Jennie C. Stephens

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at National University of Ireland, Maynooth

The use of fossil-derived hydrocarbons in fossil energy, plastic production, and agriculture makes these three sectors mutually reinforcing and reliant on sustained fossil fuel extraction. In this paper, we examine the ways the fossil fuel energy, plastics, and agrichemicals industries interact on social media using Twitter (renamed X as of 2023) d...

Despite uncertainties about its feasibility and desirability, start-up companies seeking to profit from solar geoengineering have begun to emerge. One company is releasing balloons filled with sulfur dioxide to sell “cooling credits”, claiming that the cooling achieved when 1 g of SO2 is released is equivalent to offsetting one ton of carbon dioxid...

Energy justice analysis requires assessing who is benefiting, who is being excluded, and whether and how the expansion of renewable energy and the phasing out of fossil fuels are reinforcing or disrupting inequities, disparities, and the concentration of wealth and power. Contributing to the idea of “a just transition”, energy justice recognizes th...

The evolution of fossil fuel industry tactics for obstructing climate action, from outright denial of climate change to more subtle techniques of delay, is under growing scrutiny. One key site of ongoing climate obstructionism identified by researchers, journalists, and advocates is higher education. Scholars have exhaustively documented how indust...

The Republic of Ireland is considered a climate leader-having passed ambitious climate plans, including the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act (2018)-and a climate laggard, as policy implementation has been weak failing to effectively reduce emissions. This chapter reviews the nuanced landscape of climate obstruction in Ireland describing the evolution of...

Responding to the climate crisis requires social and economic innovation—because climate change is a symptom of patriarchal capitalist systems that are concentrating—rather than distributing—wealth and power. Despite the need for social and economic innovation, technological innovation continues to be prioritized in climate policy and climate inves...

A radical exploration of how higher education can advance transformative climate justice. Amid the worsening climate crisis and intensifying inequities, higher education can play a powerful role in addressing the intersecting crises facing humanity. Institutions of higher education hold untapped potential to advance social justice and reduce clima...

Global financial architectures, including central banks and their monetary policies, are critical to leveraging transformative change for climate justice. Yet, currently central banks are exacerbating rather than mitigating the climate crisis and climate injustices. By following a neoliberal policy paradigm and narrowly interpreted mandates for pri...

The current sharing economy suffers from system-wide deficiencies even as it produces distinctive benefits and advantages for some participants. The first generation of sharing markets has left us to question: Will there be any workers in the sharing economy? Can we know enough about these technologies to regulate them? Is there any way to avoid th...

Moving beyond technocratic approaches to climate action, climate justice articulates a paradigm shift in how organizations think about their response to the climate crisis. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by exploring the potential of this paradigm shift in higher education. Through a commitment to advancing transformative climate justic...

As social scientists, we are concerned about the impact of the National Academies Report on solar geoengineering. It has already set into motion a major, federally coordinated national research program in the United States to develop this dangerous technology. We emphasize that scientists and researchers are not the ones who will be making decision...

This paper contributes to the post-Keynesian debate on central banking by arguing that for monetary policy to be effective in countering the growing risks of climate disruption it will have to adopt a climate justice approach and thus integrate climate action with social, economic, and spatial justice. This will require a new kind of alignment of m...

Purpose of Review This review explores how more transformative climate policies are emerging arguing that such policies require decision-makers to move beyond the dominant, narrow technocratic lens that I call climate isolationism. Recent Findings Climate isolationism refers to the common framing of climate change as an isolated, discrete, scienti...

Responding to the climate crisis requires a large-scale transformation of energy systems away from fossil fuels toward a more distributed, equitable, renewable-based society. The societal benefits of this transformation which could redistribute power, literally and figuratively, go well beyond decarbonization; a renewable society could also be a he...

Sacred Civics argues that societal transformation requires that spirituality and sacred values are essential to reimagining patterns of how we live, organize and govern ourselves, determine and distribute wealth, inhabit and design cities, and construct relationships with others and with nature. The book brings together transdisciplinary and globa...

Many U.S. states have taken significant action on climate change in recent years, demonstrating their commitment despite federal policy gridlock and rollbacks. Yet, there is still much we do not know about the agents, discourses, and strategies of those seeking to delay or obstruct state-level climate action. We first ask, what are the obstacles to...

Many U.S. states have taken significant action on climate change in recent years, demonstrating their commitment despite federal policy gridlock and rollbacks. Yet, there is still much we do not know about the agents, discourses, and strategies of those seeking to delay or obstruct state-level climate action. We first ask, what are the obstacles to...

