5

Public Engagement to Build a Strong Social Contract for Deep Decarbonization

ABSTRACT

One of the greatest threats to a successful transition to a net-zero economy is failing to mobilize the participation and support of the people who call the United States home. In every corner of the nation, decarbonization efforts will ask households to buy and use new technologies; businesses and workers to transform energy systems; and institutions in the public and private sector to collaboratively imagine, plan for, and invest in clean energy futures. Furthermore, diverse communities will be asked to assent to and support new policies, programs, and infrastructure construction, and to adapt to the resulting changes to society, the economy, and the environment. Without full participation in these intertwined and interdependent activities, the United States may fall short of implementing decarbonization at the pace, scale, depth, and universality necessary to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Public engagement is a crucial element of the social contract necessary to sustain the political will for decarbonization. It is needed to prepare and marshal individuals and communities to act; deliver tangible and meaningful benefits to all; and acknowledge, mitigate, and compensate for the disruptions, risks, losses, and added burdens many will experience. To participate in decision-making, people will need new knowledge, capabilities, opportunities, and resources. Industries and governments will need new methods to meaningfully engage publics, new skilled professionals to do this work, and robust research and educational programs to guide their efforts. Getting this work done in the coming decades is a daunting human challenge, but it is just as crucial as developing and implementing the technologies needed for deep decarbonization. Meeting this challenge will entail continuous and robust public engagement opportunities offered by governments, the energy and electricity industries, and civil society.¹

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¹ Civil society is the composition of communities and organization not associated with government. Civil society organizations include schools, advocacy groups, churches, and cultural institutions (Ingram 2020), as well as labor unions and indigenous groups (Longley 2022).

Although many of the elements of recent policy initiatives create opportunities to engage and invest various publics in clean energy futures, the human challenge of decarbonization has received only a tiny fraction of the investment in federal and subnational policy and private action. Inadequate public engagement curtails opportunities to advance creative, place-based energy systems and their potential advantages for equitable decarbonization. Furthermore, public engagement literature shows that policies and reforms that reduce public engagement risk slowing transition processes. Without additional resources and determined strategies, current public engagement efforts risk exacerbating public resistance to the pace and scale of systemic change necessary for deep decarbonization. Table 5-2, at the end of the chapter, summarizes the committee’s recommendations that appear in this chapter to support innovative public engagement in decarbonization.

INTRODUCTION

The people of the United States are essential contributors to and participants in the decarbonization of the U.S. energy system. Without their active involvement and support, the nation will not achieve the policy, technology, and societal changes necessary to fashion a carbon neutral economy by 2050. To engage the public well is to build a strong social contract for the whole-of-society commitment necessary for deep and rapid decarbonization of the U.S. energy system. Unfortunately, in many parts of the country, the opposite is occurring: a growing number of people are feeling left out of decisions that are affecting the communities, places, and landscapes where they live and work—decisions that they see as having little to no local benefit. The number of communities placing significant new restrictions on actions required to achieve deep decarbonization is growing rapidly, especially in the deployment of renewable energy (Aidun et al. 2022; Lopez and Levine 2022a,b; Zullo 2023). These restrictions reflect the fact that the United States is not just an abstract territory or population: it is a land of urban and rural places—with associated histories, communities, resources, and industries to which many people have considerable attachment and concern for risks from new kinds of energy projects.

Effective response to public engagement concerns requires that public- and private-sector institutions and civil society establish new ways and capabilities to draw people into processes, including for deliberating the pathways and specific actions needed to achieve carbon neutrality. Only through such innovations will the diverse members of the public at large feel able to meaningfully contribute to and see themselves as a part of the decarbonization project and the decisions that shape future U.S. energy systems and the associated societal and economic futures (Devine-Wright 2011).

(See Chapter 2 for the equity dimensions of strengthening meaningful public engagement in deep decarbonization.) Furthermore, the nation needs to simultaneously move forward with distributed-, community-, and utility-scale decarbonization projects that incorporate public engagement early and often. Without synergistic, innovative public engagement opportunities, the nation’s ability to achieve deep decarbonization may be put at risk.

This chapter maps out the public engagement innovations required to facilitate a social contract for deep decarbonization, which go well beyond “social acceptance” of technology. Robust public engagement practices are necessary to involve people in the setting of transition goals for and the design and implementation of the energy system transition. The committee’s first report introduced the joint goals of accelerating decarbonization and facilitating a just and equitable transition, goals that are often considered to be in conflict. The tension between pace and process poses many real challenges for those implementing energy transition policy. However, this chapter emphasizes that failure to prioritize justice, equity, and a multi-faceted and multi-scalar² approach to engagement will in fact slow decarbonization and highlights the ways to make meaningful engagement processes more effective.

The chapter begins with a summary of lessons and priority actions for public engagement innovation, followed by a brief assessment of progress toward the first report’s goals and recommendations. The bulk of the chapter consists of four sections that review public engagement theory and practice that could substantially enhance the ability of policy and energy institutions to involve U.S. publics in deep decarbonization: (1) Strengthening Energy Democracy Through Inclusive Policy Dialogue; (2) Community Energy, Energy Sovereignty, and Collective Benefits; (3) Meaningful Engagement in Siting and Permitting; and (4) Building the Nation’s Expertise in the Human Dimensions of Decarbonization. Box 5-1 summarizes key lessons from practice and scholarship that provide the framework for this chapter.

Status of Prior Committee Recommendations Related to Public Engagement

New decarbonization technologies and infrastructure programs will involve much of the U.S. public in extensive changes to the energy system. Furthermore, fairness and justice are essential to a net-zero energy future. The committee’s first report addressed the scale, fairness, and justice aspects of decarbonization and identified an important

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² Related to multiple scales, including individual, local, regional, and national.

set of broad policy goals to support an equitable transition (see Appendix C). Many aspects of the first report’s recommendations explicitly and implicitly called for inclusive public engagement:

• A White House–level Office of Equitable Energy Transitions;
• A National Transition Corporation to ensure coordination and funding for assistance to communities and regions;
• National laboratory support to subnational entities for planning and implementation of net-zero transition;
• Educational and training programs to train the net-zero workforce;
• Ten regional centers to manage socioeconomic dimensions of the net-zero transition;
• High-profile regional public dialogues and listening sessions to discuss decarbonization pathways and goals;

• Net-zero transition offices in each state capitol;
• Local community block grants for planning; and
• Opportunities to grow community-owned and planned energy systems.

The report also recommended that the energy industry follow best practices in stakeholder engagement and suggested ways to overcome barriers to participation facing disadvantaged populations.

Despite substantial changes in the federal policy landscape that heighten the importance of effective public engagement, growth in federal support of public engagement is not commensurate with the major energy investments made in recent legislation. Appendix I summarizes the committee’s evaluation of the implementation of the first report’s public engagement objectives in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) (P.L. 117-58), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) (P.L. 117-169), and other relevant federal actions. In summary, the committee finds recent legislation falls short of what is needed to empower the public to effectively participate in deep decarbonization. The outlier is the objective to “invest in community block grants that support local transition planning, community-based action, and community-benefiting economic and technological change,” which was codified in several sections in the IRA (e.g., Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund [§60103], Climate Pollution Reduction Grants [§60114], Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants [§60201], and Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants [§60501]).

The 2023 Policy Landscape: Innovations, Barriers, Opportunities, and Requirements

The current policy landscape of budgetary statutes and executive orders is limiting the reach of public engagement. The IIJA and the IRA authorize and appropriate essential funding for infrastructure deployment but only feature modest opportunities for engaging the public, primarily through funding requirements that distribute benefits via access to technologies and economic opportunities. Public engagement is a significant barrier to IIJA and IRA implementation in both areas of low and high readiness to capitalize on available funding. In parts of the country primed to capitalize on funding for projects, the increased activity is likely to generate new siting and permitting conflicts. In other areas of the country, shortfalls in human and organizational capacity and readiness to act will limit the impact of many of these laws’ provisions. Gaps in engagement also create barriers at the local and community level and exacerbate equity concerns. For example, many of the provisions for technology adoption will primarily engage wealthy households and businesses, given the laws’ reliance on

subsidies. Executive Orders (EOs) 13985 and 14008 created parameters and strategies to advance equity and established supporting task forces, initiatives, and working groups to support equitable outcomes. However, as Chapter 2 points out, the administration’s executive-level approach to equity and justice is not codified in law and faces significant implementation challenges. Furthermore, the scope of publics that must be effectively engaged in supporting decarbonization extends far beyond disadvantaged communities; public engagement needs to provide opportunities for every potential stakeholder, regardless of income status or region, to play a role in decision-making processes throughout the transition to a net-zero energy future.

Much of the implementation of the IRA and IIJA will ultimately be carried out by state and local governments and other subnational actors,³ accentuating the gap between leaders and laggards. The continued politicization of climate action poses a major obstacle to the transfer of knowledge from states that are further along the transition to others that have made less progress (Gustafson et al. 2019). Deploying decarbonization in a fractured political landscape is an opportunity for innovative public engagement. However, this engagement will come in the form of support and opposition to aspects of the transitions, specifically the deployment and adoption of new technologies.⁴ This is not an insignificant concern; decarbonization is a whole-of-the-nation challenge. To be successful, areas of the country with a Republican majority will play a substantial role in many facets of the transition to net zero. This is especially true for the siting of extensive infrastructure within communities and the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps by households. Box 5-2 summarizes the opportunities made available by recent U.S. policy and the chapter recommendations associated with them.

