ABOUT DR. TONY REAMES:
Dr. Tony Reames is the Tishman Professor of Environmental Justice and an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, where he founded the Urban Energy Justice Lab and the Energy Equity Project. He is also Director of the U-M SEAS Detroit Sustainability Clinic.
He was recently a presidential appointee in the Biden-Harris Administration serving as Deputy Director for Energy Justice and Principal Deputy Director for State and Community Energy Programs at the U.S. Department of Energy. He established the first-ever Office of Energy Justice Policy and Analysis in the Office of Energy Justice and Equity.
As a multidisciplinary scholar, with degrees in engineering and social science, his research investigates the fair and equitable access to affordable, reliable, clean energy, and explores the production and persistence of energy disparities across race, class, and place. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration from the University of Kansas, a Master of Engineering Management from Kansas State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. He is a licensed professional engineer and an U.S. Army Officer Veteran. He serves numerous boards and advisory committees.
ABOUT LISA WOZNIAK:
Lisa’s career spans over two decades of environmental and conservation advocacy in the political arena. She is a nationally- recognized expert in non-profit growth and management and a leader in Great Lakes protections. Lisa is a three-time graduate from the University of Michigan, with a bachelor's degree and two ensuing master's degrees in social work and Education.
Lisa serves a co-host and content partner in 89.1 WEMU's '1st Friday Focus on the Environment.'
RESOURCES:
Michigan League of Conservation Voters
University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS)
TRANSCRIPTION:
David Fair: This is 89 one WEMU, and it's been a rather cold winter so far. You may have noticed that with the impact on your recent utility bills. Energy costs are a real problem for all too many in our community and throughout Michigan. I'm David Fair, and I'd like to welcome you to the February edition of WEMU's First Friday Focus on the Environment. Today, we're going to talk energy and energy equity. My First Friday partner and co-host is Lisa Wozniak. She's the executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. And welcome back, Lisa!
Lisa Wozniak: Thanks, Dave! We're certainly at an interesting and uncertain time when it comes to how we get our energy and energy costs in particular. They were definitely part of the narrative last election, along with the cost of just about everything. Our guest today is the right person to dig into these issues. Dr. Tony Reames is an associate professor at the University of Michigan. He is a Tishman professor of environmental justice and serves as director of the University of Michigan's School of Environment and Sustainability's Detroit Sustainability Clinic. Dr. Reames, thank you so much for your time!
Dr. Tony Reames: Thank you for having me, Lisa and Dave!
David Fair: Well, a key part of your work, Dr. Reames, is focused on energy equity. It's a term that's gotten a lot of attention in the past couple of weeks from the Trump administration with its focus on removing diversity, equity and inclusion programs from all government grants, work and documents. It's become politically charged, perhaps to the detriment of what equity actually means. How do you define energy equity?
Dr. Tony Reames: Yeah, that's a really great question, thinking about the current context of the time that we're living in. The energy justice movement and scholarship is really an international context and started trying to understand the difference between developed and developing nations when it came to access to modern technology. Later, in time around the '90s, that term really started to look more internal to countries looking at energy disparities domestically. And so, over the last decade or so here in the U.S., you've seen a lot more scholars, a lot more activism around things like energy prices, access to renewable energy and access to energy efficiency. And so, when we try to define this term or this concept, it's really about the fair and equitable access to energy services, the fair and equitable participation in energy decision-making, and then also recognizing that we have to undo the harm of our current energy system as we transition to a newer, cleaner, greener energy system.
Lisa Wozniak: So, based on that definition, Dr. Reames, how equitable or inequitable are we here in Michigan in the year 2025?
