Justice in Renewable Energy Supply Chains

Examining injustices in US solar and wind energy supply chains.

Research News

California’s Solar Market Faces Seven Forms of Corruption—Including “Sex for Solar” (6/4/2025)

Community Input Is Critical to a Just Clean Energy Transition, New California Case Studies Illustrate (11/15/2024)

Renewable power will play a significant role in advancing clean energy goals in the United States — but with its development has come unexpected social, economic, and environmental harms to the communities involved. To help steer renewable energy transitions onto more just and equitable paths, Boston University’s Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS) is visiting multiple sites across the US representing different stages of the renewable energy supply chain.

Leading this effort are highly cited energy justice scholar Benjamin Sovacool, Director of IGS, and Xander Dunlap, an IGS Research Fellow with expertise in the lifecycles of solar project development. The project is funded by the Sloan Foundation.

Research Goals & Approach

At the center of this research initiative are in-depth site visits to explore community vulnerabilities to renewable energy’s impacts, ranging from extraction and production to generation and waste processes. These sites include the Genesis Solar Energy Project in the California desert, the Rio Tinto Kennecott mine in Utah, manufacturing facilities operated by First Solar in Ohio, and varied electronic waste operations that span a penitentiary in Florida, a formal facility in Arizona, and scrapyards in California. The information collected is explored through the lens of theories and approaches encompassing green extractivism, dispossession, Indigenous energy justice, and political ecology.