It is critical for the White House and federal agencies to develop a comprehensive approach to public engagement that makes the U.S. public full partners in deep decarbonization. What is needed goes beyond simply adding public engagement as a requirement to federal grants and providing modest funding for community empowerment, as important as those efforts are. To address the challenges that threaten progress on the social contract needed for rapid deep decarbonization, the committee

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³ Subnational actors, also known as non-federal actors, are states, cities, corporations, philanthropic and religious organizations, and academic institutes (Cyrs and Elliot 2018), as well as regions, tribal nations, and civil society (Kok and Ludwig 2022). The role of subnational actors is further discussed in Chapter 13.

⁴ Case in point: A group of Wyoming state legislators recently introduced a bill proposing the phase out of electric vehicles (Wyoming State Legislature 2023). Mounting, and increasingly coordinated, resistance to renewable energy deployment in response to aggressive state mandates is visible in numerous media reports (e.g., see Catenacci [2022]; Clifford [2022]; French [2023]; Gearino [2022]; Gelles [2022]; Rittman [2023]) and is the subject of increased scholarly attention (e.g., see Crawford et al. [2022]; Nilson [2022]).

offers a series of detailed recommendations to address gaps in the current approach to public engagement. These recommendations are organized around four areas of innovation that are essential to successfully decarbonize the U.S. energy system:

1. Strengthening energy democracy through inclusive public dialogues: What are the opportunities and challenges for expanding energy democracy?
2. Community energy, energy sovereignty, and collective benefits: How can the transition to carbon neutrality promote projects that meaningfully advance local stakeholders’ goals that go beyond the rapid deployment of clean energy technologies?
3. Meaningful engagement in siting and permitting: How can design, siting, approval, and construction of new decarbonization infrastructures better engage publics in ways that manage conflict productively, meaningfully incorporate public input, and enhance trust and fairness?
4. Building the nation’s expertise in the human dimensions of decarbonization: What is needed to ensure (a) that efforts to transition the U.S. energy system are robustly informed about how the transition impacts people and the roles people need to play in getting it done, and (b) that the public has the competency and literacy to be effective partners in deep decarbonization?

This chapter describes the need for ambitious, broad, and differentiated forms of public engagement linked to transition planning and implementation. Recent scholarship emphases the need to frame public engagement in energy system transformation in terms of “wider ecologies of multiple interrelating practices of . . . participation that are constitutive of, shape, and are shaped by energy systems” (Chilvers et al. 2018, p. 208). Public engagement policies and practices encompass a great deal of government and private-sector activity. Unfortunately, in far too many cases and places, publics desiring to engage in clean energy debates and decision-making still need to actively advocate for and sometimes push themselves into processes, rather than being invited in.

The following sections focus on the opportunities for engagement present, nascent, or absent in the nation’s current climate and transition policy portfolio. The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act (CHIPS and Science Act) (P.L. 117-167, 2022) is also discussed as an exemplar of the kind of comprehensive research and development (R&D) policy initiative necessary to build the knowledge base for a national engagement strategy. While the policy recommendations focus primarily on federal actors, the committee also notes the important role of civil society and subnational entities.

STRENGTHENING ENERGY DEMOCRACY THROUGH INCLUSIVE POLICY DIALOGUES

The Challenge

Energy democracy is the ability of democratic publics to meaningfully participate in governing U.S. energy systems. Efforts to enhance and expand energy democracy start from the recognition that “energy is inescapably political” (Nadesan et al. 2023, p. xxxvii) and, therefore, that decarbonization should be governed in a manner that is consistent with societies’ broad commitments to democratic norms and principles. The idea that new ways of organizing energy systems could support the growth of democratic societies and be carried out in ways that would enhance democracy has a long history (e.g., see Lilienthal 1944). Recent analyses of energy democracy have highlighted the substantial power, scope, scale, and influence of energy systems in contemporary economies and societies (Miller 2022) and the growing efforts of activists and citizens to open and/or decentralize energy governance, decision-making, systems, and operations (Burke and Stephens 2018; Szulecki 2018).

Central to energy democracy is inclusive policy dialogue, supporting avenues for the public to inform, deliberate, and contribute to choices about future trajectories of energy systems. Inclusive policy dialogue encourages all members of the public,

particularly those left out of policy discussions, to deliberate and help shape policy proposals and implementation (Forester 1999; McCoy and Scully 2002). Researchers have identified four elements of inclusive dialogue: participation, information, fair decision-making, and local context (Elmallah and Rand 2022). This is an admittedly tricky issue to operationalize. Democracy in the United States is subject to intense and divisive polarization, so it is risky to presume a set of shared norms and principles or the capacity to act on shared norms in constructive ways (Sides et al. 2022). By that logic, however, it is even more important to protect the integrity of energy deliberation processes through a deliberate commitment to the mechanisms described here.

Engagement mechanisms that catalyze equitable deep decarbonization address each of the elements of inclusive dialogue. Such procedures have been used in small deliberative groups of the general public and open sessions of e-governance. See Box 5-3 for an example of the challenges and opportunities associated with developing new settings for engagement in policy design. Mechanisms of public deliberation must focus on improving deliberative processes, as well as outcomes. “This means more inclusion and procedural integrity, increasing participants’ knowledge and their commitment to democratic norms, and providing symbolic value as a means of legitimizing institutions forced to make difficult decisions” (Gastil 2018, p. 273). In the context of decarbonization, inclusive policy dialogue includes two-way, multi-sited,⁵ and continuous engagements that connect policy to affected publics from the local to the regional to the national scale.

Change is under way in the energy and electricity sectors that aims to open governance and decision-making to broader and more inclusive public participation, especially regarding decarbonization. As the world reimagines and redesigns how it produces and consumes energy, many communities and organizations have seen the desirability of expanding efforts to engage different facets of the public. Globally, governments are also increasingly looking for new ways of public involvement in developing and deliberating the future of energy, using methods such as citizens’ assemblies (Lacelle-Webster and Warren 2021) and community visioning (Trutnevyte et al. 2011), on scales from cities (Sandover et al. 2021) to countries (Devaney et al. 2020; Duvic-Paoli 2022; Shehabi and Al-Masri 2022).

Innovative inclusion can help deepen the impact of already-established best practices in industrial development, including strategic environmental assessment (SEA), a procedure to assess the environmental impacts of a program, policy, or plan. For example, the SEA process, conducted at national or regional scales, “acts in anticipation of

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⁵ Offered in diverse venues to accommodate the different capacities and constraints of participants.

future problems, needs, or challenges and creates and examines alternatives leading to the preferred option” (Noble 2000, p. 210). This prospective, integrated approach is associated with “greater efficiency in resource use, shortened the duration of the project level assessment process and proactively contributed to achieving improved environmental practices” when compared to conventional project impact assessments (Fischer et al. 2020, p. 35). Additionally, SEAs can provide the clarification of the necessary policy reforms for industry deployment. For example, in Saskatchewan, Canada’s SEA process produced a blueprint for coordinated institutional reforms necessary to enable a successful regional transition to renewable energy (Nwanekezie et al. 2022).

While SEAs do not eliminate controversy, they can mitigate against time lost to the contentious politics created by after-the-fact rulemaking—something already evident in tensions between state and local governments about renewable energy laws (Dawson 2023; Paullin 2022). For example, the relegation of key decisions about natural resources to state and local politics has created a highly uneven and uncertain regulatory landscape for shale gas developers to navigate (Rabe 2014). The risks associated with shale gas development—increased consumption of water, induced earthquakes, air quality impacts, and increased truck traffic, noise, and dust (DOE n.d.(c))—have created public controversy. In fact, the state of Texas eventually conducted a SEA, recognizing a need to “improve the broad understanding and awareness of the impacts of shale production” (TAMEST 2017, p. 15).

Generative dialogue, conversations that create and expand understanding through meaningful inquiry, is a key aspect of inclusive engagement. Examples in Arizona, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia illustrate applications of generative dialogue in different dimensions and settings of the energy transition. The 2011 Arizona Town Hall brought together more than 100 policy, business, civil society, and energy leaders to discuss strategies for advancing the state’s energy future (Miller and Moore 2011). Other future-oriented initiatives in the state have solicited diverse stakeholder participation in creating scenarios of the future of solar energy (Miller et al. 2015), identifying potential economic pathways for decarbonization (Miller et al. 2022a), and imagining the impacts of future renewable energy development on urban and rural life (Eschrich and Miller 2019, 2021). In Canada, a national dialogue about the energy future in 2017 was attended by more than 380,000 people who identified public values and principles to guide efforts to design and build Canada’s national energy future (Government of Canada 2017). This public engagement mechanism included multiple venues: in-person sessions, online comment submission forums, and polls and quizzes. Through this set of events, a 14-member “Generation Energy Council” collected input from citizens to be used to inform its recommendations to Canada’s decision makers (Government of Canada 2018).