While much of the research and investment on electrification focuses on technology and materials, the transformation away from fossil fuels to a more regenerative, sustainable future that relies on renewable energy also provides huge opportunities for advancing social justice. Unfortunately, society has so far underinvested in the research and deve...

The U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) 2021 report on solar geoengineering research is a political intervention in global climate politics. Although the NASEM report explicitly acknowledges the risks of unilateral research without broad-based public participation and global governance, the report minimizes these co...

Green New Deal (GND) policy proposals that simultaneously address the climate crisis and economic inequity by prioritizing job creation have been developed for multiple different levels of government in jurisdictions around the world. The United States federal GND originally introduced to Congress by Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey...

Climate change poses increased risks to coastal communities and the interconnected infrastructure they rely on, including food, energy, water, and transportation (FEWT) systems. Most coastal communities in the US are ill-prepared to address these risks, and resilience planning is inconsistently prioritized and not federally mandated. This study exa...

Minimal research has assessed the policy process of developing solar programs at the state level, and no research yet has investigated how these policies characterize and engage with the target populations they are designed to benefit. Grounded in Schneider and Ingram's social construction framework (SCF) and applying computational methods (i.e., t...

In anticipation of the March 25th release of the National Academies report: Reflecting Sunlight: Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research and Research Governance, this brief primer outlines three areas of key questions to ask about any effort to advance solar geoengineering research using public funds.

The field of science and technology studies (STS) has introduced and developed a “sociotechnical” perspective that has been taken up by many disciplines and areas of inquiry. The aims and objectives of this study are threefold: to interrogate which sociotechnical concepts or tools from STS are useful at better understanding energy-related social sc...

In Diversifying Power, energy expert Jennie Stephens argues that the key to effectively addressing the climate crisis is diversifying leadership so that antiracist, feminist priorities are central. All politics is now climate politics, so all policies, from housing to health, now have to integrate climate resilience and renewable energy. Stephens...

The field of energy justice is at a critical juncture. As the social dimensions of energy systems are becoming more salient, it is time to reflect on what has been achieved, and look towards a future of greater impact and transdisciplinary methods in energy justice research and practice. In the past 10 years, the energy justice literature has grown...

Advancing solar geoengineering research is associated with multiple hidden injustices that are revealed by addressing three questions: Who is conducting and funding solar geoengineering research? How do those advocating for solar geoengineering research think about social justice and social change? How is this technology likely to be deployed? Navi...

Intersections of food, energy, and water systems (also termed as the FEW nexus) pose many sustainability and governance challenges for urban areas, including risks to ecosystems, inequitable distribution of benefits and harms across populations, and reliance on distant sources for food, energy, and water. This case study provides an integrated asse...

As women take on more leadership roles in the United States advancing social and political change, analysis of women’s contributions to the transformation occurring within the energy sector is critically important. Grassroots movements focused on energy justice and energy democracy focus on: (1) resisting the power of large multinational fossil fue...

The transition from centralized energy systems based on fossil fuels to renewable-based systems is a macro-level societal shift necessitated by climate change. This review of recent environmental education (EE) research identifies gaps and opportunities for promoting environmental action in this new context. We found that environmental educators an...

Energy systems around the world are in the midst of major changes as renewable energy expands and related infrastructures and governance regimes adapt to a future with reduced reliance on fossil fuels. At the same time, human societies are also grappling with the consequences of an increasingly unstable and rapidly changing climate. The challenges...

We introduce the new concept of embodied energy injustices in order to encourage integrative, systemic, transboundary assessment of the global implications and responsibility of energy-policy decisions. Embodied energy injustices reframe considerations of energy justice to explicitly consider hidden and distant injustices (upstream or downstream) a...

Puerto Rico is not prepared for another hurricane. A year ago, Hurricane María obliterated the island's electric grid, leading to the longest power outage in U.S. history. This disrupted medical care for thousands and contributed to an estimated 2975 deaths. The hurricane caused over $90 billion in damage for an island already in economic crisis. A...

As the social movement promoting “energy democracy” expands, analysis of how the principles of energy democracy are being operationalized is increasingly valuable. The state of Vermont provides a unique case of a United States jurisdiction intentionally promoting multiple ideals of energy democracy as the state commits to transitioning toward renew...

