BEI’S COMMITMENTS TO RACIAL JUSTICE

Updated August 2023

BEI was founded in 2018 with a commitment to advance equitable building electrification. For us, this means enabling a transition in which all communities can move away from fossil fuels without leaving anyone behind and implementing the transition in ways that address the harm caused by discriminatory policies and systems. Low-income communities and communities of color are the least responsible for climate change, yet they continue to bear the greatest burden of failed policies of the past that were built upon systemic racism. As we move into a new future, these are the communities who must benefit most from the transition to clean energy.

In the spring of 2020, as the world seemed to wake up to the atrocity of police brutality against Black and Brown communities, BEI redoubled its efforts to proactively address systemic racism. We committed to five specific actions to advance racial equity in our work and our personal lives. Since then, we have continued to work toward these commitments and will continue to provide updates on our progress annually. As we learn and grow, we remain  dedicated to the self-reflection, curiosity, humility, and courage that are required to continue our efforts.

 
 

1. Learn the history of racist policies that intersect with building electrification.

 
 

OUR PROGRESS

Learning and sharing the history of racist policies is critical to holistically addressing longstanding inequities for Black and Brown communities and equitably distributing the benefits of building electrification. Policies to electrify homes and buildings are not just climate policies, they are also fundamentally housing policies—with major implications for affordability, gentrification, and displacement in cities. As such, BEI staff has focused significant time learning the history of housing and land use policies in the U.S. and understanding the priorities of housing justice advocates. In addition, BEI staff have spent time exploring the racial implications of energy policies, learning the history of local labor movements, and understanding the impacts of public health initiatives. BEI actively works with cities to share these histories and identify solutions to mitigate past harm. 

RELEVANT RESOURCES

 
 

2. Help city sustainability staff learn from and co-create policies with communities of color and other stakeholders who are typically left out of the policy development process.

 
 

OUR PROGRESS

The perspectives of low-income communities and communities of color are critical to ensuring building electrification programs and policies are effective and will benefit those who have been harmed by past policies. Centering these voices in the policymaking process will require local government staff to approach stakeholder engagement differently and more intentionally than they often do. BEI has worked with ten of its cities on community engagement and co-creation processes to design opportunities for increased involvement and ownership of solutions for historically under-represented communities. This includes, for example, creating new venues for participation that are more accessible to systematically disadvantaged communities, developing transparent processes for collecting and incorporating community feedback, providing fair compensation for local expertise, engaging in participatory research with potentially impacted stakeholders, and investing in capacity-building for community groups and stakeholders to increase their ability to collaborate with local, regional, and national policymakers. 

RELEVANT RESOURCES

 
 

3. Support city staff in developing strategies to address racial inequities through building electrification policies and programs.

 
 

OUR PROGRESS

Implemented well, building electrification can improve housing affordability, enhance environmental health, increase access to high quality jobs, and improve economic opportunities for people of color and other historically marginalized communities. These are clear benefits that can help create a more just society, but delivering these benefits will require centering the priorities of communities that have been historically marginalized and directing new public investments to those who need them most. BEI coaches our cities to move past a standpoint of simply trying to do no harm and into a more proactive role of using climate and sustainability policies to address ongoing inequities in their communities. This has required both BEI staff and our cities to work with social and racial justice experts, lean into the tensions that are inherent to complex social issues, and work intentionally at the intersections of housing, health, resiliency, workforce, economic development, and climate change policy to enable change.  

RELEVANT RESOURCES

 
 

4. Develop hiring and retention practices for BEI that will increase the racial diversity of our staff and support the professional development of our internal leaders of color.

 
 

OUR PROGRESS

BEI is working to increase the racial diversity of our staff and remains committed to the goal of diversifying our team. As we continue to grow our staff, we are actively exploring new hiring channels and processes to ensure we are recruiting talented individuals who bring a diverse set of experiences. We also recognize the importance of creating an inclusive work environment to retain our staff and investing in internal processes that reward creativity, curiosity, and new perspectives within the organization. BEI has expanded its senior management team and invested in new management processes over the last year to ensure that all staff feel supported in their professional development and growth. In 2023, BEI also completed an internal leadership and communications training that helped us generate greater understanding and empathy for each other based on our lived experiences, individual skills, and perspectives. By centering diversity, understanding, and empathy as foundations for BEI’s success and investing in supportive structures for our staff, we are striving to create a work environment in which all of our leaders can thrive as we work to equitably address climate change over the long-term.

RELEVANT RESOURCES

 
 

5. Examine and dismantle the ways in which white supremacy may continue to affect our work culture and engage in an ongoing learning process to become anti-racist leaders in our field.

 
 

OUR PROGRESS

We recognize that advancing social and racial equity with our cities requires us to lead by example. To this end, BEI staff has participated in numerous racial justice learning opportunities hosted by NEWHAB, USDN, and other partners and we hold regular internal discussions to reflect on ongoing social and racial equity challenges. In 2023, BEI staff participated in Common Spark Consulting’s “Energy (in)Equity” training to better understand how the energy industry has historically perpetuated systemic and racial injustice, and what policy makers can do to reverse past harms. We have also sought to identify how white supremacy continues to manifest in our work and address issues that are common in our field, such as perfectionism, defensiveness, a false sense of urgency, and the tendency to reward quantity over quality. Dismantling white supremacy in all its forms will not happen overnight, but we remain committed to doing our part to rectify systemic racism and oppression wherever we see it, including in our own work culture. 

RELEVANT RESOURCES