Generative dialogue can also take the form of citizens’ climate assemblies, which incentivize representative, small groups of the public to participate in the policy-shaping process at national and local levels. Citizens’ climate assemblies have been established in the United Kingdom⁶ and have the potential to (Devine-Wright 2022):

• Provide upstream engagement to develop an understanding of concerns and values before projects are proposed;
• Enable net-zero policy to have broader legitimacy and better inclusion;
• Make information, including about national or state energy policy, more accessible;
• Bridge the gap between the national and local level;
• Give participants a chance to form their own informed views about a given technology through interactions with expert witnesses; and
• Identify which technologies are suitable for the county location.

Through all the above strategies, climate assemblies intend to generate socially acceptable plans for infrastructure development.

Elsewhere, there is support for deliberative dialogue about energy futures in regions experiencing widespread abandonment of fossil fuel facilities. In Australia, practitioners and academics—and in some cases, industry—support consideration of social impacts of and public perspectives on mine closures in addition to the policy focus on environmental rehabilitation in coal-dependent areas (Cameron and Gibson 2005; Measham et al. 2021). For example, AGL Energy Ltd., an Australian publicly traded utility, recently commissioned a study of community perspectives on reclamation options for three Latrobe Valley coal mines and surrounding lands. Community perspectives were “obtained through a series of focus groups with key stakeholders, including community organizations, environmental groups, government authorities, business groups, primary producers and Traditional Owners; and a web-based survey, completed by over 560 participants” (Reeves et al. 2022, p. 173). The resulting study generated a community-driven plan for further consultation about options for remediation to include “an iterative consultative or co-design process to capture values, share opportunities and address concerns” with “[t]he voices of youth and Traditional Owners . . . at the forefront” (Reeves et al. 2022, p. 184).

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⁶ See for example the UK Climate Assembly, consisting of 108 participants representative of the UK population, and the Devon Climate Assembly, made up of 70 participants representative of Devon County (Devine-Wright 2022; Devine-Wright and Moseley 2019).

Opportunities and Barriers in Current Policy

Federal Opportunities and Barriers

Recent legislative action does not provide formal direction and support for generative public dialogue activities, as shown in Appendix I. Instead, the most explicit federal commitments to inclusive dialogue on the energy transition can be found in executive directives and interagency initiatives. For example, the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), established by EO 14008, brings together a council of experts who “have knowledge about or experience in environmental justice, climate change, disaster preparedness, racial inequity, among other areas of expertise” (EPA 2021). It encourages the experts to provide advice and input on policy development and implementation, including providing in-depth recommendations on key policy initiatives such as the Justice40 Initiative. Public comment at WHEJAC meetings demonstrates that the council is attracting and facilitating input from representatives of communities who have previously lacked meaningful access to federal policy conversations.⁷ However, WHEJAC and other advisory groups or initiatives created through executive orders lack administrative support and adequate resources, undermining their efficacy (CEQ 2022; WHEJAC 2022a). In addition, the emphasis on environmental and climate justice, while critical, does not always encompass all energy transition questions and issues.

Several new offices have been established to facilitate federal support of public engagement in the energy transition. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently established a new Office of Public Participation to build capacity to facilitate public involvement in FERC processes. The goal of the office is to help the public better understand the institution and to reform agency rules and practices to ensure that the agency hears from the publics that it needs to hear from in order to make good decisions (FERC 2022). The Department of Energy (DOE) has also begun to include commitments to community engagement as an important criterion in reviewing federal energy R&D investments, although the ultimate efficacy of the resulting engagement practices remains to be determined (DOE-OCED n.d.). Recently, DOE introduced its new Office of Energy Justice Policy and Analysis, which will collaborate with members of minority and disadvantaged communities to evaluate policy impacts and administer programs that advance energy justice and equity (DOE 2023).

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⁷ For example, the May 11, 2022, meeting minutes summarize the updates and the public comment period, during which the public expressed concerns related to environmental justice in their communities. For more information, see WHEJAC (2022b).

The Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization is an exception to the gap in federal prioritization of accessible and continuous public dialogue on the energy transition. As further discussed in Chapter 12, the IWG is an explicit acknowledgment that maintaining a social contract in support of decarbonization demands engaging impacted communities by “[r]ecognizing the importance of meeting these communities where they are” in the energy transition (IWG 2023, p. 5).⁸ The IWG focuses on economic and technical assistance to communities with high numbers of “workers directly employed in coal mining and power generation, and also the workers in related jobs in logistics and services, residents who are dependent on coal-related tax revenue” (IWG 2021, p. 1). However, the IWG was not designed to facilitate prospective policy dialogue and is currently limited to locations that host coal mines and coal-fired power plants. Regardless, this is a significant strategy that merits continued investment, financial and otherwise, from the federal government and is a good model for general and targeted engagement during the transition.

State and Regional Opportunities and Barriers

As introduced in Chapter 2, some states have enacted legislation that promotes community engagement to facilitate energy transition planning. These initiatives often focus on including historically excluded populations and centering their priorities in program and policy development. Following the passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (S. 6599, 2019–2020 Sen., Reg. Sess. §1), New York created a Climate Justice Working Group that includes representatives from environmental justice communities across the state to provide strategic advice to state policy makers regarding the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the transition (New York State 2022). As part of Washington state’s Climate Commitment Act (2021), which incorporates just transition principles into utility and energy sector regulation, the Environmental Justice Council was established to provide formal

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⁸ The IWG recently released its year 2 report outlining the activities the working group and the Biden administration have undertaken since the signing of EO 14008. The report includes the progress made in terms of keeping the promises made in its first report to the President. Of note, the IWG oversaw a set of roundtables that discussed the funding opportunities made available by the new U.S. Economic Development Administration office, established to provide a foundation for durable regional economies. These actions allowed the working group to keep its promise to “launch a series of town hall meetings . . . to both listen to the concerns of key constituencies and identify federal resources communities could immediately access” (IWG 2023, p. 3). View the IWG report at https://energycommunities.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IWG-Two-Year-Report-to-the-President.pdf.

advice on the implementation of climate policies (Washington State Department of Ecology n.d.). The Climate Commitment Act also includes dedicated support for tribal participation in climate project planning.

In addition to legislation, some states have committed to engaging the public through collaborative, multi-scalar regional planning for the energy transition. California’s Transformative Climate Communities program is discussed in detail in Chapter 2. Re-Imagine Appalachia, a coalition of civil society, elected officials, and activists, is focused on creating regional dialogue about how the energy transition can “boost economic opportunity and benefit working people” through deliberate policy choices (Brown 2021). Notably, the coalition regularly uses digital convenings to solicit input from diverse stakeholders about specific policies and update their “Blueprint” for the region’s economic transition, which connects local priorities to broader policy opportunities and priorities (ReImagine Appalachia 2021). States and communities are more likely to access support from new federal programs when the programs have prioritized the network-building, visioning, and capacity necessary to ensure equitable and effective investments. Box 5-4 highlights an engagement practice from Canada’s Participant Funding and Policy Dialogue program, which provides compensation for participation.

There are substantial opportunities for states, localities, and tribes to leverage the appropriated funding of the IIJA and the IRA for participatory and innovative planning and visioning for local and regional energy transitions. These opportunities include the $150 million Reconnecting Communities Pilot program (IIJA §11509), $16 billion to address legacy pollution (IIJA §40601, §40701), and $11 billion total funding available for community block grants (IRA §60114,⁹ §60201, and §60501). Areas with high levels of existing capacity and bridging social capital¹⁰ are expected to access and deploy these funds with ease. Conversely, lower-resourced and less-networked areas will struggle to access, let alone implement, the funds to support inclusive dialogues about the energy transition. It is critical to augment capacity gaps for the transition to include opportunities for generative dialogues (see Recommendation 2-4 in Chapter 2). Until these opportunities to take advantage of federal funding are translated into effective state, local, and community action, however, many critical aspects of state clean energy and climate development will remain inaccessible to many individuals and communities.

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⁹ At the time of writing, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicates this money will include non-competitive funds for planning, followed by competitive implementation grants (EPA 2023).

¹⁰ A social network of individuals with different demographic characteristics.

Utility Opportunities and Barriers

Electric utilities across the country are also developing new strategies for engaging with communities who are impacted by their decisions. Target communities include those where coal-fired power plants are closing (e.g., the Salt River Project’s Coal Community Transition initiative [SRP n.d.]), low-income and minority communities that experience high energy burdens (e.g., Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s Building Sustainable Communities program [SMUD n.d.]), and frontline communities grappling with the long-term challenges of pollution and other environmental risks (e.g., New York Power Authority’s Environmental Justice program [NYPA n.d.]). However, the development of investor-owned utility regulation and ratemaking is overseen by state public utility commissions (PUCs) or public service commissions whose processes, authorities, and functions resemble those of courts (EPA 2010). As a result, participating in utility regulatory decision-making processes in most states is complex, expensive, technical, and may require representation by an attorney. These costs and barriers are prohibitive for community-based organizations and individuals. Some mechanisms

exist to make the process more accessible, including through intervenor compensation rules, the establishment by some state legislatures of non-governmental state Citizens Utility Boards (CUBs) to advocate consumer interests and priorities in PUC settings (e.g., Minnesota’s CUB [CUB Minnesota n.d.]), and grant programs to improve public participation (e.g., the California PUC’s Equity Initiatives and Clean Energy Access Grant Program, currently under development [CPUC 2023]). In general, however, the effectiveness of these mechanisms is modest.

