Practical energy equity decision making in resource-constrained communities: A case study in the Navajo Nation

There is an increasing recognition of the central role of energy equity and social justice in energy planning. Governments, utilities, planners, and the research community are working to advance a more nuanced understanding of energy equity, involving distributive, procedural, recognitional, and restorative aspects. Complete energy equity requires a holistic understanding of all these aspects, and energy planning should attempt to address them simultaneously. In practice, this can be challenging in contexts where the available pool of human and economic resources is limited. This article presents a case study of a community within the Navajo Nation to illustrate the challenges and implications in such contexts. The first challenge is the inevitable prioritization and compartmentalization of decision making due to the constraints imposed by the planners’ primary mandates, authority, place-based contextual factors, and available resources. The second – related – challenge is the impact of the resulting decisions on realized outcomes, and its effects on the community perceptions of – and confidence in – the planning institutions. The case study also finds that equity concerns of the utility's end-customers may not always be uniform and are influenced by the customers’ perspectives, roles, responsibilities, and expectations. Thus, a more holistic view of energy planning is necessary to 1) capture the variations of equity opinions and priorities across all stakeholders, 2) to ensure that decisions and resource allocations by utilities, elected bodies, or governmental agencies occur on multiple fronts in a coordinated and transparent manner to advance energy equity targets.