Dr. Tony Reames: Yeah, I moved here to Michigan in 2014 from Kansas City, Missouri, where I really started to explore this issue. And what I found when I came to Michigan was a very engaged populace in energy decision-making. Activists from Detroit and Grand Rapids and other cities across the state were really pushing back on rate increases at the utility company, calling for more access to renewable energy and energy efficiency. We had some really interesting energy laws here in Michigan. One in particular is focused on energy waste reduction, which, in other places, we call energy efficiency. And I thought it was really interesting that, at the time, there was a Republican governor, Governor Snyder, and the Legislature decided to frame it as waste reduction to get everybody on board. And so, as we're talking about the federal government pushing back on diversity, equity and inclusion, the terminology can be very important in how the political game is played. And what we see here in Michigan is we have a very cold temperature. We get a lot of support for low-income energy assistance programs from the federal government because of that. But it's not enough to reach our households. And we also found in our research that a lot of households don't know about the services that are available to them. And so, you combine cold temperatures, older homes that have deferred maintenance, as well as not enough resources in the social safety net, and we end up with a very inequitable energy system.
David Fair: Well, another DTE energy rate hike went into effect yesterday. The Michigan Public Service Commission approving a $217 million hike for DTE. That was about half of what the company had actually asked for. But we often talk about housing and food insecurity. Should we be talking about energy insecurity in the same way?
Dr. Tony Reames: Yes, we should. So, another concept under the energy justice umbrella is this idea of energy insecurity that really started in the public health field, looking at the impact of energy prices on households, making the decision between what we call heat or eat: choosing to heat their home or buy food. And so, this issue of energy insecurity has made it through different parts of our government, whether local, state or federal. And the long-running energy assistance programs that exist like energy assistance called LIHEAT, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. And so, when we think about that, there are studies that can look at data that look at the relationship between energy burden and a household's public health issues, as well as trying to understand how these different types of energy insecurities overlap. And so, if you have food insecurity, housing insecurity and energy insecurity, what is that concentrated disadvantage? How does that impact a household?
David Fair: WEMU's First Friday Focus on the Environment conversation with Dr. Tony Reames continues. Dr. Reames is director of the U of M School for Environmental Sustainability's Detroit Sustainability Clinic. And the other voice you hear is the executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters Lisa Wozniak.
Lisa Wozniak: I'd like to dig in a little further on the question of affordability. How are Michigan's utility companies, in comparison to their peers and other states, doing on issues like energy affordability and preventing energy shutoffs?
Dr. Tony Reames: So, we've done studies in the past that compared utilities, particularly here in the Great Lakes region, and found that Michigan utilities were kind of in the middle, as far as the potential for greater energy efficiency to reduce energy cost. Advocates in the low-income energy waste reduction movement have really pushed the utilities to increase their contributions to these low-income energy efficiency programs. And you've seen over time that the amount that the utilities put in to those programs that I want all of our listeners to know we actually contribute to our utility bills is increasing. And so, the component of energy that I think is interesting for people to understand is that when this was all set up, the idea was that there would be an equal share of participation in this ecosystem. And so, we all pay our rates. And because it's distributed across the greater rate base, it allows the utilities to do more for all ratepayers. But what we found was that there were inequities in who was actually participating in the energy efficiency programs. Higher income households had more knowledge about programs and were more likely to participate. And so, with a lot of advocacy from partners across the state, there's more awareness for low-income households, as well as more resources into those programs for those households.
Lisa Wozniak: More recently, there's been a debate and some action around community control over their energy futures, such as who owns electricity generation in Ann Arbor. There have been studies on the process and cost for the city to take over power and the grid from DTE. And voters also passed a local ballot initiative--a measure--to establish a voluntary, opt-in, sustainable energy utility. I don't want to get into the nitty-gritty here, but are moves like this going to increase energy equity and accomplish other goals, like better reliability and decarbonization?
Dr. Tony Reames: Yeah, I think what you are seeing here in Michigan and other parts of the country is this understanding that the services that are being provided are not meeting the needs of energy ratepayers. In Michigan, we unfortunately do not have community-owned solar opportunities. I like to call it we have solar in your community. But I think there is a great opportunity for more locally-owned energy that can participate in the grid or directly deliver energy to households. That movement continues. There were some bills in the recent legislative session that did not make it through, but the work continues to push for that. And you see efforts like what's happening in Ann Arbor as examples of what's possible. I think as more communities think through their energy future, you will see a lot of that bubbling up from the ground. We funded some of those efforts to plan energy future that the Department of Energy with programs like the Community Local Energy Action Program or Community LEAP. Highland Park, Michigan was one of the recipients of that and have put together a clean energy future plan for that city.
