an energy future that is both sustainable and equitable, it’s extremely important to start this conversation with our fellow organizations in the energy space.

Student Energy’s Theory of Change outlines our values as an organization, and these values are centered on listening to and empowering young people and embedding equity and climate justice as an integral part of the energy transition. Recognizing that we are often in spaces where we are one of few youth-led organizations represented, raising critical questions on justice and equity in relation to the energy transition and climate change is an important part of our daily work. Here are some immediate and long-term actions we are taking as an organization to ensure that we are also explicitly incorporating anti-racist principles and advocacy to the work that we do:

• We are researching and developing a framework to embed anti-racism and equity into how we design and collaborate on programs with our partners. This framework will serve to increase the accessibility of our programs to BIPOC youth, resourcing for BIPOC youth-led sustainable energy initiatives, and support youth-led work with direct impacts on human rights in energy such as universal access, health and safety, energy in disaster responses, anti-discrimination in energy, community and Indigenous rights, and the relationship between conflict and energy.

• We will be adding additional anti-racism resources to our Communicating Justice and Equity in the Energy Transition training that is a part of staff onboarding. This resource is an introduction to the concepts of energy and climate justice, and explores historical and ongoing inequity across all aspects of the global energy system. For a condensed introduction to energy justice, including a case study of anti-Blackness in the energy system, please see our social media resource here.

• The impacts of climate change, the economic downturn, and the long-term effects of COVID-19 will be disproportionately felt by BIPOC communities. As we are an organization based in Canada, we will be advocating for Canada’s climate plans and COVID-19 recovery efforts to address systemic racial and economic inequity and include plans on how the future clean economy will not just be sustainable, but equitable.

Read more about what it means to have a just recovery from COVID-19 here.

• We will continue to seek out, work with, compensate and recommend Black-led organizations, speakers, and service providers.
• We will hold space in the workplace far beyond the next several weeks to continue to learn together about what anti-racist advocacy looks like for Student Energy, for the global climate movement, and for our team as individuals.

Finally, we want to emphasize that Student Energy’s conversations on equity and anti-racism in the climate and energy space will continue well beyond this current moment. We are committed to ongoing learning as an organization, and taking action to address anti-Black, anti-Indigenous and other forms of racism in the climate and energy space. We are committed to addressing economic and power inequities for young people globally and at an intersectional level, whether that means reducing barriers to access leadership-development and educational opportunities, accessing decision-making spaces, or being better equipped to implement appropriate climate solutions for their communities.

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If you are able to, one effective way to take action no matter where you are is by donating to support directly affected individuals, community organizations, and frontline organizers. On Instagram, we shared links to donate to the following organizations and fundraisers that are seeking donations at this time:

•       Black Lives Matter
•       NAACP Legal Defense Fund
•       Black Visions Collective
•       Reclaim the Block
•       Official George Floyd Memorial Fund
•       Justice for Regis GoFundMe

Please see the following lists for more organizations to support and ways to take action – these are continuously updated:

•       Support funds, anti-racism resource guides, petitions and ways to take action (includes Canada-focused actions)
•       Support bail funds and organizers
•       Support harmed Black-owned businesses

• What are the biggest obstacles to moving away from a fossil fuel-dependent energy system and achieving net zero emissions by 2050?
• Where do we stand now on the global energy transition?
• What skills should young people develop for their careers?
• What issues need more attention?

These are some of the questions we dove into on our webinar with Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and formerly the CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All. We’ve summarized some of our key learnings:

We’re not on track to meeting the goals of SDG7 by 2030. Here’s why:

840 million people still lack access to energy. This itself is likely an underestimate of the actual number, as it is self-reported by governments that have an incentive to show that more progress has been made than has actually taken place. In addition to those without energy, there are a billion more without access to reliable, affordable energy. Most of these communities are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, so there is a real geopolitical risk of large parts of the world being left behind, as access to energy is critical for alleviating poverty, improving education and healthcare outcomes, and providing a foundation for economic development.

Energy demand is predicted to rise enormously, both due to rising income, and increased demands for heating and cooling in many parts of the world. As the climate crisis gives rise to record summer temperatures, thermal comfort will become a significant public health issue, and demand for air conditioning will rise. With over 80% of the world’s energy still supplied by fossil fuels, rising energy demand will also lead to rising emissions.

There are a lot of reasons to be excited about the clean energy transition.

