Ben Passer: Energy Access and Housing Justice

Climate change threatens to change the face of our planet for the worse. The movement for the adoption of renewable energy sources in order to combat climate change caused by carbon emissions has gained significant traction in recent times. But communities of color are often left out of this narrative despite the fact that they are the ones that are going to face the brunt of the impact of climate change. On April 24, I interviewed Ben Passer, Director of Energy Access and Equity, Fresh Energy to see how a small non-profit in Minnesota is trying to incorporate the interests of communities of color and lower-income communities into energy policy.

On what was perhaps the most beautiful afternoon this April with the sun shining crisply in a clear blue sky, I met with Ben Passer at the Bad Weather Brewing Company in East Saint Paul. He came in on his bike straight from work, and greeted me with a large smile that seemed to spread infectious positivity around him. He tells me that he is currently working on organizing a meeting for an umbrella organization focusing on water efficiency, even though that does not relate to his field of work in energy efficiency and access directly. As we find a seat, he strikes up a conversation with my co-interviewer Elizabeth Hrycyna and we find out he knows her interviewee, Jennifer Nguyen Moore, who is on the environmental justice council of the Pollution Control Agency. In hindsight, this is almost unsurprising considering how much he interacts with different parts of the government and the emphasis he puts on building good relationships across the lines.

Ben is the director of the Energy Access and Equity program at Fresh Energy, a non-profit organization focused on creating and supporting policies to adopt renewable energy and solve global warming. His role in the organization revolves around making sure that the policies that are proposed by Fresh Energy benefit all sections of society equally and do not further existing inequalities through oversight in policy recommendations. Because of the nature of the work, this often spills over onto issues of housing justice as well. His program particularly focuses on making solar energy more affordable for lower income communities, as well as trying to make building owners adopt more energy efficient systems for both economical and ecological reasons.

Ben has been working at Fresh Energy for four years now, having joined them in May 2015, straight out of law school. While the work he initially did focused on energy efficiency, as time progressed and he did more and more projects, he realized there was a very obvious connection between environmental justice and the work he was doing. One such project was geared towards increasing the affordability of housing for lower-income groups by encouraging landlords in large apartment buildings to adopt more energy efficient practices thereby decreasing the cost of living due to lower energy bills, and at the same time increase the health and safety in the buildings. Another project involved pushing towards electrification of public transport, especially in regions with high air pollution, which he found to be chiefly occupied by communities of color. Seeing these connections to how embedded inequalities are within the system, Fresh Energy started their “Energy Access and Equity” program about a year ago, with Ben at the helm.

The work they do takes a variety of different forms, one of which is working at the Minnesota state legislature on bills. This can include direct lobbying in bill development, but a lot of it is also just reaching out to candidates or elected officials and educating them about why issues of energy and environmental justice matter. “It’s easy to just look at the target – we have to get to 100% renewable energy – but it’s the ANDs – we need to get to 100% renewable energy AND make sure it is affordable for MN’s lowest income families AND they’re part of the job growth created by that sector.” They also work with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) which is where a lot of utilities programs are proposed and approved: utility rates are set, long-term energy plans are filed, etc. Recently they have been trying to make the PUC more public-facing as well so that people know more about it, including what it is responsible for and how to access it. For Ben, working through an equity lens is extremely important. This involves making sure that the energy policies they work on don’t unintentionally leave out any group from the benefits, that they are not exacerbating any current disparities that exist, and finally ensuring that they don’t cause any unforeseen or unintended negative consequences. Moreover, it is not only important that everyone benefits from the policies going forward, but that they act on the situation right now to make sure that the inequalities that currently exist aren’t exacerbated due to inaction. On the issue of addressing entrenched inequities, Ben said something really powerful which demonstrates how his work not only involves pushing ahead but also its emphasis on uplifting everyone together. “It’s easy to just look at the target – we have to get to 100% renewable energy – but it’s the ANDs – we need to get to 100% renewable energy AND make sure it is affordable for MN’s lowest income families AND they’re part of the job growth created by that sector – I love looking at all of those ANDs to make sure that’s part of the solution”.