This chapter explores and critiques technological optimism and the sociopolitical appeal of technological fixes with regard to energy and climate mitigation. The term "technical fix" is frequently used by academics and activists to describe the application of a technological solution to a social problem, where a reductive problem definition leads t...

Colleges and universities have played a critical role in the growing social movement to divest institutional endowments from fossil fuels. While campus activism on fossil fuel divestment has been driven largely by students and alumni, faculty are also advocating to their administrators for institutional divestment from fossil fuels. This article ch...

Mounting evidence that even aggressive reductions in net emissions of greenhouse gases will be insufficient to limit global climate risks is increasing calls for atmospheric experiments to better understand the risks and implications of also deploying solar geoengineering technologies to reflect sunlight and rapidly lower surface temperatures. But...

Inspired by the energy democracy movement, this conceptual review critically explores relationships between concentrated or distributed renewable energy and political power. Advocates assert that because the renewable energy transition is fundamentally a political struggle, efforts to shift from fossil fuels and decarbonize societies will not prove...

Energy democracy is an emergent social movement advancing renewable energy transitions by resisting the fossil-fuel-dominant energy agenda while reclaiming and democratically restructuring energy regimes. By integrating technological change with the potential for socioeconomic and political change, the movement links social justice and equity with...

This special issue of Sustainable and Renewable Energy Reviews is focused on the social and policy dimensions of smart grids, an emerging set of technologies and practices which have the potential to transform dramatically electricity systems around the world. The six related articles explore social and political dynamics associated with smart grid...

Distributed and renewable energy technologies are changing the electricity sector and altering traditional relationships between electric utilities and their customers. This analysis involving focus groups with fourteen electric utilities in seven U.S. states (California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Texas, and Vermont) demonstrate...

Superstorm Sandy hit the northeastern United States in October 2012, knocking out power to 10 million people and highlighting energy and critical infrastructure system vulnerabilities in the face of a changing climate. The increased frequency and intensity of such disruptive events is shifting priorities in electricity system planning around the wo...

The term smart grid (SG) has been widely used in both the United States (U.S.) and Canada to represent multiple visions and configurations of electricity system change. In both countries policies, programs, and initiatives have emerged to promote technological and social changes associated with SG, and different patterns of SG implementation and go...

Sustainability science is a solution-oriented discipline. Yet, there are few theory-rich discussions about how this orientation structures the efforts of sustainability science. We argue that Niklas Luhmann’s social system theory, which explains how societies communicate problems, conceptualize solutions, and identify pathways towards implementatio...

Managing water resources, air quality, forests, rangelands and agricultural systems in the context of climate change requires a new level of integrated knowledge. In order to articulate a role for university-based research teams as providers of climate services, this paper analyzes environmental change concerns and expectations about climate models...

This paper argues that existing critiques of technical fixes are unable to explain our simultaneous enamourment and distrust with technical fixes, and that to do so, we need a political economy analysis. We develop a critical, theoretically grounded conceptualisation of technical fixes as imagined defensive spatio-temporal fixes of specific politic...

The aim of this paper is to review the increased use of strategic financial decisions in higher education to promote social change toward sustainability. The social movement to divest from fossil fuels has been growing rapidly, and universities are playing a critical role. New types of university investments to support sustainability transdisciplin...

We explore gender diversity in the energy workforce and highlight the value of systematic assessment of women’s participation in the move toward sustainable renewable-energy systems. A gender imbalance in the energy sector workforce is apparent in countries throughout the world, yet women’s participation in, and contributions to, the energy industr...

As the impacts of climate instability intensify, environmental scientists and earth system modelers are rapidly advancing our understanding of the complex dynamics of climate change. Although large quantities of high-quality climate data and climate science information are now publicly available, the usability of this information to policy-makers a...

Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways, offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public opinion....

Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways, offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public discourse...

As the threats of climate change grow, the need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel burning is increasingly acknowledged by governments around the world. The potential of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a set of technologies that offers a politically appealing vision of a ‘cleaner’ way to use fossil fuels, has provided power...

Transitioning to low-carbon energy systems depends on fundamental changes in technologies, policies, and institutions. In Western democracies, public perceptions and engagement with energy have encouraged innovation while also slowing deployment of low-carbon energy technologies (LCETs). Transitioning to low-carbon energy systems requires re-engin...

The term smart grid has become a catch-all phrase to represent the potential benefits of a revamped and more sophisticated electricity system that can fulfil several societal expectations related to enhanced energy efficiency and sustainability. Smart grid promises to enable improved energy management by utilities and consumers, the ability to inte...