Despite the sobering statistics on energy access and rising emissions, there is still meaningful progress being made, and more and more opportunities for young people to guide the transition to a just and sustainable energy future.

 The price of renewable energy continues to drop steeply, contributing to positive developments for electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and other emissions-intensive sectors.

While many governments continue to show weak political leadership, there are some promising signs: there is an increasing amount of ‘South-South’ finance mobilized towards decentralized energy infrastructure (for example, Indian investment in mini-grids across the Sahel), demonstrating an alternative to the risk-averse approach of development assistance from the Global North.

For young people who are driven to transform the energy system, there is an entirely new generation of energy jobs on the horizon. We’ll need public policy that embraces the need to build green infrastructure at the speed and scale needed to tackle climate change, and we’ll need a completely different systems analysis, encompassing centralized and decentralized energy, modern renewables, buildings and vehicles that store and give back power, and energy produced and consumed across political boundaries.

 We need an urgent shift to integrated energy planning.

It used to be that bringing energy to communities meant extending the central grid, but it is clear now that this is not the most effective solution in many cases. Many of those without energy access are living on the peripheries of fast-urbanizing cities with grids ill-equipped to handle an increasing electric load, and others are in rural and remote areas where extending the grid would be an expensive, resource-intensive undertaking. Still others might have access to a grid, but may not be able to afford to connect to it. For these reasons, integrated energy planning – figuring out where the grid should be the provider of power, and where it should be supplemented with off-grid and decentralized energy sources – should be prioritized by decision-makers, and young people seeking careers in the energy sector.

Integrated energy planning extends beyond cities and peri-urban areas, and might include trans-national and trans-continental energy planning. Problems with renewable energy and green infrastructure availability can in some cases be solved by working collaboratively across multiple jurisdictions, yet the energy security debate often limits this type of collaboration.

Decentralized energy empowers communities (particularly women within those communities), but it is a potential challenge to the political status quo.

Decentralized energy comes with many other benefits aside from providing energy access. It empowers communities to develop, own and govern energy infrastructure that is appropriate for their needs. Women tend to disproportionately bear the effects of energy poverty, from missing out on income-generating opportunities due to time spent collecting cooking fuels to experiencing severe health impacts from indoor air pollution. Access to decentralized energy could free up time, improve health outcomes, and allow greater involvement in energy governance for women.

However, the road to a more decentralized energy system won’t be easy. Incumbency, and locked-in utilities and infrastructure creates a natural bias against decentralized energy. Going up against entrenched energy ministries and institutional structures that are reluctant to lose central control of the energy system presents another major political and bureaucratic hurdle. In addition to the institutional barriers, development finance remains slow-moving and risk-averse, with only 1% of development assistance going into off-grid, decentralized energy.

Progress on energy efficiency is slowing down, even though conserving energy is the cheapest way to reduce emissions.

To meet the SDG7 goals on energy efficiency, the rate of improvement in energy efficiency needs to be over 3% annually – currently, it is only 1%, and slowing down. Considering that improving energy efficiency is the cheapest way to curb emissions, and an area that presents numerous new job opportunities, this is a major issue that needs more attention. Energy efficiency is often a hard sell for governments, industry, the financial sector and even the public, as there are deep social preferences for building new things and developing new technologies to tackle emerging problems, rather than valuing the cost and emissions savings from not doing things.

Another emerging dilemma over the next ten years will be attempts by the energy industry to offset their growing emissions with forestry and other natural climate solutions. While nature-based solutions are an integral part of addressing the climate crisis, offsets should be used as a last resort. Instead, emissions should be curbed directly at the source or not produced at all.

 Every month of the Student Energy Leaders Fellowship features a webinar with a leading energy expert. The Leaders Fellowship cohort can submit questions in advance and during the presentation, to guide the discussion.

 About Rachel Kyte

Recently named one of Time magazine’s 15 Women Leading the Fight Against Climate Change, Rachel Kyte is a trailblazing leader and expert in sustainable energy and energy access, and a long-time champion of young people. Formerly the CEO and Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), Rachel is stepping into her new role as Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Rachel has also served as the World Bank Group’s VP and Special Envoy for Climate Change, leading the Bank Group’s efforts in campaigning for the Paris Agreement and mobilizing billions of dollars to support developing countries to address climate change. She was recently honoured by Queen Elizabeth’s 2020 New Year Honours list for her critical efforts combating climate change and serving in the field of sustainable energy.