What does it take to achieve a truly just energy transition beyond technological innovation or policy reform? Our eight Fellows recently convened in-person at the Avila Center for Community Leadership in Durham, NC to deepen their understanding of equity frameworks and strengthen their ability to advance equitable outcomes in the energy sector.
This in-person gathering allowed for rich dialogue around how Fellows and their organizations can implement, operationalize, and model equity across their work, from values to implementation.
Operationalizing equity in the regulatory transition to clean energy offered a compelling container for deep discussions, which surfaced critical questions such as:
- What does equity look like in action across different organizational contexts?
- How can we move beyond intention to sustainable, systemic change?
- What shared practices can we adopt to ensure ongoing accountability?
Fellows anchored their discussions in a shared understanding that an equity framework is a set of intentional policies, practices, and projects that make equity explicit, guide decision-making, and identify the evidence that tracks progress over time. Fellows were introduced to the S.A.S.H. framework by Tamara Jones, Co-Executive Director of Clean Energy Works and a co-creator of the S.A.S.H. framework (developed in collaboration with Ed Whitfield and Kolu Zigbi) to reflect on their own organizations’ equity journeys.
Spirit – The underlying motivations, values, and intentions driving equity work. It shapes organizational culture and influences every aspect of decision-making.
Artistry – The skillful navigation of opposing forces to achieve change, balancing creative problem-solving, deep listening and pragmatism to achieve meaningful change.
Science – Systematic practices, data collection, and evaluations to ensure rigor and adaptability in implementing equity initiatives.
Habits – The routine actions and behaviors that sustain new ways of thinking and operating, reinforcing equitable systems.
This lens is especially critical when advancing inclusive utility investments, which aim to remove financial and structural barriers to clean energy access. By applying the S.A.S.H. Framework, Fellows examined how their organizations could better embed equity in utility program design, ensure procedural fairness, and shift benefits toward communities historically excluded from energy investments.
Fellows explored how to communicate more effectively and persuasively about inclusive utility investments by grounding their messages in the Five Dimensions of Equity. The session focused on equipping Fellows with the tools to speak with clarity, empathy, and power, especially when motivating community action for maximum equitable outcomes.
Fellows paired up to practice framing inclusive utility investments through each of the five dimensions:
- Recognition Equity emphasizes understanding the historical context of today’s inequalities, including the legacy of utility and regulatory decisions, and locating today’s institutions within that narrative. Fellows reflected on how removing credit barriers could meaningfully improve community energy security by addressing long-standing exclusions.
- Procedural Equity focuses on who gets to participate in decision-making processes and how authentically their voices are heard. While no situational questions were needed for this dimension, given that much equity work tends to concentrate here, it served as a reminder that inclusive design must go beyond engagement to shared power.
- Distributive Equity brings attention to the uneven distribution of benefits and burdens across the energy system. Fellows again returned to the impact of credit barriers, recognizing how current financing structures disproportionately benefit those with wealth or access while leaving others behind.
- Restorative (Structural) Equity considers how policies and programs can actively repair harm. Inclusive utility investments, when designed with intent, can directly address the harms caused by financial barriers and inequitable policies.
- Transformative Equity asks what regulatory or structural changes would truly support community visions and deliver generational benefits. Here, the conversation turned toward systemic change, not just programmatic fixes.
Following the paired discussions, Fellows regrouped to share reflections. Many noted the challenge of speaking about inclusive utility investments without defaulting to jargon or overly technical language. Yet, the act of grounding their messages in lived experience and values, not just policy language, proved powerful.
The retreat provided an avenue to explore equity as complex systems change and the intersections to utility advocacy, consumer protections, and inclusive utility investments.
Systems change is the process of shifting narratives, relationships, and power in order to foster equity and self-determination.
How does equitable systems change occur?
Systems change is an ongoing process that consists of:
1. Mapping out the forces and linkages that connect structures, culture, institutions, and individuals;
2. Sensing and influencing patterns; and
3. Connecting patterns to learning and experimentation that foster a healthy system.
What does it mean to do equitable systems change?
True systems change efforts do not merely change inequitable structures, but strive to transform the underlying power dynamics, narratives, and histories that built these structures and enable them to thrive. An equity lens is essential to systems change efforts to avoid change efforts that reinstitute the status quo or replace one systemic inequity with another.
Importantly, this retreat was not about arriving at a destination. Fellows understood that equity is not something to “get” or “complete;” it is a living practice to be modeled daily, revisited often, and integrated into every decision and strategy. To support their journey beyond the retreat, they came together to form a mutual aid network to workshop solutions and address real-time barriers along the pathways to adopting inclusive utility investments.
The insights and relationships sparked during the retreat will continue to shape how Fellows show up for each other and the communities they serve. It created space for Fellows to build trust and practice collective care. With equity at the heart of their work, this cohort is equipped to lead with intention and with one another.
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