An analysis of The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times from 1998 to 2013 suggests that media coverage of smart grid issues focuses more on benefits than risks. Coverage peaked in 2009 with substantial federal-level investment in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Wind power is an important low-carbon technology and the most rapidly growing renewable energy technology in the US, but there is significant state-by-state variation in wind power distribution. This variation cannot be explained solely by wind resource patterns or US state policy and points to the importance of both local and central governance. W...

Despite a growing sense of urgency to improve energy systems so as to reduce fossil-fuel dependency, energy system change has been slow, uncertain, and geographically diverse. Interestingly, this regionally heterogeneous evolution of energy system change is not merely a consequence of technological limitations but also and importantly a product of...

In February 2014 the BioEarth project's communication and extension working group convened a stakeholder advisory workshop focused on rangeland management concerns in order to build understanding among research team members of how the BioEarth integrated earth systems model might produce outputs that are relevant to the needs of decision-makers con...

In February 2014 the BioEarth project's communication and extension working group convened a stakeholder advisory workshop focused on atmospheric issues in order to build understanding among research team members of how the BioEarth integrated earth systems model might produce outputs that are relevant to the needs of decision-makers concerned with...

As managers of agricultural and natural resources are confronted with uncertainties in global change impacts, the complexities associated with the interconnected cycling of nitrogen, carbon, and water present daunting management challenges. Existing models provide detailed information on specific sub-systems (e.g., land, air, water, and economics)....

Government investment in carbon capture and storage ( CCS ) is a large and expensive fossil‐fuel subsidy with a low probability of eventual societal benefit. Within the tight resource constrained environments that almost all governments are currently operating in, it is irresponsible to sustain this type of subsidy. CCS has been promoted as a ‘brid...

Smart grid has strong potential to advance and encourage renewable energy deployment, but given the multiple motivations for smart grid, renewables are not always central in smart grid policy discussions. The term “smart grid” represents a set of technologies, including advanced meters, sensors and energy storage that are crucial for the integratio...

Interest in the potential of smart grid to transform the way societies generate, distribute, and use electricity has increased dramatically over the past decade. A smarter grid could contribute to both climate change mitigation and adaptation by increasing low-carbon electricity production and enhancing system reliability and resilience. However, c...

Integrating stakeholder perspectives is increasingly important in environmental science as a growing number of research projects are justified with a “solutions” orientation prioritizing societal relevance. In earth systems modeling, there is potential for model developers to engage with stakeholders who may use modeling results to inform decisions...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has received abundant federal support in the USA as an energy technology to mitigate climate change, yet its position within the energy system remains uncertain. Because media play a significant role in shaping public conversations about science and technology, we analyzed media portrayal of CCS in newspapers from f...

Background/Question/Methods Bias-correction (BC) of modeled climate data as a post-process is widely used for climate change impacts (CCI) studies at global and regional levels. However, bias-correction could cause uncertainties in estimating changes in hydrological and biogeochemical processes in terrestrial ecosystems over future climate condit...

Over the past decade, the United States (US) has demonstrated strong and evolving interest in the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS), an emerging set of technologies with potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Given the many technical, economic, and environmental uncertainties about the future of CCS...

Efforts to plan and site transmission for wind power cannot currently keep pace with wind power development. The very nature of wind power, whether distributed or intermittent, challenges traditional models of electricity grid development. Much of the decision authority for transmission is located at the state level, creating tensions between a sys...

As the societal benefits associated with transitioning to more sustainable, less fossil fuel-reliant energy systems are increasingly recognized by communities throughout the world, the potential of creating ‘green jobs’ within a ‘green economy’ is attracting much attention. Green energy clusters are increasingly promoted throughout the world as a s...

The Socio-Political Evaluation of Energy Deployment (SPEED) framework was proposed to improve understanding of energy technology deployment. It was intended to help energy policy-makers develop and implement more effective strategies to accelerate the deployment of emerging energy technologies. The theoretical underpinnings lie in the fields of sus...

Responding to growing international political interest in the potential of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to contribute to climate change mitigation, multiple CCS demonstration projects of various scales are emerging globally. A fully integrated power-plant with CCS has not yet been demonstrated at scale, and acknowledgement of the scale of learn...

Engaging stakeholders in the development of regional earth systems models has potential to improve model accuracy and enhance model relevance for decision makers. BioEarth is one earth systems modeling project currently under development aimed at investigating how climate and human-induced changes impact environmental nitrogen and carbon cycling. O...