David Fair: Report after report in recent years has found renewable sources of energy like solar are cost competitive and, in many cases, even cheaper than traditional fossil fuel sources. Of course, there are a wide range of environmental and health benefits as well. As we explore energy equity, how can we go about ensuring, as we move further into that future, that those in low-income communities are able to exercise the benefits as well?
Dr. Tony Reames: If I had a magic wand, I would hope that we could think about our housing as part of our energy infrastructure, right? We know here in Michigan, again, a very older state with older housing stock, sometimes larger housing stock when compared to other states, that they're wasting a lot of energy because of the inefficiencies. And so, how could we create a more strategic, place-based approach to going across our state and weatherizing and retrofitting homes block by block? I call it kind of my civil engineering background of doing capital improvement plans where how many roads need to be repaved or how many pipes need to be replaced. We could do that same type of understanding for our housing infrastructure and really create a strategic plan that allows us to do this in a way that can save money both in implementation, but also save households tons of money. We have some retrofit programs that were passed by the bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. And so, right now, the state is preparing its home rebate plans where you could buy a new furnace, buy a new electric stove from Home Depot or Lowe's or some other store and get a rebate in store, as well as companies trying to help households participate in those programs.
David Fair: Once again, we're talking with Dr. Tony Reames from the University of Michigan on WEMU's First Friday Focus on the Environment.
Lisa Wozniak: Dr. Reames, I want to widen the lens a bit. The Biden administration took steps to address the climate crisis and pollution in disadvantaged and overburdened communities, as well as boost the clean energy transition. However, many of these programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, which you just mentioned, were starting to roll out and be implemented last year. And as someone deeply involved in those programs, I'd love to know what you think the impact of those measures, especially in your focus area of energy justice has been. And we can maybe get into what's happening in the here and now after that.
Dr. Tony Reames: Yeah. So, I am concerned as efforts to roll back those programs or cancel contracts that haven't already been signed will have detrimental impacts on communities that, one, we fought for these types of programs either during the election or as Congress was preparing those laws, that they will lose out. We did make an opportunity to invest in communities, particularly disadvantaged communities, like never before. Back to that definition of energy justice that I talked about, we have to recognize the past harms and actually rectify those harms in a new energy system or a new energy future. And so, these funds for things like home rebates for energy efficiency, more equitable access to solar and other renewable energy, were attempts to do just that. And so, programs are rolled back or if contracts are canceled, it just has a ripple effect across this country, whether it's jobs or people continuing to have high energy bills. And so, I'm super concerned about what we're hearing out of Washington.
David Fair: And as we look at what those rollbacks may be from the Trump administration and you look at the potential impacts, who's going to be more harmed than anyone else?
Dr. Tony Reames: Yeah, the data is clear. Households that are below the median income, households that are headed by Black and other households of color, elderly households and renters are already the most disadvantaged households when it comes to energy inequities and energy disparities. And so, to reduce opportunities for them to finally have their homes repaired, put into appliances, put in new HVAC systems, that will just exacerbate those unaffordable bills and inefficient homes and often unhealthy homes, because there's a correlation between energy unaffordability and a host of public health issues, whether it's asthma, whether it's hypothermia, hyperthermia, because people are keeping their homes too hot or too cold, the ripple effect will be real.
David Fair: Well, Dr. Reames, thank you so much for sharing time with us today and sharing your perspective! We appreciate it!
Dr. Tony Reames: Thank you so much for having me and covering this really important topic!
David Fair: That is Dr. Tony Reames, associate professor at the University of Michigan, a Tishman professor of environmental justice and director of the U of M School for Environmental Sustainability's Detroit Sustainability Clinic. My First Friday Focus on the Environment partner is Lisa Wozniak, the executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. And I look forward to seeing and talking with you on the first Friday in March!
Lisa Wozniak: I look forward to it David! Thank you very much!
David Fair: I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89 one, WEMU FM, Ypsilanti. Celebrating 60 years of broadcasting from the campus of Eastern Michigan University!
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