Building relationships with partners and allies across different lines is fundamental to the kind of work he engages in. He notes that people involved in policy work too often tend to treat it like a transaction, where organizations take a quid pro quo approach in which they are thinking about what they can give up in order to get a particular policy implemented. When organizations exclusively do that, they fail to realize the value of forming good ties with groups who hold similar interests, and this makes them ineffective in the long run. The relations Fresh Energy builds with its partners are particularly useful in order to have access to community voices. As a more policy-oriented organization Fresh Energy has not traditionally been in public spaces and so they rely on their partners such as Sierra Club, ISAIAH, MN350 and Community Sustainability Project (CSP) who have more direct ties with community members. Fresh Energy has been working with CSP on the Saint Paul Tenant-Landlord Energy Project for quite some time now. The program’s objective is to level the power dynamic between tenants and landlords , which is usually the worst for lower-income tenants, by elevating renter voices and encouraging transparency of energy costs on rental properties. Ben had also been pursuing an ordinance to make access to average monthly energy bills to prospective buyers or renters a mandatory disclosure, thus giving renters additional decision-making powers they do not usually have and allows them to make more informed choices. The ordinance was recently passed by the city of Minneapolis, marking an important milestone in housing equity for the city.

When I asked Ben about the obstacles he faces in his work, he let out a hearty laugh and said he would need at least two hours to answer that question fully. On a personal level, Ben says it is quite a dilemma to decide what kinds of issues he could be working on. “There’s so much we have to do – the climate crisis is real, there’s a lot to get done and there’s only so many different things we can keep our eyes on and trying to identity the issues on which we can make an impact and how much time and bandwidth and resources we have to give can be really challenging.” In his job on the ground, the main barrier to progress tends to be political will. Political will ends up playing a major part in helping with the implementation of bills and policies statewide or even within a locality, and unfavorable legislative environments or internal barriers in government organizations are factors that impede the amount of progress that can be made with energy policy. So what keeps him motivated to keep working in the face of stubborn politics? Ben feels that it is understanding the significance of this challenge he is working on, in terms of not only introducing renewable energy but also making sure that there is equity in how different sections of society get access to it, that helps him carry on despite the barriers he faces in his job with political obstinacy. The responsibility and burden of knowing that the work he does is to benefit populations and entire communities of people that haven’t benefited in the past motivates him to show up and do better every day.

But has he ever had to deal with climate change deniers? He reveals that thankfully there are not many who deny climate change is happening in his field of work. “There is a general consensus that something needs to be done, but there’s many different voices on how we should do it”, he said. However, he feels that environmental racism as a concept is not something that is being considered by most energy advocates. Climate change is going to affect underrepresented groups the most, and they’re working to adopt policies which reduce climate change. Even though people have started having conversations about equity and inclusive processes, yet there still exists a mental disconnect between working on energy issues and seeking to recognize and remediate historical disparities faced by communities of color and lower income communities to ensure everyone reaps the benefits of renewable energy and sensible tenancy practices. There is a general air of skepticism around energy work and social justice / racial equity coming together and they are still seen as mutually exclusive entities. Ben is quick to point out that his peers somehow fail to see that several studies have shown that communities of color in the US and around the globe are disproportionately impacted by climate change. He thinks the link between promoting renewable energy to mitigate climate change and social justice is quite explicitly clear – climate change is going to affect underrepresented groups the most, and they’re working to adopt policies which reduce climate change.

When asked about advice he would give to younger people aspiring to work in an environmental justice related field, Ben is chock-full of suggestions. He recommends getting involved right now, however that might look for someone. Getting involved in politics, going to rallies, volunteering or interning at local organizations, are all great ways to “get in”. The benefits are twofold: one can not only soak in what it is like to work in environmental justice, but it also is an opportunity to get facetime with people who are already in the field and networking with a lot of people in this way is helpful to form connections which can come up later during job searches. The other thing he suggests it to have an open mind about the form your work can take and not to rule anything out. He gives his own example – going into law school, he was prepared to work in a team of 500 attorneys and work 80 hours a week and if he hadn’t been open to all possibilities it wouldn’t have allowed him to start working with Fresh Energy as a policy associate and do the work he was doing today.

Ben serves an important example of how one can engage with and contribute to the environmental justice movement in many different ways. For some, being on the frontlines as an activist, as a part of “Blockadia” (Klein, 2015) is what makes the most sense. And yet for others, environmental justice can take the form of engaging in desk jobs in order to create a framework and precedent for dealing with environmental justice issues. Their non-activism does not necessarily mean that they are somehow less involved or invested in the movement. This is best summed up in Ben’s own words: “I think environmental justice wasn’t something that I really set out to do or I even knew I really wanted to do but once I realized what was happening it just kind of clicked. I started to recognize that environmental justice is important and how it is present in the work I’m doing everyday and it began to resonate with me. Now, it drives me on a daily basis.”