Findings and Recommendations

The examples and conceptual underpinnings of inclusive policy dialogue described above underscore the importance of the public contribution to energy transition dialogue and visioning. These approaches help to align public values and policy goals; build public understanding and awareness; incorporate community perspectives into policies and infrastructures; uncover potential roadblocks or policy gaps; allow communities to shape and design meaningful co-benefits; and coordinate across scale, region, and sector with multi-scalar planning activities. However, neither the IIJA nor IRA provide formal direction or support for generative dialogue.

COMMUNITY ENERGY, ENERGY SOVEREIGNTY, AND COLLECTIVE BENEFITS

The Challenge

Extending energy democracy to the participation of individuals in small-scale energy systems and large-scale transition projects is key to the clean energy future. This includes increased opportunities for small groups or communities to own and operate energy processes and to directly benefit from decarbonization actions, including through community and tribal energy systems that provide collective benefits. For low-income communities, the benefits of clean energy development have the potential to permanently lower energy burdens, with proper policy support (Biswas et al. 2022). Similarly, localized renewable energy infrastructures are increasingly understood as opportunities for Indigenous nations to pursue self-determination and sovereignty, as well as economic development and resilience.

Community Energy Systems

There is a global explosion of interest in decentralized energy production, such as distributed solar energy, as an important element of democratizing involvement in and control of energy systems (Lotfi et al. 2020). While many end-use energy technologies have always been owned in a decentralized fashion (e.g., automobiles, furnaces, and electrical devices), in recent years, data show that U.S.-distributed solar generation

has grown faster than utility-scale solar generation (EIA 2023).¹¹ Furthermore, a recent survey and interviews in New York state found that support for community or rooftop solar among rural residents is significantly higher than support for utility-scale solar (Nilson and Stedman 2022). The number of distributed solar systems is likely to continue growing nationally given the tax credits in the IRA and the potential for rooftop solar to reduce household energy bills.

Individual ownership is not the only mechanism for distributed solar systems. In the European Union, for example, energy cooperatives and neighborhood microgrids have emerged as an important strategy for enhanced public engagement and involvement in the clean energy transition (Inês et al. 2020; Lowitzsch et al. 2020). In the United States, DOE has set a target for the National Community Solar Partnership¹² of enabling community solar projects that power the equivalent of 5 million homes by 2025. Such investments can provide widespread benefits that help generate support for decarbonization by reducing long-term electricity costs and providing a means for using clean energy to strengthen other household goals (e.g., resilience to electricity grid outages). However, as noted elsewhere in this report (Chapters 2 and 6), equity is a major concern given the high up-front capital costs required for distributed energy systems and microgrids, and the challenge of ensuring affordability and reliability of system operations and maintenance. Chapter 2 describes policies to facilitate disadvantaged communities’ participation in distributed and community-owned energy systems.

Tribal Energy Sovereignty

Efforts to leverage decarbonization and clean energy technologies to enhance Indigenous energy sovereignty have also emerged as an important focus of discussion, policy development, and investment (Atcitty 2021; Kinder 2021; Montoya 2022; Royster 2008; Schelly et al. 2020; Smith 2022a). This is not surprising given both the growing prevalence of distributed energy systems and the reassertion of sovereignty as a key priority for many Indigenous communities, both in the United States and around the globe (Rezaei and Dowlatabadi 2015). Tribally owned and operated community energy systems, when executed with attention to the feasibility of long-term operations and maintenance, can “multi-solve” for energy service access and climate resilience. For example, the Blue Lake Rancheria, a federally recognized tribal government

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¹¹ For a study of the extent and dimensions of social preference for household and community-scale distributed solar in Puerto Rico, see Echevarria et al. (2023).

¹² See https://www.energy.gov/communitysolar/national-community-solar-partnership-targets.

and Native American community, provides an example of a successful community-led effort to exercise sovereignty and enhance climate resilience through energy systems. The community’s microgrid is connected to the regional distribution system and is designed to operate autonomously—when a nearby fire in 2017 caused a grid outage, the microgrid was successfully islanded and facilities avoided a blackout. Energy savings to the Blue Lake Rancheria are estimated at nearly $200,000 annually (Carter et al. 2019). Other examples include the energy efficiency and renewable energy investments at the Navajo Nation (Diné Bikéya in Navajo) (Begay 2018a) and Citizen Potowatomi Nation (Neshnabé) (Begay 2018b).

In cases where Indigenous nations host energy infrastructure designed to export power (e.g., high-voltage transmission lines and utility-scale storage and generation facilities), there is new attention and interest in models favorable to development, in contrast to historic practices. In a landmark example in 2021, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians was approved as the first Native American tribe to be a participating transmission owner in a major system. Through the agreement with Southern California Edison (SCE), the Morongo Band secured a capital interest in the project and its returns and improved the terms of the lease, allowing access over tribally held territory (ICT News 2022). The Morongo–SCE agreement was highly complex and required many layers of regulatory approval, a barrier some have cited as one of many facing tribes that seek to use renewable energy for economic development (Zimmerman and Reames 2021). Similarly, the agreement between the Navajo Nation and Salt River Project surrounding the closure of the Navajo Generating Station coal-fired power plant and associated mine also gave the Navajo substantial access to transmission capability for future renewable energy development (Pyper 2019). The regulatory challenges associated with these agreements need to be addressed to support energy sovereignty within Indigenous nations.

Collective Benefits

Compensation and benefits schemes are critical aspects of engaging the public around large-scale energy infrastructure. According to research on social dimensions of facility siting, local stakeholders often view community or local benefits mechanisms—and the processes and negotiations associated with them—through lenses of trustworthiness and fairness. In this way, compensation emerges as an element of procedural, not just distributive, justice, which has a profound influence on the acceptability of proposed projects (Crawford et al. 2022; Hoen et al. 2019; Jørgensen et al. 2020; Knauf 2022; van Wijk et al. 2021). The rapid acceleration of renewable energy deployment is encouraging creativity in compensation models such as community benefit

agreements, pooled payments to landowner collectives, and innovative state fiscal policy. These models demonstrate increased consideration of the importance of distributive justice to securing a social contract to site and host large-scale renewable energy facilities. Indeed, payments and other monetary benefits to individuals, communities, and governments do influence both the social acceptance and local impacts of energy developments—although public acceptance and local impacts are not always correlated in straightforward ways. However, collective payment schemes and community benefits agreements in renewable energy development are very novel tools with many potential legal issues yet to be identified and resolved (Fazio and Wallace 2017).

With vast areas capable of hosting utility-scale generation and interstate transmission lines, federal and state public lands and waters offer an important opportunity for the U.S. public to contribute to and even facilitate deployment of renewable energy (Springer and Daue 2020). While state and federal property are not taxable by local governments, their use for facility siting can generate public revenue in the form of lease and bonus payments, right of way rentals, and even generation taxes. Despite the apparent opportunities embedded in the nation’s public land and water holdings as sites for renewable energy deployment, this estate will likely continue to be an underutilized decarbonization resource without necessary policy reforms.

Opportunities and Barriers in Current Policy

The current policy landscape creates new opportunities to engender public support for energy infrastructure through projects with clear local benefits that outweigh the costs. This could meaningfully comprise the growth of community-scale and energy sovereignty–focused development as well as creative public and collective benefits schemes. The primary vehicles in federal policy include the following IRA provisions listed in Table 5-1.

An additional boost for community benefits includes efforts by federal agencies to promote community benefits agreements as a new criterion in evaluating loan and grant application reviews. DOE is relying heavily on Community Benefits Plans¹³ as a vehicle to meet requirements under the Justice40 Initiative, which applies to all IRA and IIJA funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) (DOE n.d.(a)). Likewise, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s New ERA program supports rural electric cooperatives

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¹³ Community Benefit Plans as defined by DOE are inclusive of community benefits agreements and include Collective Bargaining Agreements and other elements. The DOE Community Benefits Plan template can be downloaded at https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-05/CommunityBenefitsPlanTemplate.docx.

TABLE 5-1 IRA Provisions Supporting Community Energy Development, Energy Sovereignty, and Collective Benefits

and the communities they serve to develop clean energy resources and workforce skills needed for the transition (USDA n.d.). Together, programs in the IRA create meaningful investment opportunities for communities and their advocates to design and fund new, decarbonized energy infrastructure that aligns with local priorities.

Community Energy Systems

Many households and communities face steep barriers to deploying renewable energy projects that generate significant community benefits. In the example of solar, barriers include both lower levels of home ownership and lower financial capacity to cover the high up-front costs of rooftop solar and/or batteries. However, where low- or zero-down solar opportunities are available (e.g., via leasing), the resulting arrangements generally provide significantly lower financial savings than owning the solar panels. Additionally, in cases of fraudulent or predatory behavior, these opportunities might end up costing households (Vogelsong 2022). Last, many low-income households do not own their homes or otherwise have control over what happens on their rooftops.

