America’s Energy Gamble

Shanti Gamper-Rabindran

Shanti Gamper-Rabindran, professor in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, recently published the book, “America’s Energy Gamble: People, Economy and Planet,” which documents the obstacles, challenges, and benefits of the transition to renewable energy. The book has garnered wide attention from both specialist and popular media. She sat down for the following exchange.

Q: Does America’s Energy Gamble provide ammunition for policy changes?

A: “America’s Energy Gamble” explains how Americans will need to change our political and policy framework that limits choices in both the public and private sectors. We can either direct more investments into deploying renewable energy, for which the technology is cost-effective and proven, or we can direct more taxpayer subsidies into technologies like blue hydrogen and carbon capture, whose financial and technological outlook is very risky. A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study found that the United States could decarbonize 75% of its electric grid by deploying clean energy and keeping some existing nuclear and fossil gas power plants. 

Q: What are the “Just Transition” principles in energy transition? 

A: The Just Transition envisions workers and communities shifting from reliance on fossil fuel extractive economies to securing quality livelihoods in the greener regenerative economy. Investment in a regenerative economy—renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture, and ecosystem health—can generate jobs. We need to make an orderly shift of funding from the current immense support for the oil and gas industry toward making investments in fossil fuel communities and in the clean energy portfolio.

Q: How does the Pitt research community support energy transition?

A: In my work, I am conducting surveys of farmers in southwestern Pennsylvania to understand how solar projects can be designed to bring local benefits, along with my colleague Tony Kerzmann in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and a team of student researchers. Many farmers are supportive of community solar projects that enable them to band together to use less-productive areas of their land to generate electricity for use in their communities. 

In another project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, my team is interviewing labor unions, non-profit organizations, community colleges, and others who are working on designing training programs for workers to enter the renewable energy, electrification, and energy efficiency sectors, including unions working with battery manufacturers.