The Departments of Economics and Sociology welcome Gabriel Lade, associate professor and the C. Williams Swank Chair in Rural-Urban Policy at The Ohio State University, and Stephen Scanlan, professor of sociology and chair of the Sociology & Anthropology Department at Ohio University, to discuss the environmental, economic and human consequences of the renewable energy transition for rural America.
Please join us on Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. in Hayes Hall 109.
Environmentalists have long championed a renewable energy transition as a primary mechanism to mitigate climate change. As with all energy transitions, costs and benefits are not distributed equally across populations and space. Rural areas like Knox County are prime for renewable energy development, with cheap land values and tradespeople skilled at maintaining energy equipment. Yet, these same areas may be impacted adversely by a lack of remediation from previous extraction activities, exposure to potential environmental risks during renewable energy development, and uncertain distribution of costs and benefits for the community which will likely take on new and unexpected forms compared to previous energy extraction such as fossil fuels.