Community solar projects offer a potential strategy for addressing the barriers associated with rooftop solar, if designed well, but will need significant policy innovation to take off at a substantial scale (Chan et al. 2017; Grimley et al. 2022). These projects are often less expensive per watt than rooftop systems and stand-alone solar installations because they are larger in scale, involving lots of households or installations in the hundreds of kilowatts of capacity, and they do not require home ownership. When financed effectively, or granted to the community, community solar projects can deliver significant financial benefits. For example, the Canadian government has granted community ownership of solar projects to remote Indigenous communities (Government of Canada 2023). Through the ownership of energy projects, Indigenous communities have control over an energy project’s planning and management, jobs, and profits (Institute for Human Rights and Business 2023). In some models, low-income households can pay for their participation over time through their savings, resulting in lower bills and part-ownership in the solar project.

Nonetheless, community solar remains a small portion of the nation’s solar installations. Project-based collective benefits models are advanced and challenged by their relative flexibility and direct dependence on the capacity and will of non-regulatory actors. Community solar projects are enabled by law in fewer than half of U.S. states—and explicitly prohibited in others (DSIRE n.d.; ILSR n.d.). Even where allowed, either by law or voluntarily by utilities, community solar projects are often restricted to only one model. This limits the number and variety of communities where they can be applied and dramatically slows innovation in the sector. As the nation seeks to rapidly expand deployment of solar, especially in a future in which space for utility-scale projects is increasingly competitive, contested, and scarce, community solar projects offer a way to deploy solar and advance substantial equity goals. However, changes in federal, state, local, and utility policies are required to open opportunities for creative engagement and deployment of capital via diverse and heterogeneous community solar project models. This will be especially important to enable the historic investments anticipated in community-based solar in the IRA.

Tribal Energy Sovereignty

For tribal nations, the opportunities are also historic. The IIJA provides more than $13 billion in funding for tribal infrastructure, including $2 billion for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, $200 million for climate adaptation and community relocation, and another $200 million to plug orphaned wells on tribal lands (White House 2022a). The IRA directs hundreds of millions in grants and an unprecedented $20 billion in allowable loan guarantees to support tribal climate resilience, access to

clean electricity, and building electrification (i.e., §50145, §50122, §80001, §80002, §80003, and §80004). The IRA also includes elective pay and transferable credits that “allows entities with little or no tax liability—like tribes—to accelerate utilization of these credits,” making renewable energy development on tribal lands “exponentially more beneficial” (Smith 2022b).

However, the IRA has been criticized for offering a “blanket solution that did not address the disparate needs of the hundreds of federally recognized tribes” (Smith 2022b) and for failing to “capture the nuances of community needs and concerns,” particularly in the context of EPA and DOE funding opportunity outreach efforts (Brown 2023). Furthermore, out of the $550 million in flexible, formula-allocated funding in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, DOE has encumbered $110 million for administrative and technical assistance. This comes at the expense of additional funding to organizations that need it. Critics state this will “likely do little to make the program better or easier to navigate” (Brown 2023). Moreover, “many funding opportunities require a project to be almost fully baked to be competitive” (Brown 2023)—a problem that also plagues recent federal funding programs for community solar initiatives.

In a June 2022 National Academies’ information-gathering webinar, Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy¹⁴ founder and chief executive officer Cheri Smith (2022a) noted that despite having 2 decades of experience in applying for DOE funding, she and her colleagues still need to hire someone to decipher the agency’s FOAs. Three ways federal agencies can improve the grant application process are (1) reducing the amount of time needed to write grant applications; (2) standardizing the application process; and (3) giving potential funding recipients a seat at the table in the discussions leading up to the creation of the FOAs. Smith (2022a) has also noted that the majority of tribal communities will need to build capacity and technical expertise to make use of these funds. To this end, the Indigenous-led nonprofit is leveraging philanthropic and federal funding and Native experts so that tribes can build capacity to develop renewable electricity infrastructure on their homelands. See the section “Meaningful Engagement in Siting and Permitting” below for more information about utilizing funding to build community capacity.

Collective Benefits

One challenge for the deployment of utility-scale infrastructure is the variability in how public revenue policies approach renewable energy facilities (Hintz et al. 2021; Uebelhor

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¹⁴ Formerly the Indigenous Energy Initiative.

et al. 2021). For example, some state tax incentives for renewable energy infrastructure are less attractive to local governments than fossil fuel facilities (Haggerty and Haggerty 2015). This challenges public investment and equitable deployment of decarbonization infrastructure, hindering the progress of the energy transition. There are also situations in which states formulate fiscal policy in reactive, haphazard ways, creating confusion for developers as well as local governments (Hintz et al. 2021; Uebelhor et al. 2021). Furthermore, depending on location and jurisdiction, siting facilities on public and private land and water can be a highly complicated policy matter. In the case of local benefits that accrue via property and other taxes, multiple factors converge to affect local project “buy in”: the quality of fiscal policy at the state level; the implementation of fiscal policy at the local level; and thoughtful spending decisions and associated communication by local officials (Haggerty et al. 2014; Mills et al. 2019).

In almost all cases, revenue opportunities for renewable energy are far smaller than they are for fossil fuels and mined minerals because—unlike for oil, gas, and hard rock minerals—there is no severance tax on renewable energy (Godby 2022). This does not help to engender public support for large-scale renewable energy facilities on public lands. A notable leader in addressing this policy gap is New Mexico’s State Land Office, which created an Office of Renewable Energy with a mission to triple the amount of wind and solar energy generated on state trust land (Stewart 2022). Updates to auction and contractual mechanisms used by the office and investments in capacity to work with the renewable energy industry have enabled the use of state trust lands to make meaningful commitments to climate mitigation and diversify funds raised for beneficiaries (Stewart 2022). In contrast, Congress has yet to update federal land management guidelines to clarify key provisions regarding leasing and revenue programs, particularly for wind and solar. This regulatory gap hinders development and the delivery of public benefits from it.¹⁵

The policy space surrounding public revenue from private land is complicated. Regulations are underdeveloped, with many states scrambling to draft revenue policy in parallel to emerging renewable energy development. Key challenges for public revenue from renewable energy facilities on private land include depreciation and, as in the case of public land, the absence of a severance tax. The major form of public revenue

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¹⁵ For DOE-related lands specifically, the National Academies’ Committee on Energy Resource Potential for DOE Lands conducted an inventory of the energy development potential of lands, including (1) an analysis of all oil, gas, coal, solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable resources on the lands; and (2) an analysis of the environmental impacts associated with future development, such as mitigation actions for negative impacts. Of note, the committee recommended DOE place a higher priority on developing an inventory of lands that can be leased or sold for energy development (NASEM 2017). For more information, see https://doi.org/10.17226/24825.

comes from property taxes, from which industry advocates frequently succeed in winning relief in terms of incentives offered by state and local governments (Haggerty et al. 2014). However, scholars warn against using revenue for local tax relief (Mills 2022) because, despite being popular with voters, using new revenue to decrease local property taxes creates problems when that revenue declines—as it will in any fiscal policy regime with no counterbalance to depreciation. Elected officials must, therefore, use revenue in ways that demonstrate meaningful and sustainable value to the public.

Findings and Recommendations

Participation in energy systems offers important opportunities to engage in decarbonization by providing an economic stake in the net-zero future to more groups. The ability for individual communities to leverage the programs created in recent legislation depends on many factors, including capacity and institutional and policy environments. Sharing successful approaches will aid in the development of community energy systems, tribal energy sovereignty, and collective benefit models that support decarbonization and communities. Chapters 2, 6, and 13 offer additional insights and recommendations about building capacity for implementation. Additional opportunities to build practical expertise with community and collective benefits are noted below (see Recommendation 5-4).

MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT IN SITING AND PERMITTING

The Challenge

Innovation in public engagement to ensure distributive and procedural justice will be essential to the deployment of all deep decarbonization infrastructure across the full diversity and heterogeneity of communities and landscapes. While the factors influencing the social acceptance of energy infrastructures are multi-faceted (Boudet 2019), the local public processes to develop and execute infrastructure projects are a key venue for forming social acceptance of and included support for accelerated decarbonization. The relationship between social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructure and compensation schemes is about perceptions of procedural justice, trust and communication, and the level of compensation being provided. Policy and practices that encourage projects to provide clear and meaningful benefits to local stakeholders are critical to accelerating decarbonization.

Scholars have been studying the relationship between siting policy and practice and social acceptance of energy projects since the emergence of a strong anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s (e.g., see Freudenburg 1986). They continue to produce novel and important findings in the context of new energy technologies as well as new research questions and approaches (Batel 2020; Bessette and Crawford 2022; Krupnik et al. 2022; van de Grift and Cuppen 2022). Research demonstrates that the character and quality of the process of engaging the public in the context of siting and permitting projects will affect the pace and scale of decarbonization.¹⁶ Taken as a whole, this literature underscores that there are no perfect solutions for public engagement to deliver speedy and conflict-free industrial siting decisions in an open democratic society. In addition, even the most creative and robust public engagement is unlikely to sway ardent opponents of projects. On the other hand, shortcutting public engagement can lead to far longer delays owing to the risk of driving alienated publics to courts, alternative policy forums, and other forms of protest.

