Equity and Justice in the Climate Change Fight
The new director of the Institute for Global Sustainability and professor of Earth and environment wants to help the world make an equitable transition to sustainable energy
In February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its bleakest forecast of the planet’s health yet. “The rise in weather and climate extremes,” it warned, “has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.” One of the experts charged with crafting the IPCC’s recommendations for averting climate disaster was Benjamin Sovacool. A social scientist and an internationally renowned climate change expert, Sovacool is also the new director of BU’s Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), a hub for sustainable energy research and policy solutions.
Sovacool is helping the IGS continue its expansion into a University-wide center, welcoming expertise from every sector and school to broaden the focus of sustainability at BU. As well as looking at ways to replace existing fossil fuel infrastructure with low-carbon or zero-carbon alternatives—like wind, solar, and hydroelectricity—he says one of the biggest challenges is figuring out how to do that in every part of the world in a fair and just way.
“Fifteen years ago, it was rare to see the word ‘justice’ alongside things like ‘electricity’ or ‘electrons,’” says Sovacool, who was previously at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.
Climate and environmental justice efforts—like tackling the preponderance of highly polluting power plants in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color—are increasingly embraced by scientific and environmental communities, Sovacool says, but no one has figured out how to perfectly execute a plan to decarbonize a city or state without some sort of trade-offs or negative consequences.
“Energy policy and climate technology aren’t just economic systems, they are also systems that can ruin lives, systems that can build wealth, constrain the provision of education, or empower women,” Sovacool says. “There are all sorts of very complex interactions that research wasn’t focused on in the past.”
In a study of Estonia’s energy transition, for example, Sovacool found the transition to clean energy would cost some people their jobs or spark squabbles over land use. But “there are also major injustices with doing nothing,” he says. “If we don’t change, then there are more emissions, oil spills, soil contamination, emissions of particulate matter, and the release of other air pollutants that go over the rest of Eastern Europe. And how is a policymaker supposed to navigate that complexity and uncertainty? That’s the challenge.”
“This shows we’re moving beyond national policy,” he says. And that’s reflected in the transformation of the IGS into a hub for scientific research and collaboration across the entire University.
“What really hooked me for this job, apart from the people here, are the core strengths of BU that set us apart from other leading institutions,” Sovacool says. “Tackling big sustainability challenges, including planetary health and problems that are magnified by climate change, is part of the vision.”