On November 13, 20 folks attended the second annual rural clean energy convening in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, co-sponsored by the Center for Progressive Reform and the Center for Energy Education. Attendees included academics, energy policy advocates, small-scale developers, technical experts, and government representatives. We built off last year’s convening, addressing the new North Carolina policy landscape and context given the repeal of federal funding, the state’s proposed unfavorable carbon plan, and rising energy burden in communities.
The main topics of the day were the challenges and opportunities for an equitable and just clean energy transition for North Carolina’s rural communities. Across a diverse range of perspectives, there was one consistent theme: North Carolina’s rural communities are incredible, socially vibrant places, and they deserve better: better housing, better renewable energy resources, and better economic development.
Energy burden — or the high share of household income that goes to energy — is acute in North Carolina, which sits in the top half of states with the highest energy burdens for low-wealth ratepayers. Nearly 1.5 million North Carolinians are “overburdened” by energy costs, meaning that they pay more than 6 percent of their income on energy. Some even pay more for energy than for housing, and many live in rural communities.
Across all income brackets, rural counties have the highest energy burden in the state due to energy-inefficient housing, climate change, and structural disinvestment that has led to disparate rates of poverty and unemployment. North Carolina counties with the highest energy costs — also disproportionately rural — interestingly also tend to have a larger portion of renewable energy projects. While utility-scale renewable energy projects may produce benefits such as higher tax revenues, these projects can ignore structural issues of ownership, wages, and distribution of benefits and may even reinforce or exacerbate extractive practices in the production of electricity.
Participants at the convening highlighted some of the barriers to addressing these energy-related injustices. The rise of AI data centers has complicated what communities can leverage as a benefit. We also discussed false solutions like small nuclear reactors that take a long time to build, compared to clear, easy, real-time solutions like solar and wind resources.
As federal funding has been held up in lawsuits or otherwise totally rescinded — as is the case with most Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding — communities are grappling with understaffed agencies trying to dole out energy efficiency funds or otherwise undertake clean energy projects.
The EnergySaver program is just one example of a new state program intended to lower energy bills but faced with staffing hurdles. The EnergySaver program is supposed to help homeowners and renters across North Carolina cover the cost of energy efficiency and electrification upgrades through HOMES (Homeowners Managing Efficiency Savings) and HEAR (Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates) from the IRA. Staff at the Center for Energy Education have heard that some program participants have reported delays processing applications.
Participants also stressed the importance of making sure basic needs are always forefront in the conversation about a clean, healthy, equitable energy transition. Moldy or asbestos-filled housing, lack of clean drinking water, and mental health burdens are all examples of the multilayered concerns in rural communities, some of which are often directly connected to structures that lack energy efficiency or weatherization features. We discussed how to support and educate our commissioners on how renewable energy projects owned by the community are assets. These commissioners may otherwise be persuaded by organized corporate interests, which tend to ignore issues beyond installing and connecting large-scale energy projects to the grid.
Still, there are significant natural strengths of rural North Carolina that can overcome these barriers: social capital, strong communities, growing diversity, and, namely, a growing rural population: of 100 total counties in the state, 80 of them are rural. Indeed, North Carolina’s rural population is the 2nd largest in the country (after Texas). There were 3,474,661 people living in rural North Carolina as of April 1, 2020, with a 2.9 percent increase from 2010 to 2020. With a growing population comes new opportunities to position rural communities as epicenters of wealth-building clean energy initiatives.
Rural communities are also primed for renewable energy development. The rise of agrivoltaics can be mutually beneficial for farmers and communities. Resilience hubs in rural communities can be beacons for cooling and resilience before and after natural disasters. Microgrids and the emergence of balcony solar can encourage energy independence and also promote resilience in the wake of severe weather. Participants also highlighted the role of educating children about solar and their role in the ecosystem to build a more sustainable future through direct participation.
Ultimately, a “rural agenda” is needed to address the multifaceted challenges to a clean energy transition. If we invest in and develop community buy-in and coalition- and trust-building, North Carolina rural communities can define clean energy success for themselves.
Read our policy brief to learn more about how communities can advocate for policies and approaches like alternatives to investor-owned utilities and promote an equitable and just energy transition. If you live in North Carolina, talk to your neighbors and your elected officials about the energy future you’d like to see.
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