Client: Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia (DC PSC)
Authors: Bryndis Woods, PhD, Elizabeth A. Stanton, PhD, Sagal Alisalad, Alicia Zhang, Jordan Burt, PhD, and Elisabeth Seliga
July 2025
On behalf of the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia (DC PSC), AEC—together with our partner Visionary Leadership Group—convened and facilitated a seventeen-member Equity Advisory Working Group (EAWG) to recommend: 1) Criteria for designating Priority Populations in the District; 2) Racial equity, energy burden, and low- and moderate-income metrics for inclusion in the District’s evaluation framework for utility proposals; and 3) A stakeholder accountability process to facilitate local resident engagement and representation in utility proposal decision-making processes. EAWG members attended 10 meetings between January and May 2025. At each meeting, EAWG members were given presentations and supporting materials developed by AEC to ensure that all EAWG members had the information they required to make their recommendations, such as how BCAs work for proposed utility programs, or examples of equity metrics from the publicly available literature. AEC was also responsive to requests from EAWG members, such as by designing and modifying priority population definitions, providing equity metric methods and data, and presenting map visualizations of how different priority population definitions capture different District communities. The report presents the EAWG’s 29 recommendations which—if adopted—will help ensure that social and racial equity are included in electric and gas utility planning processes and that the disproportionate and systemic harms related to the current energy system, climate change, and environmental injustice are considered and addressed for all District communities.
Errata: On page 55 of the report, it states that "15 percent of DC households are classified as low income." This should read "19 percent of DC households are classified as low income." On page 57 of the report, it state that "The District’s moderate-income households make more than $32,000 but less than $88,000—a group that includes 25 percent of households District-wide." This should read "The District’s moderate-income households make more than $32,000 but less than $88,000—a group that includes 32 percent of households District-wide."
Link to Report
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