In this episode, we hear from Dr. Destenie Nock about energy justice and her organization Peoples Energy Analytics. We discuss her work using utility energy data to further energy equity. This is an extended cut of the video version of this interview, which is available on youtube. Dr. Nock is the founder and CEO of Peoples Energy Analytics and a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work and research addresses the intersections of energy affordability, sustainability, energy justice, and designing equitable power systems.
In this episode, we hear from Dr. Destenie Nock about energy justice and her organization Peoples Energy Analytics. We discuss her work using utility energy data to further energy equity. This is an extended cut of the video version of this interview, which is available on youtube.
Dr. Nock is the founder and CEO of Peoples Energy Analytics and a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work and research addresses the intersections of energy affordability, sustainability, energy justice, and designing equitable power systems.
Connect with Dr. Nock:
https://www.peoplesenergyanalytics.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/desdes
CREDITS
Hosted and produced by Kiana Michaan
Co-produced by Lucy Little
Edited by Maxfield Biggs
Music by Naima Mackrel
Kiana: [00:00:00] Welcome to Climate With Kiana, a podcast about climate solutions shared through a framework of joy and justice. I'm your host, Kiana Michaan A solar and clean energy advocate passionate about just climate action. This season, let's dig deeper into solutions to the climate crisis through inspiring conversations with climate experts who are leading important and innovative work to shape a more just and sustainable world.
Let's cultivate hope and joy by exploring these climate solutions and visioning new possibilities together. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode features Dr. Destenie Nock. If you follow the podcast on social media, you may have already seen the video version of this conversation. This episode is an extended cut of that interview, [00:01:00] so keep listening for even more of Dr. Nock's energizing knowledge and experience.
Destenie Nock: So many more people are being told to stay in place. Go in your home, close all the windows, like make sure that you're not putting yourself at risk of heat illness, particulate matter from these wildfires. And if people are actually able to do that in their homes, be safe, have their kids in their homes with them, and be able to afford their energy bills.
To me, that is a just and equitable feature.
Kiana: Dr. Destenie Nock is the founder and CEO of Peoples Energy Analytics and a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work and research addresses the intersections of energy, affordability, sustainability, energy justice, and designing equitable power systems.
She has published a plethora of articles and research on energy equity. Here's our conversation on energy justice. Climate with Kiana is brought to you in part by support from the Clean Energy [00:02:00] Leadership Institute, also known as CELI. CELI's goal is to equip emerging leaders with the skills and expertise they need to lead the transition to a clean energy economy.
To learn more about CELI's work, to support leadership and drive an equitable, decarbonized and resilient energy ecosystem, visit clean energy leaders.org.
Destenie Nock: My company, Peoples Energy Analytics is a software as a service company, which uses data and analytics to identify who is at risk of heat stroke, heat illness, pipe freezing in their home, or who those that have very high energy bills and then we connect them with energy assistance.
The benefit of my company is that we are able to do this for pennies on the dollar, right? Like whereas before you would need to go door knocking, right? Deploy some surveys. It's gonna get really expensive very quick. But with my company, because we are starting off with the data first, we'll identify those that are at risk and then we can do [00:03:00] very targeted outreach, very targeted door knocking it.
One, reduces the cost, but also makes that outreach a lot more effective because now instead of going to people who have working air conditioners that are pretty energy efficient, but are not using them, now you can go to people that don't have acs, right? And you can target them for heat pump deployment.
Then for people that have working ACs, um, you can go to them for like bill assistance if that's what they need, right? And so then we match the certain risk type to the certain type of assistance that will be the most effective.
Kiana: Energy justice, as you said, it's because we have a deeply complex political history redlining that became grid redlining and just unequal access to to energy.
How has your personal experience with the energy system inspired you or motivated you to get into this work in the first place?
Destenie Nock: I was always interested in like, you know, making the world a better place, right? Sustainability, classic girl Scouts. But then when I was in [00:04:00] grad school. I ended up getting in a situation where I couldn't afford my bills, so we got our lights cut off right then we ran out of heat.
