Interview with Shalanda Baker, Former DOE Equity Advisor

Catherine: Hi, I’m Catherine McLean, Founder and CEO of Dylan Green. And we are filming today from the WRISE Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C., and I’m very excited to have with me Dr. Shalanda Baker. Thank you for joining me.

Shalanda: My pleasure.

Catherine: Shalanda, Dr. Baker is the inaugural vice provost for Sustainability and Climate Action at the University of Michigan. First, I wanted to congratulate you on this new role.

Shalanda: Thank you.

Catherine: The University of Michigan’s, for those who may not know, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about why you’re so excited to work there?

Shalanda: Yeah, of course. So, I should say I’m only a JD, not a PhD. People call me doc all the time. People insist on it even after I say I’m not a PhD. So, I just kind of roll with it.

Catherine: Am I okay to call you Shalanda?

Shalanda: Call me Shalanda. Madam Vice Provost also. I gotta tell you, this nail polish, I’m not taking off because it’s Madam President.

Catherine: Love it.

Shalanda: So, I’m trying to get good vibes. So, I’m Shalanda Baker, and I’m an academic. So, I’m a lawyer and an academic. I taught for 12, 13 years before being asked to lead energy justice for the nation and the Department of Energy. And so, most recently, I led the department’s Office of Energy Justice and Equity, which is a name that I gave that office, but it was an office really focused on creating economic opportunities to communities often left behind and particularly communities of color. It was focused on setting the environmental justice model for the agency and then doing the policy and rewiring to make sure all the money we were spending in the department is actually going to be spent in an equitable way. So, I left that job in June after 42 months to return to academia, but to return in a new role, which I actually perceive as sort of helping to transform the academy into a place where we can rapidly accelerate climate action. And so, I think academic institutions are often an afterthought. We consider climate action, we consider sustainability.
Obviously, there’s so much great research happening there, but in terms of actually accelerating action on climate, they’re often not considered. And there are many universities, top-tier universities, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, now University of Michigan, and others who are trying to jump into this game and say, hey, we have so many students who want to jump into the climate action space. We have professors and scholars who are already doing great work.
How do we tap in to this moment that is a window that is kind of unprecedented in its scope and scale? And so, I’m there to lead that effort for the entire university.

Catherine: You’ve said the last three and a half years have been the hardest part of your life. But also allowed you to integrate the most sacred parts of your life with academic and policy work you’ve been committed to for over a decade. Can you elaborate on this and share some of the most significant challenges you’ve encountered, specifically around those marginalized communities and how they can benefit from this Clean Energy Initiative?

Shalanda: Sure. So, my job was to ensure that our energy transition was just and equitable. And so, just because the president said we’re going to have an equitable energy transition doesn’t mean we make it so. I entered into a government system that was not designed for equity. The Department of Energy, even though we had this amazing office, Minority Economic Impact is what the office is called in the statute that created it. But we had this office in the Department of Energy, but the department itself wasn’t really set up to facilitate justice and equity. It was set up to do research, cutting edge research and development. And in the span of three and a half years, all of us had to elevate our game, not only to move into deployment activities and large scale demonstration activities, but also to make sure that in those new activities, we were embedding equity and justice. So, there was a lot of breaking stuff. A lot of sort of fitting square pegs into round holes and sort of chiseling into the infrastructure and architecture of the agents to make justice work. So, that’s hard work. And one of my teammates, who is a lovely PhD, described it as my being the tip of the spear. So, I am, and I’m the wedge. So, I’m the one who had to go in and break down barriers every single day so that my team could come behind me and continue to do the work.
So, it was absolutely the hardest job because of structural challenges, but then also because I knew the urgency of the process. You know that communities of color tend to be in the shadows of fossil fuel generation, regardless of income. So, even if you’re not a low income Black American, you’re still more likely than your white counterpart to be breathing in dirty, toxic air.
So, there’s a structural racism problem with the energy system on that front. We also know that there are so many households that are facing energy insecurity, which is juggling bills, trying to decide whether to heat or cool your home or eat every single lump. I grew up in a household. And one in three Americans lives in that situation.
But we also know we have this extraordinary opportunity where at the Department of Energy alone, we have $100 billion that was going to be spent and is scheduled to be spent in the next five to ten years. And what I saw was this incredible opportunity to make sure that money reduced pollution impacts, reduced the cost of energy, created jobs, and also created generational wealth by having disadvantaged, underrepresented businesses be plugged in as suppliers and even as prime contractors on these projects. So, every day I was running and I was hitting walls every single day, but I had to keep running.

