The Racial Equity in Energy Project

Anthony Kinslow II, Ph.D. purpose in life is making a meaningful impact toward mitigating global warming. He has spent the last decade working toward making a meaningful impact through researching, implementing, and educating on energy efficiency. Anthony is the CEO of Gemini Energy Solutions which provides energy efficiency services to businesses historically underserved. 

Born in Nashville, TN and raised in Baltimore, MD; Anthony holds a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. 

Anthony is committed to improving the quality of life of those most disadvantaged. His active involvement in understanding wage theft in the construction industry, was recognized by the City of San Jose. Moreover, he has introduced the concept of environmental justice to hundreds of high school students. Currently Anthony resides in Foster City, CA with his wife, Maria and son, Marcus.

There are thousands of community based organizations (CBOs) that serve historically underrepresented minorities. However, the vast majority have neither the money, capacity, or expertise to effectively educate and engage their community on the energy and environmental inequities that exist nor the solutions that exist to address those inequities. Individuals who want to participate in making their community cleaner, healthier, and more resilient experience similar challenges. 

The Racial Equity in Energy Project (REEP) is designed to address these shortcomings. The REEP will connect CBOs nationwide through a network and provide a repository of information, tools, and resources to be used for those CBOs and individuals. Across the country, CBOs are recreating material. By creating this repository, we enable them to focus on developing and implementing solutions. Moreover, we create a feedback loop of information and metrics so that we are all learning and improving together.

REEP is working to solve the disproportionate economic, health, and climate safety burdens within communities of color. In particular Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities who make up over 30% of the U.S. population (Census.gov).

Due to a lower median income, African Americans spend a significantly higher fraction of their household income on electricity and heating than non-African Americans with Hispanics experiencing a comparable energy burden (NAACP, Lights out in the Cold 2018).  

Through racist federal and state housing and zoning policies, such as redlining, these communities experience lower property value, less parks and outdoor spaces, and more air pollution. Both Black and Hispanics receive dramatically disproportionate amounts of PM2.5 pollution compared to White/Other (PMAS, Feb 2019). PM2.5 also has been shown to have negative impacts on mental health such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts (WHO, 2014).

As global warming increases, so will the severity and frequency of natural disasters such as Hurricanes. Communities of color while having the least resources to adapt, are being hit first and worst (U.S. Climate Action Network, 2020). Furthermore, when natural disasters occur, minority communities receive less funding and take longer to recover (E. Fussell et al., 2010).

The Racial Equity in Energy Project will leverage the U.S. transition to a clean energy economy to reduce the wealth gaps, increase resiliency, and minimize energy and health burdens in communities of color. To achieve this, REEP will increase the effectiveness of existing community-based efforts and create community-based efforts where there are none. Our focus is specifically on: Energy Efficiency, Electrification, Access to Renewable Energy, Environment Revitalization, and Clean Energy Investments.

Across the U.S. there are thousands of community-based groups, who are underfunded, understaffed, and underutilized. 

REEP will: 

1) create a network that connects these organizations and provide a repository of best practices, materials in various languages, case studies, etc. These tools and resources will reduce the time and cost required for administration and will allow organizations to quickly develop and implement proven solutions.

2) consolidate a consortium of organizations, experts, activists, and philanthropists, willing to provide resources and expertise to the REEP network. For example, if a community wants to advocate for a policy change they will have templates, data, and consulting readily available. 

3) establish groups in communities that do not have an existing infrastructure by increasing education, awareness, and engagement in a culturally competent manner.

Each enthic group has their own unique barriers; thus, to maximize effectiveness the information and how it is presented must be targeted for each group. The African-American community is the community I am most connected to, so the first year of the REEP will be focused on them. The Hispanic/LatinX communities and Indigenous communities will be the next level of priority in the second year. These three communities have the highest degree of concern for climate change (www.rff.org/climatesurvey/). They are innovative, resourceful, and resilient. They are also complex, underfunded, and undereducated. 

