Our mission is to create a more equitable and accessible energy transition through engaged student learning and meaningful community partnerships.
We use social science and community-based approaches to study, learn about, and support the interconnections between energy systems and people.
Running year round, Dartmouth students learn with community partners about how to make energy systems more inclusive, equitable and just. Students are trained in a qualitative and community-based participatory research approach on how to collaborate ethically with communities.
Our community partnerships in the Upper Valley across New Hampshire and Vermont include:
Energy Burden Survey Collaborators: Angela Zhange of LISTEN Community Services and Jon Chaffee and Woody Rothe of Lebanon Energy Advisory Committee
--Hartford Energy Commission
--COVER Home Repair
--Sustainable Hanover's Energy Subcommittee and the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire
--the town of West Fairlee and the Municipal Electricity Resilience Program Grant
-the Upper Valley Energy Burden Research Initiative guided by Jonathon Chafee and Woodie Rothe of the Lebananon Energy Advisory Committee and Angela Zhang of LISTEN Community Services
--Don Kreis, NH Consumer Advocate
-the Hartford Energy Commission
Our transational research and practice includes:
Investigating the legal geography of Indigenous rights recognition in a long-term hydropower conflict in Mapuche-Williche territory of Chile involving a Norwegian state-owned company
Presenting and Participant Observation in Norway in travel research-learning trips to the Puelwillimapu, Chile, and Norway
Investigating the legal mechanism of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent with lawyers, communities, and active cases
Learning and researching with supporting actors in a network across the Global South and Global North
Outcomes:
Volunteer builds and community relationships via weatherization projects led by COVER Home Repin low income houses.
Stakeholder Presentation on semi-structured interviews and policy research on California's implementation and equity concerns around community choice aggregation.
Community mural at COVER Home Repair
Writing reports, interviewing and producing maps, and systematizing legal and media documents
Producing communications material, like an educational video on Renewable Energy Credits (in-process)
Collaboration in organizing and providing volunteers at fairs including Energize the Upper Valley and the Affordable Energy Fair organize by Hartford Energy Commission, Vital Communities, and other actors.
Scholarly Contributions
Through the Clinic, Dartmouth scholars and students are part of cutting-edge academic knowledge production in a time of climate crisis and reckoning around racial and other forms of injustice. Our applied research produces robust and innovative data and scholarship on social and environmental issues.
We currently have one peer review article published led by Professor Maron Greenleaf and Dr. Sarah Kelly with community partners and student co-authors titled: "Tool for a just transition? Community choice aggregation and energy justice in New Hampshire and beyond." published in the journal Energy Research and Social Science. (Please email sarah.h.kelly@dartmouth.edu if you would like access to a PDF copy of the article.)
In a world suffering from climate and other crises, we believe that integrating research, learning, and service can be of direct benefit. As an education program at Dartmouth College with acknowledged privilege, we provide applied social science collaborations with community partners working toward horizontal learning relationships. We train our students in how to do ethical qualitative research grounded in law and policy and focused on remedying injustice and inequity. The Clinic operates year-round, with students able to participate both through coursework and as research assistants, providing learning continuity and depth beyond the 10-week quarter system.
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