Catherine: As the architect of the Justice 40 initiative, you have had many historic accomplishments while working at the DOE. One example is the implementation of the DOE’s first-ever equity action plan. The EAPs have addressed foundational issues with how data is collected concerning underserved and underrepresented populations and established the DOE’s commitment to community benefits plan. Can you share more about this and the impact that it’s had?

Shalanda: Sure, sure. So, the equity action plan is really a product of a directive issued by the president. So, on day one, the president issued executive order 13985. It was a day one order on racial justice. And in that executive order, he called on every single federal agency to examine the barriers that existed within their agency vis-a-vis underrepresented populations and marginalized populations. So, he said, I need every agency to explore barriers that underrepresented folks face when accessing agency resources. That had never been done before. And so, we at the Department of Energy, I mean, I started on day one. Here’s the executive order. I had to stand up an entire infrastructure within the agency to do that analysis and grapple with that question. And so, we had a team of 150 people who were doing that analysis across the entire department. And then we came out with our first equity action plan, which was good. I mean we had to bring everybody with us. So, it was as good as we could all get together. It couldn’t go too far, too hard, too fast. We needed to make sure everybody was there. And we did make commitments in that first equity action plan around data collection, around community engagement, stakeholder engagement, etc.
We then kept working. And there were other policy directives happening, like Justice 40 and other things. And at the agency, we had committed to a community benefits plan as a part of our financial assistance that we were providing to companies, essentially, to the energy transition.
And so, we set the requirement as an agency that every single applicant for the Department of Energy funding had to have a plan for community engagement, had to have a plan for true economic benefits for underrepresented, disadvantaged, marginalized communities, had to have a plan for getting businesses into, underrepresented businesses into their big project, and had to have a plan for high-paying, good-quality jobs. And so, all of that was not only responsive to that day one order on racial justice and equity, but it was responsive to an entire policy framework that the president erected within the first month of his term. And so, that’s the community benefits plan. And in our second equity action plan, we really doubled down on that commitment to making sure underrepresented folks and marginalized communities actually had a seat at the table, a voice, a voice, absolutely. So, that was a lot of policy, like jujitsu, but I hope you’re tracking in terms of the different pieces.

Catherine: It’s very interesting to me. I mean, if you don’t mind, just another question that keeps coming to my mind is, how did you get involved on day one? Like, how were you there at that moment? You don’t have to answer that, but I mean, I think because I’m a recruiter, I’m always like, how did you, like talk to you about the journey? How did you get the call?

Shalanda: Yeah. Well, so as I mentioned, I’m an academic, but I’ve always moonlit as an activist. So, I’ve started two different organizations focused on energy justice. The first in Hawaii, I’m really trying to plug communities into Hawaii’s energy transition through deep community work, round tables. I brought students along with me. We started that back in 2014.
And then I moved to Northeastern University in Boston, and there I had the opportunity to establish a national organization called the Initiative for Energy Justice, which I co-founded. And that was really designed to bring communities into policy conversations in every state. So, we were really trying to provide tools, resources, policy guides to facilitate that. And so, and I was writing, and I wrote a book, and I did this stuff. And that, in some ways, wasn’t popular for a long time. Like, to suggest that communities should have a seat at the table on climate, that was a pretty novel intervention in 2010, 2012.
Catherine: First, you got to get people to agree there’s an issue with climate. And then there’s an issue with underserved communities. It’s a lot to overcome.

