What Makes It a Just Transition? A Case Study of Renewable Rikers

This essay offers New York City’s Renewable Rikers as an example of what a just transition might look like in practice. Specifically, this essay describes how Renewable Rikers connects the need for non-polluting energy infrastructure with a broader conversation about decarceration and racial justice to build an inclusive pathway for prosperity and environmental health for all New Yorkers. The first part of this essay sets the stage with a brief overview of the climate crisis. Part two sketches the contours of what constitutes a just transition as that term is used in the Green New Deal Resolution.

Part three situates the idea of a just transition against the current racialized injustices embedded in the carceral state. Part four turns to Renewable Rikers. After describing the history of incarceration on Rikers Island, and contours of the Renewable Rikers project, this section highlights the creativity of the partnerships, legal structures, and participation pro- cesses embedded in the Renewable Rikers project. The final section draws some early lessons from Renewable Rikers, suggesting how it does and does not offer a model for how to solve what Nadia Ahmad has called “the tsunami of the problems arising from the carceral state and extractivist economy.”