Um, we had an oil based heating system, so it is like, it's kind of like a prepaid meter in the sense that you have to pay for the fill and it's like a very large amount all at one time. There, there were a couple times where like the oil ran low and one time we actually did run out of heat and so that was when I was studying for my PhD.
Right. I have a degree, I have three degrees at that time. Um, one in electrical engineering, one in applied math, and one my masters in leadership for sustainable development. And so I'm just like, I feel like I'm a smart individual, right? Like I didn't consider myself to be quote unquote poor, but then turns out, like at that time I was making, um, a little bit less than minimum wage and.
That just getting my lights cut off and realizing one, how hard it was to get them turned back on. Then like, you [00:05:00] know, once we ran outta heat, how long it took to get like a person to come out with the oil and then they had to come in the house, check the pilot, like we couldn't serve the pilot ourselves.
It just was very difficult and also very scary because it happened during the winter and if all the pipes in the house froze, like we would've been on the hook with our landlord for all the damage, which later I learned would've cost about $30,000. Um, and on top of that, we would've not had a place to live with working water.
Just understanding that like with energy, even I call it the light bill, right? But it's not just the light bill, it's your food security bill 'cause of your refrigerator and your stove, right? It's your like health, safety and comfort because you're able to turn on your AC or turn on your heating system. I mean, even if you're in like natural gas based heating house without your thermostat, none of it works.
Right? Right. And like that's what electricity does. And so I think. Just learning from my own personal experience once I was without electricity, how essential it is to every [00:06:00] other service. Like electricity is the, a service that enables all other essential services. And so that really inspired me to like focus in on like social inequities within the us.
I did some before in Sub-Saharan Africa. I had studied abroad in Malawi and started doing some work. Um, there I did some stakeholder workshops in Ghana, but then. Once I was in my PhD studying, I learned that even in the US there are still a lot of people that can't afford to keep their heat on. Right.
And that, to me became very personal. Um, and that was something I wanted to solve.
Kiana: Wow. Lot of important things there. Side note, I went to Malawi like 10 years ago. I feel like it's not a common place to go. I went with a nonprofit and was in a, staying in a village with no electricity and. Like you said, I think access to electricity is so inextricably linked with human rights.
Yeah. And particularly health. I know before this we were talking about the, the health impacts related [00:07:00] to income in households and how that affects usage of heating and cooling, which has direct health impacts.
Destenie Nock: The main way that people try to save money on their electricity or their, you know, natural gas bill.
Is by adjusting the thermostat, so the heating, ventilation, air conditioning in a home that will represent 40 to 70% of your electricity or natural gas bill. And so what we see are when people are struggling, right, there's a lot of really smart people out there that want to make sure that they're not gonna go put themselves in debt.
And so what they'll do is they'll turn, you know, the thermostat way down the winter where their thermostat might be set at 50 degrees. Inside of their home. Like sometimes you can walk in, you can see their breath, or they're turning off their thermostat when they're going to work. Well, what happens then is your house becomes this place of stress, right?
And that can lead to a whole host of issues. Anxiety, right? Mental health decline. But in [00:08:00] addition, like you are putting yourself potentially at risk of like hypothermia if you're not able to keep yourself that warm. Some people are heating their homes with their stoves or their ovens. And then that also has like a level of fire risk associated with that, especially for young kids, right?
Who may unknowingly touch the, the stove. And so that then has like burn risk. And then in the summer season, you know, we're also seeing like people who are turning off their air conditioning units. Um, I have a neighbor 80 years old with cancer. She doesn't actually have a working home AC system. And has, I think, two window units for her entire house.
Well, what happened is she was taking a shower, fainted because it was so hot in the bathroom, ended up having to go to the hospital. Right. And it was lucky that her daughter had come to check on her and did a wellness check. But there's a lot of elderly, um, people that don't always have someone to come and check on them.
And so when you are [00:09:00] not able to use your air conditioning in the summer season. During a heatwave, you are super vulnerable during wildfires when you're supposed to stay at home, you're super vulnerable. Um, and we even see that in Arizona. I mean they, Arizona did a report where they looked at houses that had AC units but had experienced heat related deaths.
