Households in Extractive Communities: A Crucial Dimension of Energy Transition

Bringing energy transition down to the scale of home has commonly focused on energy consumption—rooftop solar, programmable thermostats, and so forth. Rarely, however, do researchers consider what is happening in homes at the production end of energy transition: the households that are adjacent to fossil fuel extraction, such as coal mines and oil wells. At these sites, three different dimensions of energy transition are salient:

• The experience of environmental burdens such as air pollution, toxic spills, and loss of access to valued lands.
• The economic and cultural uncertainty surrounding the future of the oil, gas, or coal industry.
• Increasingly, the experience of climate disasters, such as fires, floods, hurricanes, and extreme heat.

In fossil fuel extraction communities, hardships stemming from all three of these forces position households to benefit greatly from a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. However, such communities have complicated ties to fossil fuels; many are economically dependent on fossil fuel extraction, have strong cultural associations with these industries, or have governments that are committed to ongoing extraction. Finding pathways to climate resilience requires thoughtful collaboration among multidisciplinary researchers and these overburdened communities.

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