Who gets to keep the lights on?

On August 11th, a derecho hit northwest Indiana, and the city of Gary was left without power for 14 days, which makes it one of the longest power outages in modern U.S. history, according to Electric Choice. For those who don't know, Gary is a predominantly black city, and while they aren't the only community that's had delayed service after a natural disaster, this did make me wonder, as our climate crisis continues to unfold, who gets to keep the lights on? How does where we live, or even certain attitudes about where we live, affect the quality of service we get? To answer that question, I'm joined by Janae Barnes, health and environment reporter, and Shalonda Baker, vice provost for sustainability and climate action at the University of Michigan. Janae and Shalonda are walking me through how our aging power grid, coupled with climate change, the strain of new technologies, and a lack of investment, exposes the systemic shortcomings that very well might leave all of us in the dark. Shalonda, Janae, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Okay, so I want to start off with a story that I think has been on a lot of people's minds since this summer. It was the two-week, two-week power outage in Gary, Indiana. Janae, you reported you went to Gary, you talked to people, you saw what was going on. Why was this outage so significant, and why is it significant that this happened in Gary, Indiana? Absolutely. So as we know, on August 11th, a great show, which is like a very strong windstorm, blew through northwest Indiana. Which Gary is a part of. And it knocked out the power for tens of thousands of people for two weeks, essentially. So what we're seeing there was a culmination of all these different effects from the power outage to the heat that we were having over the summer as well. We had record high temperatures this summer that culminated these effects. And then, of course, hitting a city like Gary, which already has a limited amount of resources and funds, it only exacerbated those impacts. So when I went there, I saw people, you know, pretty much in survival mode. We saw people, they were, you know, going to food relief drives that were hitting out packs of ice, right? Ways that they can keep, like, goods that they do have cold, battery packs, flashlights, toiletries, right? And then, of course, non-perishable foods like crackers and snacks and things like that. And even, you know, family items, diapers, wipes, things for the kids. It was really a city, like, in trauma, a city in survival. And because it happened in Gary, which is a predominantly Black community in northwest Indiana, it was actually the last city to get their power back. Wow. Wait, they were the last city in their area to get their power back? Yeah. So basically, Gary and most of northern Indiana, is serviced by a electric company called Nipsco. And Nipsco was in charge of returning the power back to different communities. And there were communities outside of Gary, maybe 20, 30 minutes down the road that were over the two weeks slowly getting their power back. But Gary was the last one to get theirs. Oh, my gosh, I want to come back to sort of the interlocking factors that are a part of this whole thing. But I want to zoom out for a second. I'm gonna be honest, so much of this story, and so much of, similar stories that I feel like I've seen throughout the United States over this summer and last summer, the summer before that, where people are dealing with power outages and brownouts and blackouts. So much of this has to do with America's outdated power grid. I gotta be honest, as much as I follow and, you know, read and listen to all of these stories about blackouts and power outages, I'm not 100% sure on what the phrase the grid actually encompasses. Shalonda, can you briefly explain what the grid is? And why it's important? You know, the grid is a complex thing. I love that you're sort of saying that it's ambiguous, like, what does it actually mean? I like to think about it in three parts. So we think about generation, transmission, and distribution. And so I'll break down what each of those things is. So generation, that's your centralized power facilities, coal fired power plant, a gas powered power plant, a nuclear facility, even a wind turbine, even a wind farm or a solar farm somewhere away from a an urban area. Usually these things are located in more rural communities. But we know that sometimes generation is also located right on top of communities. And so that's that's the generation piece. Okay, it's like where the power comes from where it gets generated. Yep. And so once it's generated, it then moves through transmission. And so these are high voltage transmission lines. And usually they travel across territories through sometimes communities, sometimes, you know, forests, you know, unpopulated areas into populated areas where then it drops down into the appropriate voltage for a household to use. And so once it's in the household, then you can plug in your devices, your vacuums, your refrigerators, and actually use it. And so that's a very simplified version of the power grid. So that's a very simplified version of the power grid. And so that's what we're talking about. We're talking about challenges. A recent story in New York Times highlighted how vulnerable the American power grid is right now. I mean, it's in such a fragile state that the entire continental US could experience an 18 month blackout. I mean, I mean, that sounds like a worst case scenario. But also the fact that that's even on the table, that freaks me out. I think it freaks other people out. And also to thinking about Janae's reporting and her experiences with what she saw people living with and dealing with and trying to get through. And Gary, I mean, imagining something like that much lengthier than possibly nationwide or statewide or region wide, that's really scary. Like, walk me through what that might even look like. Well, we don't need to imagine it. I mean, we can think about Hurricane Maria, which hit in September 2017, nearly a decade ago, left much of Puerto Rico in darkness for a substantial part of a year. And that led to a lot of subsequent challenges on the island. And so, you know, Janae's reporting really is an echo of what happened in Puerto Rico for that year. So folks who were relying on devices like dialysis, like respirators, you know, lost access to that. And so in some cases, they would have to find a neighbor with a generator and that neighbor with the phones, you know, medical devices, maybe one refrigerator could get