Shalanda: And so, I was sort of fighting my colleagues in environment, and we were working on climate in those early days to say, look, guys, we have to worry about justice and equity. Otherwise, we’re going to replicate a system that has produced a lot of inequality. That’s right.
And they were like, we just want to make sure climate gets on the table. And I was like, yeah, we can do both and, right? And also, if we don’t bring communities with us, they’re going to fight every single clean energy project you’re trying to do. And finally, it took about a decade before that became a thing, but I had been writing about it. And so, I think I built a lot of credibility within the movement, activist movement, as a scholar who had commitments to the community. Okay. And I had built a lot of credibility within the academic community, because I’m writing about it, before a lot of people jumped into that game. And so, when President Biden was a candidate, he said, I’m going to rebuild our country after COVID. So, there’s an economic promise. I’m going to fight the climate crisis, tackle the climate crisis. And I’m going to make racial justice a cornerstone of my administration.
So, he was going to do all three of those things. And he, on the campaign trail, said, I’m going to do something called EJ40, which is 40% of the spending at that time, on climate and clean energy, is going to go to those frontline communities, which could be used as a goal. I mean, remember that moment? It was May and June of 2020. George Floyd had just been killed. We were having a reckoning. With racial justice. And communities were dying because of the pandemic, both the health consequences and the economic consequences of the pandemic. And we were experiencing the hottest year on record. So, all of those things were converging. Meanwhile, I was working in my little corner. And once President Biden was elected, I got a call out of nowhere. And they were like, can you lead Justice 40 for the Department of Energy? Which is essentially leading the just and equitable energy transition for the country.

Catherine: Oh, my goodness. What must that have felt like? Was it vindication? Did you feel like, finally, this is the moment I’ve been working towards? It must have been so incredibly exciting for you.

Shalanda: I often work in a way where I don’t know what I’m working toward. I know that I care about justice. I know that those are my commitments. I never had any dog in the fight in terms of wanting to be a political person. Because what I said to them when I got the job was, are you sure? Because I’ve written all these things and I am who I am. I have strong commitments to justice and equality. They’re like, no, we need you. We want you. And it was an honor. Honestly, I felt like such a calling. And I knew it was going to be hard, but I thought, if not me, then who? I knew who was in the space. And I was like, I think it has to be me. But I’d never done anything like that before. It was cool.

Catherine: Speaking of your accomplishments at the DOE, I’d love to have you tell the story of how the Regional Energy Democracy Initiative REDI formed, as well as the $8 billion kickoff with over 50 projects in the Gulf South.

Shalanda: Sure. So I talked about community benefits. I mentioned that we had $100 billion to be spent at the Department of Energy. Sixty new programs were stood up under the bipartisan infrastructure law and Evasion Reduction Act. A lot of people are like, oh, you lead Justice 40.
So that means you’re focused on communities. And yes, I am. And I was. But those 60 new projects are not for community solar and they’re not for community owned wind projects or EVs. I mean, some of the projects are actually one of the programs focused on EV infrastructure, but they’re for massive industrial projects. A lot of people don’t realize that the energy transition is about industry. It’s about transitioning every single aspect of our economy and our energy economy into one that’s clean. So that means carbon capture and storage. It means hydrogen.
It means battery manufacturing and recycling. It means critical mineral mining. That’s the $100 billion. If you break it up and slice it up, it was broken into industrial projects. And so we wedged in this community benefits requirement to make sure industry had to connect with community living, had to hire underrepresented people, including returning citizens, had to engage the local community where those projects were going to land. But in my mind, I was thinking, oh, my God, these communities, some of them are going to receive tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of projects in their region. How will they really be able to negotiate benefits in a meaningful way? With industry on the other side of the table. It’s difficult enough for an agency like the Department of Energy to negotiate with industry. Imagine communities, who have so much to gain.

