Atlanta Green Equity Index
Greenlink Analytics
NRDC has been a pivotal partner in enabling the American Cities Climate Challenge cities to access Greenlink Analytic's equity map. This current partnership has benefited just clean energy efforts across the entire nation, including the support of Atlanta's first Equity Index Pilot Project.
While the Greenlink Equity Map (GEM) has been very successful in helping cities to reach their climate and equity goals, there is a growing interest and need to develop city-specific equity indices driven and supported by environmental justice communities. Given that several cities expressed the need for an index, Greenlink Analytics began piloting the development of a local, tailored index for the City of Atlanta, Georgia. The Atlanta Equity Index allows residents to help city leaders define equity and inform them of the concerns and priorities going on in their neighborhoods.
Sustainable Community Solutions (SCS), a Black, female-owned, local sustainability consulting firm, was engaged to support ground-truthing GEM's Equity Index through authentic community engagement within Atlanta's neighborhood planning units with the highest energy burdens across the city.
Our objective was to engage Atlanta’s six (6) most energy burdened Neighborhood Planning Units throughout the city, and listen to the communities' top priorities as it relates to climate, health, housing, and other socioeconomic inequities. Through questionnaires and workshops, we aimed to collect generalizable data on the most pressing issues that intersect with energy burden today.
Findings…
We engaged nearly 200 residents to help determine what issues were of highest priority and happening most frequently, and at what intensity, in their neighborhoods.
We held 9 NPU Meetings, 4 Town Halls, and compensated nearly 200 residents from the most negatively impacted NPUs to better understand what equity issues are of highest importance to address at a city level.