Can Clean Energy Policy Promote Environmental, Economic, and Social Sustainability?

Two and a half decades of clean energy policymaking focused primarily on environmental and economic sustainability have yielded considerable environmental and economic benefits. Along the way, however, other policy considerations, such as the social sustainability of the transition to a cleaner, renewably fueled energy economy, have gone largely overlooked. As clean energy technologies continue to gain ever-greater traction in the United States and global energy economies, the social impacts of their enabling policies become more and more salient. Already, ratepayers, taxpayers, and other stakeholders who fear being left behind by the clean energy transition question the “fairness” of today’s renewable energy policies. The underlying discontentment threatens to erode popular support for a key component of United States and global efforts to successfully mitigate anthropogenic climate change. At the heart of this debate lies the question of whether public policy support for low-carbon renewables prioritizes environmental and economic sustainability at the expense of social sustainability. The goal of this essay is not to question the “if” but rather to explore and, ideally, improve the “how” of the shift toward a less carbon-intensive, renewably-fueled, energy economy. To this end, the author proposes a framework of proxy criteria for testing and, ultimately, enhancing the social and, hence, overall sustainability of policies for the promotion of solar, wind, and other clean energy technologies