The NYU SPS Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab

In order to meet the scale and urgency of the challenge, global negotiations must address how best to distribute billions of dollars of climate finance in a fair and just manner, as is a priority concern for many developing world leaders. It requires the full-scale development of robust institutional structures that can translate billions of dollars in public and private finance into effective, targeted adaptation spending aimed to reduce vulnerability and enhance sustainability. While a massive scale up of international public and private finance is needed, this mobilization must consider the priorities which developing nations have identified for their citizens and ecosphere including resilient energy and transport infrastructure, climate smart agriculture, and coastal protection.

ECJS initiative on climate justice focuses on cross-disciplinary research, bringing rigorous systematic investigation and a voice to broad perspectives on the social, cultural, and geopolitical context for the impacts of climate change and the energy transition. In the United States as in many other regions and countries, there is a pressing need to reverse the toll of historical environmental injustices to underserved communities and to rebuild basic infrastructure and services using a more just model of economic empowerment. New frameworks and evaluative tools are needed to ensure that climate solutions can alleviate conditions of poverty and strife likely to become more severe due to climate change. ECJS Lab will bring together global scholars and activists to develop a published volume of visioning, thought leadership, and analysis on the topic of global climate justice, the just energy transition, and energy security justice.

Governments are currently facing the challenge to ensure that legacy infrastructure shutdowns do not produce energy shortages if replacement low-carbon facilities cannot keep pace with demand for cleaner forms of energy. Without active policies that effectively design how a blended system of new and existing energy infrastructure will meet current needs, energy security gains experienced in recent years will dissipate, leaving consumers and businesses with rising costs and hard-to-navigate market uncertainty.

ECJS Lab research on the energy mid-transition will include a major visioning of the fully decarbonized world together with policy assessment of the middle state where new policies must be developed to promote an orderly transition. ECJS brings to its work a unique perspective on the opportunities and burdens of existing energy infrastructure and what facilities can be leveraged or converted to provide lower carbon forms of energy and what policies may be required to ensure firms retire facilities in a manner that does not impose monopolies or fuel shortages. ECJS will also work together with external partners to envision how the digital world will provide new solutions for energy demand management, energy efficiency and conservation, and low-carbon energy solutions.

The program aims to provide local actors with policy-making analysis and tools to evaluate their policy requirements and opportunities. One barrier to mounting an effective response to climate change is the tendency to work from historical data that does not capture the real unprecedented risks that will be faced in the future. By building narratives around our science-based climate event analysis we will help local leaders and community stakeholders gain a better understanding of severe climate risks they could face and the steps that should be taken to prepare for them. ECJS will collaborate with other academic institutions, cities, civic groups, and other emergency preparedness institutions like the American Red Cross to build scenario construction, structured workshops to develop future responses that are targeted to the possibility of unprecedented climate events.