And, and I think roughly like 25% of them had turned off their working AC to save money on their bills. And so it does lead to health. Um, consequences and sometimes life or death consequences.
Kiana: It's so profound. I think that, yeah, hearing your personal story and that this affects so many households. I don't know, actually, do you know the numbers?
I'm sure we'll maybe get into that in a moment,
Destenie Nock: Well, actually the number of people across the us, like we don't have those numbers because one challenge with getting the scope of hate related deaths from lack of ACs is [00:10:00] one. Like if you die from heat, a lot of times it's because you fainted or you were dehydrated.
And so that might not listed as a yeah, it might not be listed as a cause of death. Right. It might be like a contusion on your head or, or something like that. Um, hypothermia, right? But then did that incur indoors outdoors, like that doesn't always happen. And then sometimes, um, things aren't even labeled as a heat related death if they, if the actual death itself occurs outside of the heat wave.
Right. So you might have become dehydrated and gone to the hospital during it, and you might die from complications, but then it's not labeled as that. So there are, I think the CDC does track it. Um, don't have the number off the top of my head, but, um, there that number is a severe underestimation. And then on top of that.
For heat related deaths, you also have emergency room visits, right, where they don't result in death. And so then you also have heat illness as well.
Kiana: How are you using utility data to make this work happen?
Destenie Nock: So with utility data, the biggest thing that [00:11:00] we do is we actually are measuring like energy use.
Like right now, I think most of the energy justice metrics are proxies. So when we're looking at like. You know, um, energy burden, for example, the thought is that you should spend less than 6% of your income on your energy bill. But where does that come from? Right? That number was made off of the fact that, um, the report had said you should not spend more than 30% of your income on your household bills, right?
And then from that 30% of the 30%, then only 20% of that should be for your energy bill. And so that's where the 6% number comes from. But there are so many people that spend more than 30% of their income on their rent, right? I mean, in the low income area, sometimes people are spending 80, 90% of their income on their rent, just trying to have a place to live.
So then they're not able to achieve that 6%. So the question is, what do we really [00:12:00] care about? Well, we care about people not having to spend a lot of money to be safe and comfortable in their home. Right. And so in order to do that, we need to have multiple metrics that look at that. So first, yes, we need to have energy burden, but then the second one is, are they safe and comfortable in their home?
Are they using AC during a heat wave? Are they using their heat during a deep freeze situation? And so that's one of the things that my metrics have. Um, accomplished. And then with the work at Peoples Energy Analytics, that's why we are really focused on who is at risk of having their pipes freeze. Okay, let's connect them to insulation weatherization.
There's a programs for that. Okay? Now they have working heat, but their bills are super high. Okay, let's now connect them to bill assistance, right? Let's connect them to more energy efficient heating, right? Maybe we're connecting them to solar. Different people are starting at different places with their.
Um, poverty risk with their vulnerability with the injustices that they're facing. And so they're gonna need different solutions [00:13:00] to really accommodate that. I mean, even renters, right? If you know somebody is a renter versus a homeowner, maybe the solar doesn't work for the renter because the landlord has to approve it, right?
So now maybe we're gonna start off then with bill assistance, and then as we were trying to get the landlord to adopt solar for the resident.
Kiana: How are you thinking about your research and the research of other energy justice scholars and you know, colleagues of yours as helping to sort of bridge the gap research wise so that we can actually implement solutions where the problems actually lie and not be south, sort of outdated information?
Destenie Nock: I think that research that ties like the community perspective. To like planning, targeting data analytics is super important. I mean, there's so many people now in this space, like of course there, Shalanda Baker, Tony Reames, Sanya Carly, Michelle Graff, uh, Diana Hernandez, right? They're all working at somewhat of this intersection of [00:14:00] like community informed research, community engaged research, and then also like what do we do?
What does that mean for policy? And I think that changing the policies around how do we identify who is at risk? Right. And then how do we design and implement solutions to improve their lives or reduce their risk? Um, that's gonna be super important. And the question is, you know, what is an acceptable level of risk?