plugged in and people were sharing food. But it was really a year of intense trauma for the people of Puerto Rico and also subsistence and survival living. And so, you know, we saw a lot of folks leave Puerto Rico as a result of that. And I think now there's a water crisis there. And so we don't have to sort of imagine it. We actually saw it happen in the United States. I think in places like New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, a prolonged power outage could have pretty devastating effects when you think about, you know, high numbers of people living in multifamily housing, people, you know, needing access to food, water. Folks who live on the East Coast experienced that with Sandy, right, where there was just a short-term outage. But in some of the high rises, they were relying on power to keep the toilets flushed. And so then you started to run into some sewage issues. So you can see kind of a cascade of different issues, you know, that emerge from just one power outage, whether it's food issue, you know, food going bad, the medicine issue where if it's your one shot for your insulin, you know, you're losing that. Or if it's a sanitation issue, right, you're seeing your sort of public health issues emerge. So power is essential. And that's why some people have begun to see it, you know, as a human right. We are all vulnerable in the face of aging electrical infrastructure. I mean, we're not all affected equally. According to data published by researchers at Georgia Tech in 2023, people living in poor communities waited longer for power restoration after power outages. This sounds a lot like what you observed, Janae, in Gary, Indiana. I wonder how do race and class factor into our experiences with America's honestly crumbling infrastructure? Janae, talk to me about it. Yeah, absolutely. So we saw a lot of that in Gary. And multiple studies have shown and a researcher I spoke with for my piece in The Atlantic, who's focused on grid sustainability, have all confirmed that, you know, when people of color, particularly speaking to Black communities, live in areas that are more likely to have slower response times when it comes to power outages. Black communities also tend to have higher utility burdens, which is spending more of their paychecks on their utilities, And so we've seen that this kind of disproportionate impacts of power and who has access to power has led to kind of a double whammy for Black communities who are already, again, like in those in Gary, are already on fixed incomes, right, who are dealing with higher rates of having to pay for their utilities. Nipsco has one of the highest electric rates in the state of Indiana, and people are paying for it in Gary, and then are also having to deal with lower quality of those services when they need them the most. So it goes back into a lot of things, into like historical redlining, and of course, the infrastructure and the investment of infrastructure of these communities that we have Black and brown communities in. And then, of course, just the quality of service that companies have for these communities as well. Just speaking for myself, like I live in a now gentrifying Black and Latino community, you know, neighborhood that was not so gentrified when I moved in six years ago, I've been in New York almost 15 years, and all but two years, pretty much, I lived in within a 15 minute walk of where I live right now. And I went without power, my husband, I went without power for an entire day on two separate occasions last winter. And my neighbors across the street, they were out of power for even longer. Meanwhile, people I knew living in other neighborhoods. Areas of the city weren't having any sort of power issue whatsoever. I don't want to give away where I live in the city, but it's an area that a lot of people have specific attitudes about. And I couldn't help but wonder, right, what the link might be between those attitudes and the service that we were experiencing. So I want to take us back to winter storm, Yuri. In the winter of 2021 in Texas, I have family down in Texas. And so I was watching the news. I was trying to figure out what was going on down there. And people were without power. And so, you know, folks died as a result of that. And I wanted to know because I was in a role in Washington that allowed me to have this question. I wanted to know how the power outages were sort of distributed among communities and if there was sort of a racial or social economic dimension of the duration of power outages. And it turns out that there were researchers who were actually looking at that very question. And so. After winter storm Yuri hit, a study was published that showed that if you are in a majority black or brown community identified by census block or census tract, you were more likely to experience a longer duration of power outage. And so they had images in their study that really showed these sort of bright spots of long duration outages, which really align with black and brown communities. There's a structural problem that we need to begin to understand. So we definitely need the data. We need the data and analysis. But what is happening is a product of decades of decision making, right? One decision after another that sort of said we're going to defer maintenance on this. We're going to, you know, diminish sort of service provision for whatever reason. And then when you have these climate events, these major events, all of that comes to the surface. All of the decision making over the prior decades is evident, you know, based on what what happens with the power outages. So. Again, maybe it's not intentional, but it's structural. We're going to take a quick break. But first, if you're a longtime listener or brand new to It's Been a Minute, be sure to come back every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday for brand new episodes. And did you know you can make it even easier to get new episodes by hitting the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app? Whether you're a new friend or a loyal bestie, join the team by subscribing today. Coming up. After the break. You asked what it's going to take, Brittany. We need federal investment and that's taxpayer dollars. And these are dollars that we all pay into that system. We all should benefit. So from rural communities to urban communities, we need more investment so communities can actually take charge. Stick around. I want to come back to sort of the structural failures in a second. But there's kind of a new kid on the block in terms of putting strain on our already very strained