Catherine: David and Goliath

Shalanda: And so once we were able to stand up all of this community benefits plan architecture, I got to work thinking about the capacity building architecture as well. And so REDI was a product of that. So the $8 billion you referenced is $8 billion in DOE money going into the Gulf South for things like carbon capture, direct air capture, and massive industrial projects in communities and in a region that has already experienced so much harm for a century. And so we kicked off the Regional Energy Democracy Initiative to basically create a consortium of resources for communities in that area. So it’s a clearinghouse of information. It’s legal assistance. It’s community economic development advice.
It’s a little hub, an engine of power for the local community and the region to tap into to understand, OK, how can we think about benefits for this region in a more broad way? Instead of having to work with one company at a time. Hey, if there are 50 projects, there are 50 companies. How do we how does so REDI is a consortium that will take the step back and say, hey, there are 50 projects. So why don’t you create a regional workforce development hub and a training center that every single project can contribute to? That way you don’t have 50 training centers, you have one and you’re sort of leveraging the resources coming into that area.
Or, hey, why don’t we do a microgrid for this community that’s impacted by hurricanes constantly? Let’s have every single company that is bringing money into this area contribute to this microgrid. So, again, the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. And you’re able to maximize and deepen the positive impact and hopefully mitigate some of the negative ones, which we know are going to come because development in this country doesn’t have a good track record. Who loses? Black people, brown people, indigenous people lose so often. Poor people, rural communities, people without political voice, they lose.
And so REDI was also about creating a space for voice. And creating an accountability mechanism for those benefits that all those companies said they were going to provide.

Catherine: I mean, I just imagine those communities when this came, when they came to realize like what this they were going to have at their disposal for so long being without those sorts of things, how meaningful that must have been to them, how empowering it must have felt to them that someone was focusing on them.

Shalanda: I mean, yes and no. So there was also a lot of skepticism. I mean, a lot of these communities were like, yeah, we were promised jobs when the oil, oil and gas industry came here. We were promised jobs. Because power still remains. And honestlyI’ve talked to industry executives who are like, oh, well, those people don’t qualify for the jobs we have. So I’m like, OK, sure. How do we close the gap? So we need industry to sort of say, OK, I’m going to roll up my sleeves to create a workforce that’s qualified. If it’s a high school graduate. Let’s work with a high school graduate to make that happen. Let’s work with the school district. So the community members were a little skeptical because they’d made promises before. And so my job when I was inside the federal government was to sort of say, can you be patient with us? Can you give us grace as we try to do something we’ve never done before? Recognizing that there is a lot of risk that comes with this activity.

Catherine: Do you think this historic momentum that you had at the DOE is going to continue?

Shalanda: Well I wanted to make sure that it was never about me. Right. So one person and one personality can’t. Well, they can make a lot of impact. And I’m proud of what I did. But it was never going to be the Shalonda Baker transition. It had to be the team that I built. It had to be the fourteen thousand colleagues I had that were going to lead it. And so what I know is that I left behind a team of 100 people when I was one, when I walked in that door. So that’s one truth. I know I leave behind a policy framework that every single office in the Department of Energy is committed to implementing. And I know that money is leaving that agency with contractual mechanisms embedded within it that are going to hold companies accountable. And so what it’s going to take, though, to keep the momentum going is courage. And I talked about that today at this conference. Every day I was challenged. Every day was hard and I had to be courageous. And then that’s what changing the world requires. And all of us have to commit to that. And if we want a better world, if we want a world where hurricanes are not barreling down on the same region week after week, if we want a world where people can afford their power, have clean air and water, we have to fight for it. We were born into this moment to be fighters. So your kid whoever the women who are at this conference have kids right now, we gotta fight for them. Someone fought so that I was not being changed today. Someone fought. So I’m fighting for the next generation. I don’t have kids, but I’m fighting for the generations to come after me. But it requires courage and requires saying, no, we’re not going to do it that way this time. And so everyone I left behind at the agency has to do that. And I’m going to continue to do it wherever I go.

Catherine: Yeah. Thank you so much. I’m getting emotional. Thank you so much for talking to us. It’s so nice to meet you.

Shalanda: Let’s do the good work.