The Role of NGOs in Climate Resilience: Evidence from Tallahassee Smart Meters

• In Event: Resilience in Action: Insights into Private and Public Sector Responses to Climate Risks

Abstract

A growing body of literature recognizes the far reach NGOs can have in their local communities. NGOs act as an intermediary, aligning government initiatives and resources with community needs. This role is particularly important for disadvantaged communities who are less resilient to climate change and face longer recoveries after climate-related disasters. Ongoing research builds a comprehensive national repository of NGOs who engage with government resources in the climate hazard space and analyzes how they reach out to and establish trust with marginalized communities. This paper builds on that work, combining a database of Tallahassee NGOs with granular household-level smart meter data to quantify outcomes of NGO activity and outreach.

Specifically, we examine if the presence of community NGOs can decrease power outage durations after major climate events. We focus on 2016, 2017, and 2018 when Tallahassee experienced hurricanes Hermine, Irma, and Michael respectively. Hermine left 100,000 without power, Irma affected thousands, and Michael knocked out power to 97% of electricity customers (Ensley & Burlew, 2023). Existing literature recognizes the social and spatial disparities of power restoration (e.g. Coleman et al., 2023); nevertheless, there remains a need for more spatially granular outage data. With our Tallahassee smart meter data, we can obtain outages down to the address in 30-minute increments and track outage durations after these major hurricanes with high accuracy and precision.

Tallahassee utilities prioritize the largest groups without power (Talgov, n.d.), meaning disadvantaged groups can be inadvertently overlooked. As NGOs bridge government resources to community needs, we hypothesize that increased presence of NGOs promoted outage recovery after hurricanes Hermine, Irma, and Michael for disadvantaged communities in Tallahassee relative to little or no NGO presence. From our preliminary exploration, however, the distribution of NGOs in Tallahassee are unevenly concentrated in majority white census tracts and block groups. Thus, while NGOs could improve recovery outcomes for any given community, such an uneven spread of NGOs may end up contributing to climate hazard inequalities as a whole. To better understand these dynamics, we use NGO tax filings to further probe how different types of NGOs support their communities. Combining granular outage data with detailed NGO classifications enables comparisons across Tallahassee communities, shedding light on the distributional equity of NGO-related climate outcomes and the consequent implications for future policy design with regards to climate disaster preparation, support, and recovery.

Works Cited:

Coleman, N., Esmalian, A., Lee, C., Gonzales, E., Koirala, P., & Mostafavi, A. (2023, May). Energy inequality in climate hazards: Empirical evidence of social and spatial disparities in managed and hazard-induced power outages. Sustainable Cities and Society, 92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2023.104491

Ensley, G., & Burlew, J. (2023, September 10). Hurricane history: Tallahassee’s hits and near misses since the 1800s. Tallahassee Democrat. https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2023/09/08/hurricane-history-tallahassee-hits-and-near-misses-since-the-1800s-kate-michael-hermine-idalia/70742255007/

Talgov. (n.d.). How power is restored by the city of Tallahassee utilities. City of Tallahassee Utilities. https://www.talgov.com/you/power-restoration

Author

• Daniel Han, Florida State University
  Presenting Author