Black and Brown people know they are disproportionately burdened. We talk about it regularly. What is not commonly known is how bad it really is. When it comes to inequities in energy and environment the statistics are striking. I believe when folks are shown how bad it is, coupled with a way to fix it, they will be motivated to act. A la the protests following the murder of George Floyd. However, unlike those protests, they will have the tools and resources to 1) identify the challenges in their neighborhood, 2) develop and implement solutions, and 3) advocate for specific changes in a compelling way.

Drastically reducing the global GHG emissions in the next ten years is arguably the most important problem our world faces. Doing so in a manner that does not exacerbate existing inequities is our responsibility. Doing so in a manner that reduces inequities is our opportunity. The REEP’s fundamental theory is that communities historically left behind need 1) a greater awareness of the problem and existing solutions, 2) tools and resources to replicate those solutions. In obtaining this, they will increase their effectiveness in existing actions and drive more folks to action. Thereby, reducing existing inequities while rapidly reducing GHG emissions.

The seed of the idea that would eventually grow into the REEP started in 2014, during the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday weekend. I was staying in a cabin with a group of Black graduate students and started discussing how we could make a larger impact working together in our respected fields than individually. Later that year former Black Panther Chair Elaine Brown and Harry Belafonte came to campus. I had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Brown one-on-one and she talked about the support network that existed in the Black Panther community. A month later during the question-answer phase of Harry Belafonte’s talk a friend asked, “what could we do to further the movement for racial justice?”, he responded simply, "read a book". He elaborated that the solutions are out there, we just needed to educate ourselves on them. The last inspiration came in 2015, when I learned of a Stanford led survey that showed non-whites were more concerned about climate change. This challenged my notion that Black and Brown folks were not in the clean energy or sustainability space because they had more immediate concerns. I decided to develop the REEP in November, 2019, after reading Energy Democracy.

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” My dad taught me this Dr. MLK Jr. quote when I was just entering high school and it has resonated with me more than any other since. In America, communities of color are being hit first and worst. Moreover, they often do not have the necessary tools and resources to make meaningful changes in their neighborhood to increase their resilience. The Black community is particularly vulnerable to both climate change and the U.S. transition to a clean energy economy. As a Black man this is both scary and emotional. My family and their neighbors, the people who have supported me throughout my life, many of my friends and their family, the folks I go to church with. All of them are vulnerable and I am in the unique position to help reduce that vulnerability. How could I not put my time and energy into this? It is who I am. It is who my parents raised me to be. It is what gives me a sense of purpose.

I am well-positioned to deliver because of the people surrounding me as much as my personality, my resume, and my ethnicity. The Black community like any other group has indicators to determine if you are worth engaging with. Who do you know, who knows you, cultural references, and where did you go to school all play a role in your ability to garner support and ultimately have success for any project related to the Black community. As Black man and a graduate of an HBCU (NC A&T) I have instant credibility whenever I am introduced to someone in the Black community. I also earned a masters and PhD from Stanford University, which provides instant respect and credibility in general. Attending both an HBCU and Stanford, I have a fluency and comfort with influencers, industry leaders, and subject-matter experts within the Black community and outside. Moreover, I thrive on engaging with people and connecting people. It is a skill my Dad has and Mom excelled at. My close relationships and connections extend to individuals across all walks of life. Living in Australia and the UAE coupled with marrying a German, provides me with a global perspective when thinking about and searching for best practices and case studies. My wife’s Stanford PhD research focused on improving the effectiveness of global teams collaborating to complete a project. Her decade worth of experience centers around rapidly developing distributed teams. Her insights will be invaluable to the successful and rapid development of the REEP.

The night before my first day starting college, I got the call from the hospital that my Mom was in an induced coma and that I needed to come immediately. When I texted her I love you that afternoon, I had no idea that would be our last communication. Seven years later, it was my Dad on the phone. My older brother had been shot and killed. These two deaths, while not the only ones I experienced, were the ones that made me question my faith and my purpose in life. Their deaths still affect me; and it has created a drive, a focus, a grit, that I did not previously possess. All were needed to complete my PhD.