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¹⁶ See Chapter 6 for a discussion of how models project the impact of siting and project development.

In that context, scholars and practitioners point to key features of effective siting and permitting process that have the potential to reduce conflict and delay:

1. Public engagement in the context of project development requires inclusive, expansive, and immersive communication. This means that communication between project representatives, contractors, government officials, and local and public stakeholders is conducted in multiple languages and in diverse and accessible formats; begins early in the process and features continuous updates of project progress with easily accessible archives of past discussions; and utilizes both low- and high-tech strategies to help different groups visualize and guide changes to the natural and built environment.
2. Public engagement professionals representing developers and permitting agencies should treat local perspectives as constructive expertise in project design and give local communities the opportunity to participate in shaping the process and outcomes of important design decisions (Devine-Wright 2022; Goedkoop and Devine-Wright 2016; Sherren 2021). A corollary priority is supporting communities in the development of local and regional visions for land use and economic development when such plans are absent or neglected—and doing this prior to discussion of facility siting whenever possible. In this manner, the siting discussion can build on and incorporate local visions rather than the other way around.
3. Public engagement needs to be customized to unique regions, demographics, politics, economics, and social values. To every extent possible, flexibility in public engagement processes must be a priority for permitting practitioners to align with local circumstances. Clustering review processes for projects in the same geography also has merit for equitable, rapid, and intensive infrastructure deployment that acknowledges the risk of consultation fatigue (Bice 2020; Noble 2017). Zoned permitting is also noted to facilitate effective environmental impact assessment (Faconti 2013).
4. Public engagement should emphasize clarity, transparency, and accountability in all activities, particularly in the terms and conditions of engagement. That is, participants should know and see when and how their input is used through clear and accessible information with time for discussion about the implications of the findings. Every effort must be made to provide opportunities for deliberative social learning about the credibility and accuracy of estimates of how projects will affect quality of life, public health, local environments, and economics to build trust and confidence in the data used to assess siting proposals. Participatory impact assessments lead to better project design and can strengthen perceptions of procedural justice.

Stakeholders who would otherwise be excluded from participation must be prioritized for engagement as an equity measure. For example, WHEJAC, discussed above, convenes environmental and climate justice experts together to provide advice and input on policy development and implementation. Additionally, Indigenous Knowledge has recently been elevated in federal policy making. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) have begun to institute this practice via statements, implementation and guidance memos, and establishment of the Subcommittee on Indigenous Knowledge (OSTP and CEQ 2021, 2022a,b). Included were strategies to grow and maintain relationships to support Indigenous Knowledge, and practices and opportunities to apply Indigenous Knowledge in federal processes, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These initiatives advance the inclusion of Indigenous people and their knowledge in impact assessment and siting processes. Additional initiatives that support innovative forms of engagement offered, including those discussed in Boxes 5-3 and 5-4 above, increase opportunities for meaningful engagement with key stakeholders.

Rapid and expansive landscape changes driven by the amount of new industrialization necessary for decarbonization will meet resistance from local and otherwise place-invested publics for a variety of complex reasons (Boudet 2019; Fergen et al. 2021; Nilson 2022; Sherren 2021). A 2023 public opinion poll (not peer reviewed) found that when biodiversity and land conservation is posed as a trade-off with rapid emissions reductions, a majority of Americans prefer a slower buildout (Meyer 2023). The growing frequency of newspaper stories about public resistance to renewable energy projects in many parts of the country suggests resistance is likely to strengthen and calcify in key landscapes as the pace and scale of development accelerates (e.g., see Roth 2023; Saul et al. 2022; Stang 2022). Continued conflicts over the appropriate use of high-value farmland and rangeland, ecosystem values, the disruption of scenic and cultural amenities, economic uses of land, and individual private property rights are to be anticipated. This is especially true in the absence of robust public engagement efforts that seek to understand local sources of resistance and local input into the design of preferred and acceptable deployment strategies.

Emerging technologies and the associated industrial infrastructure are particularly likely to meet public skepticism (Nielsen et al. 2022) as well as outright resistance from those parties with the least trust in the energy sector. For example, the environmental justice community continues to express concerns about carbon capture deployment¹⁷ (Anchondo 2022). Where the electric grid meets the built environment in key shared

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¹⁷ See Chapters 2 and 3 and Appendix E for more information about the environmental justice concerns and health risks associated with carbon capture investments and other decarbonization technologies.

elements (e.g., electricity distribution lines, distributed generation, and EV charging), the pace and intensity of infrastructure additions may result in unacceptable or undesirable conditions. By extension, strong local resistance and/or inequitable outcomes may develop. A difficult feature of the contemporary environment for renewable energy deployment is exacerbation of conflicts through the rapid spread of misinformation and uncertainty via social media (Fergen et al. 2021). This emphasizes the importance of proactive and generative public dialogues prior to and during project development and of authentic and reliable investments in building interpersonal relationships and trust. Beyond known best practices, there is a pressing need to accelerate and expand social science research about how to build trust in the context of contentious decisions. (See the section “Building the Nation’s Expertise in the Human Dimensions of Decarbonization” below.)

Opportunities and Barriers in Current Policy

Calls for more robust and innovative public engagement found in the social science literature on renewable energy project development seem at odds with widespread concern in public policy circles about the need to reduce permitting barriers through major policy reform. Legal scholars find that permitting processes for large-scale infrastructure are made burdensome by a lack of interjurisdictional alignment, the ensuing redundant and circular processes of both public participation and detailed environmental review, and their vulnerability to litigation by project opponents (Gerrard 2017; Ruhl and Salzman 2020). However, streamlining permitting in ways that shortcut public engagement is not a “silver bullet,” and calls for permitting reform need to be weighed against scholarship and expert commentary about where the problem really lies. Permitting professionals in many levels of government emphasize that it is not permitting regulations but understaffing and resource shortages that hinders the efficiency of permitting processes (Robinson 2022; Roth 2023). The dominance of decision frameworks that focus on a single measure (i.e., cost) also impede effective national and state siting decisions by minimizing the scope of review in ways that exclude meaningful public input (Kurth et al. 2017).

If permitting reform includes significant reductions in meaningful opportunities for and forms of public engagement, then such reform would create a real risk of slowing, rather than hastening, the process of building out a net-zero infrastructure. Policy makers must simultaneously consider eliminating redundant and conflicting permitting policies and practice robust and creative engagement in project development and permitting. Whether public engagement innovation is mandated by statute or implemented as agency or private-sector priority, its efficacy will depend in large part on

available resources. These resources include subject-matter expertise and the capacity of participating parties, including project developers, public-sector regulatory bodies, and local and broader publics and civil society. An effective public engagement workforce for decarbonization includes public and community engagement professionals from utilities; community-advocacy groups; tribes; clean energy demonstration projects; local, state, and federal agencies; and other relevant organizations and programs.

Federal Actions

The IRA directs funds to improve environmental review processes in multiple agency budgets, namely: $40 million for EPA to invest in more accurate and timely environmental reviews (§60115); $30 million for CEQ to improve stakeholder and community engagement (§60402); $100 million for the Federal Highway Administration to develop review documents and a process that provides for a timelier environmental review process (§60505); $350 million to accelerate and streamline the environmental review process (§70007); and nearly $500 million for the implementation of the NEPA to properly review proposed infrastructure projects (§23001, §40003, §50301, §50302, §50303). Furthermore, two important initiatives from the IRA require the incorporation of innovative public processes into siting procedures:

• Grants to Facilitate the Siting of Interstate Electricity Transmission Lines (§50152)—$760 million in grants for state and local governments for purposes including transmission project studies, examination of alternative siting corridors, hosting negotiations with project backers and opponents, participating in federal and state regulatory proceedings, and promoting economic development in affected communities.
• Interregional and Offshore Wind Electricity Transmission Planning, Modeling, and Analysis (§50153)—$100 million for expenses for convening stakeholders and conducting analysis related to interregional transmission development and development of transmission for offshore wind energy.

Because of how broadly these two sections of the IRA are written, there is potential to support creative public processes, which could be used as pilots or test cases for innovation.

Staffing and resources for environmental permitting and reviews remain inadequate. For many agencies, the additional funding for environmental permitting and reviews was only sufficient to address staffing losses that occurred under the previous administration (Gordon 2022). At the same time, the IRA and IIJA will create an enormous volume of new permitting and public engagement work; hence, simply returning to

a previous baseline is not adequate to the task. And the resource shortage extends well beyond the federal government. As mentioned above, the federal agencies are promoting community benefits agreements as a new element in their loan and grant application reviews. Community benefits agreements must be developed using state-of-the-art engagement practices that build confidence, equity, and transparency. They also require that local governments and community-based organizations have access to legal expertise. Capacity and access falls deeply short in many companies, states, cities, and communities.

Through the NEPA, federal agencies are required to provide opportunities for meaningful public participation. CEQ has developed documents guiding individuals through engagement processes (e.g., see CEQ and DOE n.d.) and providing clarity to federal agencies about compliance (e.g., see DOE-ONPC n.d.). Recent amendments to the NEPA included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA 2023) (P.L. 118-5) contain the requirement that one federal agency coordinate with participating agencies in the development of a single NEPA document (Diller et al. 2023).¹⁸ Additionally, FRA 2023 allows project sponsors to prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) with lead agencies providing guidance. Given the focus on a lead agency status for complex EIS processes and the provision that developers can develop their own EISs, the need for public engagement workforce expertise to facilitate decarbonization is likely widespread.