electrical grid. I wonder how do data centers factor into all of this? I mean, plenty of people who live near them have complained about rising electric bills as consumers have, in some cases, been offsetting some of the energy costs of some of these centers. How do data centers strain the grid? And are there like alternatives being proposed? To, you know, provide the same sort of service without actually straining the grid? Or is this something that is just going to actively be a big, big drain on the grid and there's no way around it? Yeah, we know that from some recent studies that data centers in certain communities has increased the electricity costs in those communities. And so that's a concern. That's a key concern. But I want to highlight some of the other issues and then get to the power question. So a lot of times data centers need to be near a water source or need to have access to municipal water supply, county water supply, whatever it may be, in order to cool the chips that are inside the facility. And so not only do communities use electricity, but they're also needing the water, right, for crops or other household use or industrial use. So there's a strain on the water resource as well. And so in my view, data centers kind of bring together this land use energy. And water issue all together. And so there's this really interesting nexus with respect to the power question. There are some data centers that are saying, look, we'll bring our own power. It sounds great, right? So we'll bring our own power to the party. But what that power looks like is a big question. And so if they're coming into a rural community and saying, hey, we're going to set up a natural gas facility right here in the community, then that creates another issue, right? It's not only the water, land. And the energy piece, it now becomes an air quality issue. Because then we're having to mitigate the effects of whatever that fossil fuel generation is in that community. And so data centers are butting up against a lot of the issues that we're facing with the existing energy system, but also environmental justice issues that have plagued communities for decades as well. Oh, gosh. Okay. With all of this to consider. What would it take to actually update the grid and also update the grid in a way that would actually be equitable, fair to vulnerable communities like Gary or like those in Texas or North Carolina or New York City or Puerto Rico or anywhere else in the country? Like, what would it take to be able to update things in a sustainable and fair way? So, you know, I talked about the three dimensions of the grid generation. So we need to transition, right? Away from fossil fuel generation to clean energy. Full stop. And let me just say, clean energy is not without its challenges. There's a whole supply chain that starts in Africa, right? And that ends up in solar panels. That ends up in some of the batteries that we may need for this transition as well. And so we need to be mindful of that supply chain as well. So I don't want to leave that part out. But we're going to need to work with landholders and landowners and tribal communities and tribal nations in this transition. To make sure if we're asking them to house this new generation, whether that be wind or solar, they're actually getting real economic benefits from housing that. And also, I would say access to power. So that's on the on the generation side. The old way of generating power was centralized out in the middle of nowhere. And then you move it through those transmission lines, you know, through the countryside, et cetera. We now also have access to rooftop solar. So we need to be maximizing rooftop. Solar in urban communities and sort of suburban communities. We need to be putting solar on churches, solar, you know, on municipal buildings to decrease the number of large scale facilities we do need, you know, out of out of those communities. And so clean energy generated with the permission of local landholders and with true benefits flowing to them and also distributed generation in communities so that communities are actually able to generate power on their own. So that's one of the things that we're trying to do and that's what we're trying to do. And then when there is a major storm, like a derecho, we then have power that is sustainable. Right. And in that community. So if Gary had had distributed generation or even certain, you know, generation on churches or rec centers, they would have had more resilience in the face of that climate emergency. We're going to have to build out the transmission grid in this country. And that is going to take not only money, but it's going to take a lot of permission again with landholders. And so they have to see that they're going to benefit in some way from that transmission running through their land. And then finally, when we get to the distribution side of it, we need a grid that's more flexible. Like I mentioned, we're going to need batteries. We're going to need utilities to be able to manage power from household to household. I don't want to get too nerdy and wonky on you, but there's something called demand response where a utility can actually balance load, where it sees that, hey, no one's using power, but we need it in this part of the grid. We're going to move it. move it here. we're going to send that energy. If we're still generating it, we're going to send it to batteries so that when everyone gets home from work at night, we're using batteries. We're not having to use any other type of generation to keep the grid going. So climate change is forcing us to ask these questions. I think the data center boom, for lack of a better term, is forcing us to really grapple with what the energy system of the future looks like. And fundamentally, communities are saying, wait a minute, where do I fit? I want the economic benefits. I want the generation benefits. I want lower cost energy. And I also want jobs, right? If we're going to build new stuff, they should be getting jobs out of this transition as well. So that's my soapbox. I'm getting off. You know, one of the people I spoke with in Gary is a leader at one of the only like solar power churches in Gary and one of the few even in like the Northwest Indiana region. And so she was saying how during the storm, she was saying, I'm going to build a new energy system. I'm going to build a new energy system. Church was able to be what, you know, she called like a resilience hub, essentially for community members to come in. I think it hard about 12 hours a day. So enough people to come in, you know, take what