I'm a household where my thermostat in the summer is set to 75 degrees. 'cause my husband can't stand the cold. Right? But. For us, it's 75 degrees. It's fine. I mean, we're, we're relatively young, right? Um, but for my 90-year-old grandfather, 75 degrees is way too hot. Right? Especially for different medications that he's on, right?
And things like that. And so it's about, one, understanding the community perspectives and the different, like struggles that they're facing and what does a good life [00:15:00] mean to them, I think is very important. Um, and then after we figure out, okay, there are these like, let's say seven things that are always popping to the top, that the ways that people wanna improve their lives.
And so then with those seven, what are strategies for each given the different barriers, like home ownership, right? Cost capital, cost of different technologies, um, and then just like regional availability of energy services. Like Dominic Bednar also has like a great paper on, you know, how. In Detroit, um, there like some people just couldn't get LED light bulbs.
I think it was Dominic and Tony Reames who did it. Um, and like they were just stores that just didn't have LED light bulbs, right? Such a basic level energy efficiency technology that people, some people just couldn't get in their area, right? And so overcoming these different barriers I think is one of the ways that research really helps of identifying what is the true barrier for different classes of people.
What are the policy [00:16:00] solutions? What the technology solutions, what are the social solutions?
Kiana: How do you see the role of joy in community building and community solutions? And maybe also what brings you joy in this work? Okay.
Destenie Nock: When I think of joy, I think of happiness, right? Like what makes, what makes you happy?
What makes, um, what makes your life worth living? Just seeing how people feel empowered once they feel heard, right? When they feel heard. And you then can break down the solutions that can actually work for them for their specific challenge that they were overcoming. I think that that brings me joy just because then you can also do that at scale.
Um, so for me, we recognizing that yes, we are all different and we have different places, different starting points, different things we're trying to overcome. But we're also kind of the same in that we all want to live a good and happy life. And I think like doing that scale brings me a lot of joy. And then also too, I just feel like it's a really good time right now [00:17:00] in the energy industry where people are talking about this.
Like, I remember when I first started talking about this, when I got my lights cut off and people were just like, wait, what? How on earth did you let that happen to you? Right. It was a very like battle oriented, whereas like now, you know, people are more receptive. To that, and I'm like, no. I was a smart individual and I was doing the best I could with what I had, and I still got my lights cut off.
And now we're like, let's work towards the solution. So that also just makes me hopeful.
Kiana: Is there a part of clean energy technology that you're feeling particularly excited about?
Destenie Nock: I think the energy efficiency technology often get me excited because one that allows for changes within the home. Like not everybody can change the things on their roof.
But within the home, if you're more energy efficient one, you can then, like even if you had your budget set, you can then use more energy to live the life that you wanted to live. So I think energy efficiency makes me really excited.
Kiana: [00:18:00] Amazing. Thank you so much Destiny. Um, where can people find your work? Where can people follow?
Destenie Nock: I have a Twitter @DestenieNock, my LinkedIn is often where a lot of people read about my work. Um, my company, Peoples Energy Analytics, ww peoples energy analytics.com. Yeah, all my, my social medias are very active, so that's where people can find me.
Kiana: To end on a, a note of hope. How are you envisioning a more just energy system of the future?
Destenie Nock: So, my vision for the future is that at some point everybody will be able to be safe and comfortable in their homes. I think with the pandemic, with these wildfires. So many more people are being told to stay in place. Go in your home, close all the windows, like make sure that you know you're not putting yourself at risk of.
Like heat illness, like the particulate matter from these wildfires. And if people are actually able to do that in their homes, be safe, like have their kids in their homes with them and be able to afford their energy bills. To [00:19:00] me that is a just and equitable future.
Kiana: Thank you for listening. Climate with Kiana is co-produced by Kiana Michaan and Lucy Little. This episode was edited by Maxfield Banks. Theme music by. Naima Mackrel. Thank you again to the Clean Energy Leadership Institute for their support. This podcast is recorded and produced in New York City on unceded Lenape land.
If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with a friend, leave a comment and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts. For more information about the guests and topics discussed, please visit climate with kiana.com. Until the next time, stay joyous.