The burdens of the energy system do not fall equally on all electricity and gas utility customers. The production, delivery, and consumption of electricity and gas causes disproportionate social, health, and economic costs and benefits for low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous people, and rural customers, among others.
State legislators and regulators are establishing new goals and processes to promote energy equity. With rapid changes in consumer technologies like energy-efficient heat pumps, rooftop solar and battery storage, equity goals related to distributed energy resources are increasingly important.
Berkeley Lab's new report, Distributional Equity Analysis for Energy Efficiency and Other Distributed Energy Resources: A Practical Guide, describes a seven-stage framework for answering the question, What are the distributional equity impacts of utility resource investments in the context of cost-effectiveness evaluation? In addition to the DEA Guide, there is a short summary of the framework and a companion document that discusses stakeholder engagement for distributional equity analysis. The report builds on the conceptual distributional equity analysis frameworks developed by the National Energy Screening Project and the Energy Equity Project.