Non-Federal Actions

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including grassroots organizations and national-level nonprofits, play an essential role liaising between the federal government and specific communities, especially communities that do not have the existing capacity to apply for or appropriately utilize available funding. Engagement with civil society leaders can produce decarbonization strategies that represent the priorities and concerns of communities. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists convened an advisory committee to develop a holistic framework for decarbonization

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¹⁸ The FRA 2023 is the federal agreement to suspend the debt ceiling, but the legislation impacted multiple future federal actions, including the processes associated with the NEPA. In addition to the changes mentioned above, the FRA 2023 allows federal agencies to adopt categorial exclusions, categories of projects that do not need an EA and EIA—meaning federal agencies will be able to determine which projects do not have a significant impact on the environment without seeking public input on this categorization. This removal of a public engagement opportunity has the potential of having adverse impacts on the energy transition. For more information about the changes to the NEPA included in the FRA, see Diller et al. (2023).

that is equitable and just. The advisory committee identified three core principles for holistic approaches to a transformative energy transition: effectively address the impacts of the climate crisis; advance equity and justice; and drive systemic change (Baek et al. 2021). Policy recommendations from NGOs about decarbonizing the energy transition need to be reviewed and considered by policy makers at the federal, state, and local levels. The key feature of many reports produced by NGOs is a platform that brings together stakeholders to discuss transition pathways, what challenges may arise, and how to avoid or mitigate adverse outcomes.

In addition to developing policy frameworks for state and national government, some non-federal actors are convening cross-sectoral stakeholders to develop local decarbonization strategies. For example, the Southwest Pennsylvania Decarbonization (SWPD) Forum gathers to discuss critical opportunities and challenges of regional decarbonization in 10 counties within the state. These opportunities and challenges include creating jobs and driving economic growth; developing a healthy public and environment; supporting thriving and engaged communities; and facilitating innovation in technologies and infrastructure. The convening activities of the SWPD Forum are hosted by the Pennsylvania Environmental Counsel, which aims to be a model for implementing collaborative solutions (PEC n.d.), and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, which brings together Pittsburgh’s public- and private-sector leaders to define and mobilize regional and action (ACCD n.d.). Funding for the SWPD Forum comes from the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, whose goals include funding innovative solutions that address community needs (Henry L. Hillman Foundation n.d.).

As further discussed in Chapter 2, non-federal actors are critical to the development of multi-sectoral partnerships that connect local and state action with broader federal funding and policy. Furthermore, these organizations can provide independent information about decarbonization and its trade-offs to protect the public from potential misinformation. These groups benefit from consistent, multi-year funding, and where federal funding is absent or insufficient, philanthropic foundations can provide needed support.

Findings and Recommendations

Capacity is not only a matter of having the personnel and know-how to implement state-of-the-art permitting processes or streamlining permitting for priority initiatives. Thus, enhanced permitting capacity will depend on an effort to integrate research, practice, and policy activities, and to coordinate across scales of government and within and across economic sectors—for example, the international and nationwide

coordination directed to the COVID-19 public health crisis demonstrated the needed urgency and dedication (Patnaik et al. 2023). Robust community and stakeholder engagement practices need those knowledgeable about diverse social science methods of community engagement and existing inequalities and policy performance in energy equity collaborating with experts in law and public administration.

BUILDING THE NATION’S EXPERTISE IN THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF DECARBONIZATION

The Challenge

Effectively engaging U.S. publics in clean energy transitions will require upgrading the nation’s expertise in the human dimensions of deep decarbonization. Doing public engagement well entails not only listening to people’s voices and concerns but also facilitating an informed dialogue about the aspects of the issues that are important to them (Reed et al. 2018). For energy transitions, this means developing a rich and contextualized understanding of the ways that decarbonization matters to people, impacts their lives and livelihoods, and intersects with other aspects of society, the economy, and the environment that they care about. The capability of the public, decision makers, and institutions to effectively understand these issues, assess their significance, and integrate them into decision-making at multiple scales will be crucial for the success of public engagement. Building the nation’s capacity for development and deployment will also require the ability to conduct credible, strategic assessments of outcomes for adaptive management (see Chapter 1).

Energy Literacy

Energy is one of the most important elements of modern economies, yet also one of the least well understood by the public. This is true even with regard to knowledge about energy sources or how to conserve energy (Bodzin 2012; DeWaters and Powers 2011; Murphy 2002), let alone the more complex challenges of navigating sustainable energy transitions (Martins et al. 2020). In this context, energy literacy¹⁹ goes well beyond basic knowledge of scientific and engineering principles of energy taught in K–12 classrooms and science museums. Few people in the United States have even a rudimentary understanding of energy sources, infrastructures, or security (van den Broek 2019). Frequently, the only source of public understanding of energy systems is often simplified news coverage of exciting new technology developments or controversies over power plant or infrastructure siting.

Federal investment has prioritized improved public understanding and engagement in science and technology for non-energy topics, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2023 $144 million budget for educational programs for the public at large. In comparison, the United States has invested relatively little in ensuring that people have the energy literacy needed to participate effectively in energy decisions. It should not be surprising, therefore, that U.S. consumers significantly underinvest in technologies that could considerably improve their household energy economics (Brent and Ward 2018) or that misinformation pervades public understanding of energy technologies and their ability to contribute to decarbonization (Sovacool 2009). Misinformed understandings of the energy sector and systems undermine robust public engagement and the development and implementation of effective energy transition policies. Choices will need to be made to upgrade the efficiency of homes and businesses, electrify heating and transportation systems, and perhaps adopt dietary changes or new distributed energy technologies. Chadwick et al. (2022) show that knowledge is one of the most important factors influencing technology adoption and rejection.

Recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of adopting integrated social and technical framing of energy systems for decarbonization policy making (Miller et al. 2015). Interesting examples of this are Richard Scarry’s well-read children’s books about Busytown, which contain highly illuminative illustrations and stories about a coal mine and power plant and the people they serve with electricity (What Do People Do All Day? [1968]) and our automobile-intensive society (Cars and Trucks and Things

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¹⁹ The understanding of the role and nature of energy in daily lives accompanied by the application of this understanding to solve problems (DOE n.d.(b)).

That Go [1974]). These books portray a rich picture of how people’s everyday lives and work are interdependent with energy technologies and infrastructures—and things that might be at stake in energy transitions, from the sector jobs to the organization of communities. Energy literacy education needs to follow this lead, not only for children but also in public engagement initiatives and for energy transition leaders across diverse sectors and organizations.

Enhanced understanding among consumers—as well as the array of contractors, technicians, salespeople, and influencers they interact with—will be crucial to effective household decision-making on decarbonized energy systems. States, cities, tribes, and communities will also benefit from improved energy literacy among residents and leaders as they face increasingly consequential choices about complex regional energy transitions (Miller et al. 2022). To make sense of the choices, decisions, and tradeoffs entailed and their societal implications requires rich understandings of energy systems: who and what they serve, how they work, and their constraints in serving regional economies. For example, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Directorate for Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBE) Sciences, which had a budget of $286 million in FY 2022, supports research on human behavior and societal factors (NSF n.d.). Experiences from incorporation of social science and community engagement in interdisciplinary NSF research centers, funded through the SBE, could usefully inform energy programs (see Radatz et al. [2019]). Similar lessons might be drawn from the integration of ethical, legal, and social research into the National Institutes of Health’s Human Genome Project (see Hilgartner et al. [2016] and McEwen et al. [2014]).

Anticipatory Methods

Recent scholarship has demonstrated the value of using anticipatory methods to examine the potential unanticipated impacts of new and emerging technologies (Guston 2014). Such methods use participatory public engagement to inform technology assessment, policy deliberation, and organizational decision-making (Kaplan et al. 2021) alongside other forward-looking analytic methods, such as responsible innovation (Stilgoe et al. 2013) and anticipatory and social life-cycle analysis (Fortier et al. 2019; Wender et al. 2014). Anticipatory methods expand insights into new technologies beyond the limits of market-based technology adoption studies. This will be especially valuable for informing energy transitions because technology adoption studies alone miss broader aspects of technology deployment that can slow decarbonization and lead to a range of risks and adverse social or economic outcomes. For example, strategic energy and environmental assessments using an anticipatory approach have

recently illuminated pathways for institutional reform and coordination that can facilitate renewable energy deployment (Nwanekezie et al. 2022).

Anticipatory methods attend to the dynamics created by new technologies that ripple outward from their construction and use via complex social and technological systems. The consequences of these ripples are not intuitively obvious either from the perspective of the technology’s intended function and use or when used differently than their inventors and designers initially imagined (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2005). These human complexities are particularly significant for decarbonization planning, which anticipates rapid and near-universal adoption of new technologies by “average” people. However, these narrow assumptions fail to account for obvious asymmetries between users and contexts, between urban and rural users (Kline and Pinch 1996), or among users with and without disabilities (Wolbring 2008, 2011).

