Environmental/Climate Justice

Energy Justice Messaging Guid

This guide is designed to help organizations bring a consumer-centered lens to energy policy debates, and to show how utility regulation, affordability programs, and climate justice intersect with state budgets and economic health. By using this guide, you can frame energy affordability not just as an environmental or technical issue, but as a core economic justice concern, one that directly impacts household stability, community resilience, and long-term, your state’s prosperity.

Tipsheet: Mutual Aid for Climate Justice 201

As a continuation of Mutual Aid for Climate Justice 101, and in response to Lab members requests, this tipsheet answers the question “how do mutual aid networks work?”

  • Learn about organizational structures, and an example from mutual aid group Water Drop LA
  • Map organizing networks to fit your own mutual aid work
  • Review the foundational values behind mutual aid organizing

Check out the full recording of the Mutual Aid for Climate Justice 201 training.

End Point or Setback? A Retrospective of the Maine Public Power Ballot Initiative

This case study recounts and analyzes the 2023 ballot initiative campaign for Maine to take ownership of the two investor-owned utilities in the state and create a new publicly-owned utility called Pine Tree Power. Along the way, the Our Power campaign integrated research throughout their campaign to evaluate their power-building strategy. While the referendum lost at the ballot, Our Power draw out a number of insights from their campaign for energy democracy, including:

Stop Dirty Data Centers

The NAACP has been working with communities across the country that stand to experience the negative impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. Using policy, the courts, and advocacy, they are committed to making sure the harms to residents and the environment don't outweigh the proposed benefits. This page includes recommendations for protecting frontline communities, community benefit agreement template and resources, and frontline framework community guiding principles.

Case Study: Door-To-Door Canvass In Northwest Indiana

Northwest Indiana has long been one of the most industrialized corridors in the country. The cities of East Chicago, Hammond, and Whiting, situated on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, are dominated by oil refineries, steel mills, and chemical plants. The BP Whiting Refinery, one of the largest in the U.S., anchors the area—bringing jobs, but also frequent accidents, flaring events, and generations of toxic pollution. These communities are known as “sacrifice zones”—bearing disproportionate burdens of fossil fuel pollution and health risks. Blue hydrogen is made from natural gas, with carbon emissions captured and stored underground instead of being released. It requires pipelines to transport both the hydrogen to users and the captured carbon dioxide to storage sites. JTNWI recognized the urgent need for door-to-door education and organizing to counter corporate narratives and ensure residents’ voices were heard. Launched in June 2023, the canvass aimed to educate residents, capture community concerns, and build local leadership around the MachH2 project.

Katrina20

Video, Katrina20, is a twenty year look back on Hurricane Katrina and how communities continue to support each other against climate disasters.
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