Completing a PhD is a mental challenge as much as an intellectual one. Completing the PhD when you are the only African-American takes even more mental fortitude. The isolation that one feels is at times overwhelming. I was able to persevere by leaning on and into my community. But also remembering that completing my PhD, would better position me to help my community. Now that the PhD is complete, I am using my time, expertise, and networks to do just that. 

I have worked at developing the skill to persuade talented individuals to put time and energy towards social good. For example, to help a non-profit in Bayview-Hunters Point, I brought together five Black Stanford graduate students from various disciplines to provide five mentor sessions to the Black kids in the neighborhood. We developed a lesson plan which consisted of the key skills to success as a Black man. My most prestigious leadership role was being elected the President of Stanford’s Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA) in 2016. Prior to my tenure, we were having trouble paying for events because, although we were responsible for the entire Black graduate student population, we were limited to the same cap as any other campus organization. There were also Black organizations for law, business, and engineering who were not depleting their funds and occasionally hosting conflicting events. As BGSA President, I persuaded the President’s and Vice-Presidents from the other Black organizations to convene. In doing so, we were able to pool available funding across the organizations and ensure there were no scheduling conflicts and build stronger community ties. I also persuaded every school (engineering, medicine, etc.) to supplement BGSA activities through an annual contribution.

Currently, the REEP is under the company I founded, Gemini Energy Solutions LLC. However, thanks to a grant from Clean Energy Works, I am going through an accelerated development process to determine where the REEP would be best supported (e.g., an existing non-profit).

The more I understand the energy and environmental justice landscape, the more I realize that my ideas are not unique. In fact, every aspect of the REEP can be found in another space or is utilized for another purpose. What makes the REEP innovative is the combination of these disparate ideas and the target audience. NRDC in combination with the Institute for Market Transformation created the City Energy Project. Their resource library has many of the same aspects that will exist in the REEP repository, but their material is created for Cities. The NAACP’s Centering Equity in the Sustainable Building Sector has a resource library and a list of organizations in the space. However, there is no explicit network connecting the organizations nor a robust infrastructure to actively grow that list. The Center for Social Inclusion has an interactive map that shows community scale renewable energy projects. However, the provided information is not consistent nor actionable. Whereas, a person must call those organizations to learn how to replicate the project. This is time consuming for the caller and the responder. Time that could be used for implementation. Charity Navigator is a donor advocate that evaluates and rates thousands of charitable organizations. The REEP network could be used for foundations and philanthropy to funnel billions toward vetted projects to reduce carbon emissions and environmental conservation, democratizing access to a historically insular group. Learning and improving upon other organizations will enable the REEP to develop faster and increase its chance for success.

I am still developing measurable goals. The one I do have for the first year is to have at least 300 Black community based organizations as active members in the REEP network. For me, active means they are utilizing the REEP repository and providing feedback on their progress. By year five the REEP repository should be a known resource in every community throughout America and other countries have begun replicating it.

Clean Energy Works is providing me with a historical context, making introductions to leaders in the space, funding me so that I can accelerate the development of the REEP, and strategizing with me on how to obtain funding.

Courageous Conversations Global Foundation will support augmenting any material to be culturally relevant and has been providing grant writing services.

Greenlining Institute will provide the REEP with educational materials and provide me with introductions to leaders in the space.

This is currently being explored; however, I will not sell access to or information on the organizations for marketing/advertisement purposes.

I anticipate 2020 expenses to require $175K. This will go to creating the framework (i.e., metrics, feedback process, etc.), creating the infrastructure (website, repository, etc.), and paying relevant experts for their time to properly review and provide feedback prior to launch.

The Racial Equity in Energy Project (REEP) is needed now. The dedicated resources provided by The Elevate Prize will enable the REEP to become active sooner. There is also a potential multiplier effect in regards to funding that comes with it.