Title:
The Uplift Project: Leveraging Carbon-Neutrality to Improve the Human Condition
Abstract:
Carbon-neutrality is a means, not an end. Global energy systems are currently one of the greatest drivers of human inequality, insecurity, and injustice. Fixing that requires redesigning the human relationship to energy systems. The transition to carbon-neutrality offers a unique opportunity in human history to implement that redesign on scales from individuals and communities to planetary political economy. In this talk, I will describe a set of interlocking strategies that sustainable energy access initiatives can use to transform clean energy into a project of human uplift: creating social value, distributing ownership, ending the energy-poverty nexus, and rebuilding sovereignty.
Bio:
Presented by Dr. Clark Miller, Professor & Director, Center for Energy & Society, and research, Arizona State University.
Clark A. Miller is a theorist and designer of people-centered energy transitions. He is Professor and Director of the Center for Energy & Society and research lead for just and sustainable photovoltaics for the Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies engineering research center at Arizona State University. He is a member of the US National Academies study Accelerating Decarbonization of the US Energy System (2021), co-author of Pathways to a Carbon Neutral Arizona Economy (2022), and co-editor of Cities of Light (2021) and The Weight of Light (2019), two collections of fiction, art, and reflections on human life in solar-powered futures. He serves as an advisor to cities, electric utilities, and national laboratories on the pursuit of equity and justice in energy transitions. Internationally, his research team collaborates with a wide range of communities in imagining and implementing clean energy futures as pathways to greater sovereignty, democracy, thriving, and resilience, including in US Indian Country, Canada’s First Nations, Puerto Rico, Guyana, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, and Egypt.