they need, take a breath. And so she was saying that she hopes that it influences people's like advocacy for more clean energy and for more solar energy. And so she says it's kind of been a bit of an uphill battle because of federal kind of rollbacks on clean energy and solar energy. But they've had their solar panel for like 10 years. So they're kind of granted in. But it's definitely something that, you know, when the storm happened, people were wondering, and people told me, hey, like, how can I get more solar, solar energy? How can I get more invested in this? Because, you know, they don't trust the grid that they have now, they're trying to find alternative solutions, and greener solutions, which means a lot in a place like Gary, where again, there's been a lot of industrial pollution, and a lot of different ways that the city has, you know, kind of had to deal with these shortcomings, environmental shortcomings. It's comforting in some ways. And it does give me hope that there are people out there who are interested in and actively in some ways, in some places actively delivering solutions. But unequal access to to utilities isn't limited to just electricity. I mean, I see something very similar happening with water access. I mean, I, my husband is from Puerto Rico, and I was visiting some family and friends in Puerto Rico over the summer. And we stayed in a hotel. And I could shower every day, we could shower every day without any warning or advice to be prudent from hotel staff. While many people who live on the island, only had access to a finite amount of water every other day, you know, they'd go and fill it up, and then have that last for two days. And, you know, I'm also from the Detroit area, which has plenty of issues with its water system, with costs for many residents just being too high in a way that kind of echoes what you were saying about Nipsco and their prices and Gary, Janae, you know, I mean, that's before we even get to the Flint water system, right? You know, the water in Flint was declared safe last year, but people living there are still experiencing health issues. And, and so, you know, we're still experiencing health issues. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, because it took so long for the problem to be addressed in any meaningful way, or what many people felt was a meaningful way. Why do resource crises like these feel almost routine? Because, I mean, these are all very different places that we're talking about, right? And yet, there is a pattern of either black and brown people, nonwhite people, or poor people dealing disproportionately with these kinds of issues, these resource, vital resource outages. What would it take to end them for good? I can only speak to Indiana, but from what I've heard, it's so far, the solutions have been, you know, band-aids, right? They're not long-term solutions and actions that have been taken. It seems like there needs to be change not only on the ground level from whether it's the restoration schedule or, or, you know, faster maintenance of any shrubbery in the area, but also on an institutional level, considering that the area is only serviced by one company that essentially has a monopoly on the area, and can basically control how much access people get. But also to be mindful of how the climate is changing, and how we are in really, like, we're approaching unprecedented climate impacts, and so we need a grid that can catch up and match those needs, because we're having these very strong winds and rain and flooding. We need to make sure that we update our system to meet the rapidly changing climate that we're seeing, and how much more intense it's been becoming. I will say that there was over $1 trillion in funding to address some of this through the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act, that were both passed during the Biden-Harris administration, and the whole federal government was sort of organized to try to address the root causes, the structural causes of these resource problems that we're, that we're seeing. So the energy system was, you know, ripe for transformation, aspects of our health system, brownfield remediation, all of that was on the table in the prior administration. So you asked what it's going to take, Brittany, we need federal investment, and that's taxpayer dollars. We need federal investment. So from rural communities to urban communities, we need more investment, so communities can actually take charge of their own water systems, their own aging infrastructure around them. These are systems that were set up 100 years ago. So our energy system was designed over 100 years ago. In that past 100 years, that infrastructure is not only aging, but as Janae mentioned, we're seeing a climate crisis. So bigger storms, sudden you know, and heavy rainfall, the types of things that don't have names, but are clearly impacting communities are, you know, like the ones that are now suffering with flooding on the East Coast. So we need that investment so communities can take charge. And I think we also need a reimagining of these systems away from purely centralized, but more decentralized so that churches, community centers can really serve as resilience hubs in the event of these major weather events. Oh my gosh, I always appreciate having these conversations, especially when I get to learn about something that does hit so close to home in a lot of different ways. But boy, oh boy, we have a lot, a lot to do if we want to mitigate this. And I think a lot of us do. But I appreciate this conversation so, so much. Janae, Shalonda, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Brittany. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having us. And as an update for our listeners, on October 4th, NIPSCO released a message to their customers stating, we will do better. We will hire an independent third party expert to review our storm response, and we'll release the results to the public. Based on this review, we will make changes in the way we operate, as well as how we prepare for and respond to the increasingly more severe storms affecting the communities we serve. The full response is on NIPSCO's website, which will be linked in the episode notes. That was health and environment reporter Janae Barnes and vice provost for sustainability and climate action at the University of Michigan, Shalonda Baker. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Alexis Williams. This episode was edited by Nina Patak. Our supervising producer is Cher Vincent. Our executive producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.