Institutionalizing Energy Justice-Measuring Equity Commitments in the Design of the U.S. Solar for All Program

• In Event: Environmental Justice, DEI, and Threats to Equity Work

Abstract

In 2024, the United States launched the $7 billion Solar for All (SFA) program under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to expand residential solar access among low-income and disadvantaged communities. Unlike earlier tax-based incentives, SFA delegates substantial discretion to subnational implementing entities to design eligibility criteria, target populations, and participation mechanisms. This decentralization raises a central sociological question: how are justice principles institutionalized in climate policy design before implementation?
Drawing on the energy justice framework, this study reconceptualizes distributive, procedural, and recognition justice as measurable features of governance architecture. It analyzes 16 publicly available pre-implementation SFA work plans using a two-stage computational mixed-method design. First, document-level semantic embeddings and cosine similarity metrics assess textual convergence across work plans. Mean pairwise similarity is 0.62 (median = 0.64), indicating substantial baseline alignment consistent with federal guidance. However, hierarchical clustering at the median similarity threshold yields two stable document clusters (7 and 9 plans), revealing structured heterogeneity in the embedding of justice commitments.
Building on this divergence, the study develops an Equity Commitment Index (ECI) that operationalizes distributive, procedural, recognition, and restorative justice through theory-grounded institutional indicators. By shifting attention upstream to the policy design stage, this research identifies governance architecture as a critical arena in which climate equity is structured before implementation and observable outcomes.

Author

• Chia-Hang Hsu, University of Florida