Data-driven environmental justice: a guide toward improved community benefits

An EJ strategy rooted in data begins with one fundamental task: defining and understanding the boundaries of a proposed project. These boundaries delineate the spatial extent and technical scope of the project, whether it is a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) pipeline, a battery manufacturing facility, or a wind farm. This boundary signifies not only a line on a map but also defines the extent of the project's impact and designates the study area, which, in turn, informs where EJ burdens should be assessed and how benefits should be distributed.

There is no universal formula for defining the project’s boundary. Instead, it varies based on the project’s nature and its effects on the local environment and communities. Factors such as water usage, emissions, local population, job opportunities, and the impact on natural and cultural resources are unique to each project type. These considerations shape the spatial scope of the project and lay the foundation for a comprehensive understanding of potential interactions with communities.

Once the study area is established, we encourage to assess the historical legacy of the affected communities and identify historical injustice and EJ risks. To ensure that the project benefits reach communities in need, it is important to thoroughly understand the specific challenges these communities face and how these challenges are distributed geographically, socially, and economically. One effective method to identify the most pertinent issues is to review local media sources and map stakeholders who frequently highlight EJ-related concerns. Equally important is continuous engagement with identified stakeholders in the affected communities to further contextualize and inform ongoing EJ issues.

This qualitative exploration needs to be complemented by quantitative measures to add to its insight. The application of EJ screening and mapping tools, supported by their comprehensive underlying databases, becomes paramount. These tools, including the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool (EJScreen) (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2021) or the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) (Council on Environmental Quality, 2021), offer publicly accessible databases and a wide array of EJ indicators. Leveraging these databases, you can extract critical pre-project data and establish a solid foundation for more in-depth analysis. This prepares the ground for your tailored EJ strategy and benefits planning.

Past injustices take various forms, including social, environmental, and economic issues. Communities identified within a project’s study area will likely be affected by numerous EJ factors, some of which could be improved or exacerbated by the project, while others provide relevant contextual information about the community’s challenges.

This complexity and diversity of possible EJ factors will be reflected within the vast array of data available for EJ indicators and outcomes. Often the amount of data can be difficult to make sense of. Navigating this abundance requires a focused approach to distill meaningful insights, ensuring the data serves as a guiding force rather than an overwhelming challenge.

To effectively navigate this wealth of EJ data, you can assess the most common EJ indicator flags across all relevant census tracts within your project's study area. This assessment serves a dual purpose: identifying which EJ indicators directly relate to your project's activities and determining whether your project could exacerbate, have no impact on, or alleviate identified EJ factors.

Once the top EJ priorities are identified, it is important to validate the chosen EJ indicators by understanding the source data, collection methods, and potential gaps or opportunities to improve data quality. We recommend starting with desktop data ground-truthing, which involves assessing data collection methods and source quality compared with best practices.

The depth of validation required depends on the indicator's importance and the expected impact of the project, as identified earlier. Checking that information obtained from public databases accurately reflects real-world conditions is vital for effective stakeholder engagement and informed benefits planning.

A central aspect of a carefully crafted EJ strategy is quantifying the flow of benefits from your proposed project to affected DACs up front and transparently demonstrate the accrual of those benefits over the project’s lifetime. Although benefits can be multi-faceted, let’s revisit what benefits may be in the specific context of projects funded by the United States Department of Energy (DOE).

According to the DOE, benefits may encompass, but are not restricted to, quantifiable favorable project outcomes aligned with or contributing to the following eight DOE policy priorities:

1. Decrease in energy burden
2. Decrease in environmental exposure and burdens
3. Increase in access to low-cost capital
4. Increase in high-quality job creation, the clean energy job pipeline, and job training for individuals
5. Increases in clean energy enterprise creation and contracting (e.g., minority-owned or disadvantaged business enterprises)
6. Increases in energy democracy, including community ownership
7. Increased parity in clean energy technology access and adoption
8. Increase in energy resilience

In other words, DAC benefits are recognized by the DOE when they accomplish or add to any of these policy priorities (U.S. Department of Energy, 2022). However, not all benefits would apply to every project, and projects may have benefits not on this list. Advancing the workforce, generating wealth, and fostering sustained economic development are other instances of favorable, long-term benefits observed in DACs (U.S. Department of Energy, 2022).

But remember, active community participation is recommended to identify benefits. It is the local community that holds the nuanced knowledge necessary to recognize and prioritize benefits that truly resonate with their unique needs and aspirations.

As such, the established benefits can vary. This leaves you with the opportunity to identify project-specific benefits flowing to DACs, align them with the DOE policy priorities and community input, and strategically integrate them with your company's policies and investment goals in a measurable way. We see this as a sustainable win-win.

Let’s say your proposed project is related to building infrastructure for a manufacturing plant within a DAC. You would need to be able to understand and explain how your project’s planned operations would impact related EJ indicators in the area. For example, your project’s operations may create jobs in the area, thus positively impacting the EJ indicator of unemployment in the DAC. However, not all the effects would be as straightforward, with some even having potential negative impacts on the DAC. For instance, your facility might risk adding to the burden of wastewater discharge in the area. This insight could inform a more thoughtful project design, additional or more focused community outreach, or additional investment in offsetting or mitigating potential negative impacts. These additional mitigation measures would need to be carefully designed, as informed by the previous steps.

Finally, once you have considered these potential project benefit flows, you can document Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) benefit metrics associated with the project throughout its lifecycle. Additionally, you are informed to devise actions and activities centered around these metrics as needed. The result would be a decision tool that helps you align to formal EJ priorities, further informing thoughtful project design, mitigation efforts, and community engagement.