Anticipatory analysis can also inform systems-level elements of the energy transition. Two examples in the electrification of light-duty transportation illustrate this phenomenon:

• A lack of anticipatory analysis in technology development may result in the need to redesign the technology after deployment. For example, hybrid and electric vehicles are inherently nearly silent when operating at low speeds; a fact that many early EV purchasers appreciated but that created potential safety risks for pedestrians and other road users who could not hear them moving. Redesign was necessary to adapt vehicles to real-world human contexts that initial designs had failed to consider by adding audible external sounds for the safety of pedestrians (e.g., see P.L. 111-373). Few assessments—especially involving robust public engagement—have rigorously explored how the heterogeneity of vehicle use (among different kinds of users, as well as day-to-day for an individual user) matches the capabilities of EVs (e.g., see He et al. 2016).
• The use of anticipatory analysis can allow for design of systems with preferred properties. For example, EV adoption is transforming vehicle supply chains resulting in new social and environmental consequences in the automobile manufacturing and repair sector, a major contributor to the U.S. and global economy. Anticipatory analyses are increasing being implemented to understand and predict how a shift to EVs will change the environmental, employment, and consumer aspects of mineral and material resource requirements and manufacturing, and the servicing of vehicles (e.g., see Colato and Ice 2023; EIA 2021; Shrestha et al. 2022).

A lack of anticipatory assessment and planning can lead to a slow pace of learning, incremental redesign, or less-than-near-universal adoption of key technologies, none

of which support the accelerated decarbonization of energy systems. Ambitious anticipatory assessment and engagement is critical to inform and modify technology design, development, and markets, as well as to help diverse people and communities learn about new technologies and understand their implications.

Research and Inquiry Capabilities

Developing new capabilities for research and inquiry into the complexities of energy transitions is important to inform inclusive policy deliberation and infrastructure siting (Sovacool et al. 2020). Areas where research capabilities can inform decarbonization planning include

• Mobilizing and supporting people and organizations in implementing key decarbonization strategies. The scale of effort required to achieve a net-zero economy is unprecedented—much of it will require significant organizational, workforce, and even behavioral change from individuals and households to entire industries. Research can identify the human and organizational changes needed and the strategies to advance them, evaluate outcomes, and enhance the sharing of good practices. Research can also identify and suggest strategies for reducing workforce shortages, inflation in the pricing of materials, and backlashes against social and environmental goal setting.
• Evaluating the societal and economic implications of deep decarbonization. Many aspects of U.S. society and economy are organized around the ways energy is produced, distributed, and consumed. As a result, the consequences of adopting clean energy technologies and reconfiguring their manufacture and supplies will ripple outward into other areas of social and economic life and work. Research can help anticipate and comparatively evaluate trends and their potential implications for different groups, communities, and regions—especially for equity and justice considerations.
• Anticipating vulnerabilities in interdependent infrastructure systems. People depend on energy systems to provide essential services for an array of critical infrastructures and systems, including food, water, transport, communication, manufacturing, and the built environment. While climate and disaster interdependencies among critical infrastructures receive careful attention, significantly less attention has been paid to vulnerabilities that might arise owing to energy transitions. Research can identify how the human and organizational dimensions of interdependent systems may exacerbate or reduce vulnerabilities created by technological dependencies.

Opportunities and Barriers in Current Policy

The committee’s first report identified opportunities for Congress to invest in educational and research programs focused on the knowledge and skills needed to implement and manage the transition (NASEM 2021). The IIJA, IRA, and CHIPS and Science Act direct nearly $18 billion²⁰ to career and skills training programs located at institutions of higher education. Several programs recommended in the first report, including $5 billion per year for the 10-year, GI Bill–type program and $100 million per year for the creation of innovative new degree programs, could be realized by the combined efforts of these three laws. However, support for workforce development in recent legislation focuses almost exclusively on applied science and engineering and less on the skills needed for an equitable and just energy transition. Outcomes will also likely be uneven given the heavy reliance on states to implement education and training programs. Workforce training will require additional support to drive innovation (see Chapter 4).

Missing from current legislation is a key element in the committee’s prior recommendations: the explicit recognition that the United States needs to develop substantial knowledge, expertise, and workforces focused on higher-level understanding, analysis, and management of energy transitions, including among disciplines and sectors, and across research, application, and decision-making. This includes use-inspired research and training that intersects with technology development and deployment but focuses on the effective and equitable integration of technology into diverse societal, organizational, and market contexts. Such research areas include public and community engagement; the human and social dimensions of energy transitions; organizational change; interdisciplinary collaboration and convergence; energy policy and economics; the social and environmental impacts of technology; and energy and environmental equity and justice. Additionally, it is critical to assess methods in interdisciplinary convergence and co-production of knowledge among researchers and diverse knowledge-users in industry, government, and society.

To build this expertise, the committee’s first report recommended $50 million per year for interdisciplinary doctoral and postdoctoral training programs, similar to those funded by NIH; $375 million per year to support doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships in energy transitions, with at least 25 fellowships per state; and support for lowering barriers to non-U.S. researchers. In principle, such investments might be made via the new NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP), established

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²⁰ IIJA §40503, §40512, §40513, and §40521; IRA §60201; CHIPS and Science Act §10113, §10303, §10316, §10322, §10392, §10393, §10601, and §10745.

to “accelerate breakthrough technologies and solutions that address national-scale societal and economic challenges” with multidisciplinary, use-inspired research and collaboration that includes traditional and nontraditional players (NSF 2022; U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation 2022). TIP is unlikely to serve this goal, however, due to its focus on advancing breakthrough technologies rather than tackling the broader challenges of integrating technologies into diverse social and economic contexts to advance national goals, including decarbonization, social and economic inclusion, and equity and justice.

Similarly, although the CHIPS and Science Act authorizes more than $13 billion in funding over 5 years for programs that include scholarships and fellowships,²¹ this investment focuses on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and entrepreneurship rather than the social science research and education needed to facilitate improved transition management. Thus, despite substantial new investments in clean energy R&D, recent legislation and executive action continues to significantly underinvest in efforts to understand and build knowledge and capacity relative to navigating the human complexities of the energy transition. This underinvestment risks replicating the misperception that the energy transition is a technological problem with social and economic dimensions rather than an integrated technological, social, and economic challenge.

Findings and Recommendations

Upgrading the nation’s expertise in the human dimensions of deep decarbonization will require innovative action by the federal agencies that invest in and regulate the energy sector. Fortunately, much of this will require only modest shifts in and intentional implementation of already appropriated funding. To date, however, federal agencies are largely unprepared to do this work, and while recent legislation has provided extensive funding that could be leveraged for these purposes, the IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS and Science Act have not prioritized them.

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²¹ CHIPS and Science Act §10113, §10303, §10316, §10322, §10392, §10393, §10601, and §10745.

CONCLUSION

This chapter raises and attempts to address how to engage and mobilize the U.S. people in the project of deep decarbonization, which has to date received far too little attention from Congress, the White House, and federal agencies. The social contract for decarbonization is the shared understanding among all sectors and groups in society about the necessity of decarbonization, the willingness to deliberation and follow steps to get there, and the agreed-upon character of the transition. It hinges on decisions and actions taken now and over the next decade to enable people to meaningfully participate in envisioning, planning, and implementing the transition in ways that they judge fair, equitable, and beneficial. This includes strategies about how to imagine, design, and build energy systems with the public as well as policies that affect when, who, where, and how people will experience the everyday material realities of decarbonization and its impacts on their livelihoods and their access to energy services.

Although many of the features of recent policy initiatives create opportunities to engage and invest various publics in clean energy futures, there is a persistent mismatch between the scale of the decarbonization endeavor and the resources, capacity, and vision currently dedicated to mobilizing all the people of the United States to achieve deep decarbonization. Without additional resources and determined strategies, current public engagement efforts will be inadequate to preempt substantial public resistance to the pace and scale of systemic change necessary. Inadequate public engagement also curtails opportunities to advance creative, collaborative, and

place-based energy system designs and their many potential advantages for equitable deep decarbonization.

Rather than being derailed by the complexity and enormity of the public engagement challenge, proponents of deep decarbonization can turn to the policies, practices, and investments reviewed and recommended here as actionable steps toward building a social contract. Recommendations in this chapter include commitments to a growth mindset about public engagement—including through significant investments in applied social science research and a determination to engage the nation’s youth in the search for climate solutions. We can also turn to our history: in crucial moments in the past, determined and robust efforts helped the U.S. public understand the gravity of existential problems, our critical roles in tackling the challenges, and the benefits that we can achieve together as a nation. Public engagement for deep decarbonization is a task no less significant than that undertaken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt via his fireside chats to help the nation navigate the challenges of the Great Depression, prepare for the prospect of war, and come together as a nation to fight for freedom and democracy. The present challenge is no less existential, and the gravity of the public engagement task no less important. Table 5-2 summarizes the committee’s recommendations to support innovative public engagement in decarbonization.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS ON PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT TO BUILD A STRONG SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR DEEP DECARBONIZATION

TABLE 5-2^a Summary of Recommendations on Public Engagement to Build a Strong Social Contract for Deep Decarbonization

^a The text in this table was changed during editorial review to improve clarity and alignment with information in other sections of the report.

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