The transition to a low carbon economy in the U.S. has potentially wide-ranging implications for North American tribal nations, many of whom have significant oil, gas, and coal resources that provide jobs for local workers and revenues that sustain vital government services, both of which are threatened by the move away from fossil fuels.  On the other hand, tribal lands are also home to many potentially attractive sites for new renewable energy infrastructure like solar arrays or wind farms, which could offset job and revenue losses from the decreased use of oil and gas. Understanding these tradeoffs, and the likely outcomes of various pathways towards a greener economy, is vital for evaluating current and future U.S. energy policy and for ensuring that the costs and benefits of the move to a low energy economy are equitably shared. Funds from this grant support a team led by Monika Ehrman at the University of North Texas, Dallas—in collaboration with scholars at the Resources for the Future, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and the University of Montana—to undertake a suite of interrelated research projects that together seek to advance understanding of how the transition from fossil fuel production to clean energy will affect smaller tribal nations in the Midwest and Southwest. Ehrman and her team plans to partner with tribal nations across three different states (New Mexico, North Dakota, and Colorado). The project will begin with a series of in-depth meetings, interviews, and focus groups with leaders and key stakeholders in each tribe to inform research design, craft data sharing partnerships, and ensure that research outputs are well positioned to inform future decisions by tribal communities. The team will then use advanced economic modeling techniques to estimate the likely impacts of different policy-driven changes in the price of fossil fuels on oil and gas revenues for each of the tribes. A second component of the projects involves environmental and geospatial modeling assessments of tribal lands as potential sites for wind, solar, and other renewable energy generation. Researchers will work with participating tribes to examine how that potential for renewable energy generation differs under various policy scenarios.  Finally, a third aspect of the analysis consists of legal analysis of how U.S. energy policymaking can better account for tribal sovereignty and self-governance.   Research findings promise to inform both U.S. and tribal energy policymaking and will be reported through several academic papers, policy briefs, and symposia. Ehrman and her team will also undertake a host of community-oriented workshops and gatherings to share findings with tribal nations and will hold presentation and discussion sessions in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on examining natural resource law. The team also expects to organize community engagement activities through the Native Nations Institute at University of Arizona.

Federal and state agencies have numerous grant and funding programs designed to incentivize researchers to develop new clean energy technologies and to speed the process by which clean energy innovations are brought to market. We know, however, that Black, Latino/a and Native American researchers do not participate in these programs at rates proportional to their representation among researchers, and there has been little research on what factors are driving this trend.  This grant supports a team led by Bryan Patterson at Johnson C. Smith University to explore the role that Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) play in clean energy research ecosystems. Patterson is leading a team that includes collaborating researchers at Florida International University and The Ohio State University and practitioners from the HBCU Community Development Action Coalition, the National Association of State Energy Officials, and BW Research. Together, the team will examine the experiences of clean energy researchers from MSIs and HBCUs in four urban regions across the Southeast: Charlotte-Greensboro, North Carolina; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; and Miami, Florida. The team will conduct 25 interviews with under-represented energy scholars of color in each region to understand the barriers and opportunities these scholars face in receiving federal funding, conducting research, and disseminating their findings. The team will also produce policy-relevant research briefs that provide insights and recommendations for government agencies investing in clean energy research, including a scorecard to help local policymakers assess their regional energy innovation ecosystems with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As the U.S. transitions towards less carbon intensive means of producing energy, important questions arise about how this transition will likely impact different communities across the country.  For instance, how do rural, urban, and suburban areas differ in their ability to adapt to economic and socio-cultural changes driven by clean energy innovation? How might various energy and environmental policies hinder or accelerate workers moving into clean energy sector jobs? How might energy transitions differ across geographies, especially in the South, where little research has been done on these questions to date? Funds from this grant support a team of interdisciplinary scholars led by Shelley Welton at the University of South Carolina and collaborators at the University of Tennessee who aim to advance our understanding of how the transition to clean energy technologies are affecting vulnerable and marginalized populations in the American South. Focusing on urban, suburban, and rural areas in Columbia, SC and Knoxville, TN, the team will conduct 80 interviews and 6 focus groups to better understand community energy vulnerability, worker experiences in the clean energy transition, and overall community priorities across a diverse range of neighborhood types.  Interviewees and focus group participants will be identified and selected with the cooperation and input from local community organizations, including representatives from environmental institutions, worker collectives, and local faith communities.  The scholars anticipate that these interviews will lead to the identification of both unique findings about the concerns of particularly vulnerable communities, as well as common themes across communities, that can inform and strengthen future energy policymaking at the local, state, and national level.  In addition to peer-reviewed articles reporting on both findings from specific locations and themes that cut across research sites, the team will produce community-oriented materials, such as “A People’s Guide to Energy Policy,” envisioned as a white paper and accompanying website that shares findings and information with local community organizations, as well as an interactive “As Goes the South StoryMap” that will serve as a digital narrative for the project and include interviews, images, and videos.

There is a long and complicated history of fossil fuel development on Indigenous lands, with mining for coal and drilling for oil and gas leading to environmental degradation in these communities while also serving as a source of income for Indigenous tribal governments. As energy transitions away from fossil fuels take place, there both is a real financial risk to these communities due to revenue declines, yet there is also an opportunity, and a desire, to use these developments as an opportunity to transition toward cleaner energy production and help Indigenous communities become less reliant on these revenue sources. This grant supports a team led by Julia Haggerty at Montana State University, in partnership with colleagues at Little Big Horn College (a local tribal community college), Plenty Doors Community Development Corporation (a community development organization), and faculty from the University of Wyoming to better understand the fiscal implications of energy transitions for Indigenous communities. The team will work closely with leaders of the Crow Nation in Montana, engaging with this community in depth, serving as a case study that can be shared with other Indigenous nations to further extend the project’s impact. The project will use multiple approaches to understand how fiscal policy intersects with economic vulnerability in the context of energy transitions on tribal lands. The team will develop a dataset that aligns coal revenue information with financial disbursement information, undertake focus groups to better understand public revenue and expenditure issues, and conduct extended interviews with tribal members. They will also produce materials for the community, including oral histories from the interviews, assessments of how changes in fossil fuel revenue might impact social services, and a series of workshops and trainings for current and emerging leaders in the Crow Nation to help them learn about the impact of energy transitions on Indigenous fiscal policy and best management practices.