Energy in COVID-19 Working Group Update: November 30, 2020

Andrew Rosenthal created this pie chart as part of the Energy in COVID-19 working group’s October Research Brief. Each month, the EIC-19 group releases a short brief with discussions of recent news articles pertaining to energy politics, policy, and use in COVID-19. Filed under the section on energy access, Rosenthal’s chart visualizes how Pennsylvania Senate Democrats plan to allocate the remainder of CARES Act funds, including the $125 million that is to be spent on utility payment assistance (Cooper 2020). Also included in this month’s brief are discussions of the changing patterns of energy use due to COVID-19 as well as the pandemic’s impact on energy access inequality.

In addition to our monthly briefs, the EIC-19 group has also recently finished up our analysis of the first round of surveys conducted for the affiliated Energy Rights Project that is being run out of Drexel University. We are now set to embark on our second round of surveys and plan to begin conducting follow-up interviews with previous survey participants in the coming weeks.

The Energy in COVID-19 Working Group invites all interested parties to collaborate by joining us at our weekly meetings hosted each Monday at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific. We also encourage you to attend our monthly discussions of recent literature in the social sciences of energy and energy humanities. Having recently discussed Dominic Boyer’s Energopolitics at our last meeting, for our next session we plan to read Cymene Howe’s companion text, Ecologics.

For more information on the EIC-19 working group or for the link to join our upcoming meetings, email James Adams at [email protected].