In the year 2035, and the catastrophic storm Xavier slams into Hawai’i, tearing through fragile coastlines and battering communities. High winds and torrential rains hit oil-fired and trash-burning power plants, sparking explosions and casting the islands into darkness. Medically vulnerable residents flee to community centers running on gas generators, while countless families huddle in their homes, waiting for light and hope. With the lack of energy, survival hangs in the balance.

This is Shalanda Baker’s imagination of Hawai’i in her book Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition, portraying a future without action toward renewable energy. In this scenario, extreme weather events easily devastate the islands, exposing the fragility of this tourism paradise.

Cover of Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition

Throughout Revolutionary Power, Hawai’i offers readers a concrete view of renewable energy implementation and its impact. Baker, the Director of the Office of Energy Justice and Equity in the U.S. Department of Energy, considers Hawai’i a “microcosm of the broader US energy system,” as it exemplifies the challenges and opportunities of the U.S. energy system. With abundant renewable resources and an aging grid that struggles to integrate them, Hawai‘i faces both economic extremes and high dependence on volatile fossil fuel imports. As an island state, Hawai‘i has a unique urgency to adopt effective climate policies, and its success in transitioning to renewables could serve as a scalable model for the rest of the country. 

Baker urges the need to deploy renewable energy technologies, especially solar. However, the book is more than a call to action; it challenges traditional power structures, framing energy system transformation as a civil rights issue and offering strategies for policy advocacy to advance equity and justice. Baker argues that a ‘just transition’ can empower communities historically excluded from the economic and environmental benefits of energy systems, fostering broader social change.

Reducing energy consumption is essential for mitigating climate change, but redistributing power is crucial for ensuring fair access. While cutting fossil fuel usage helps protect the environment and conserve resources, equitable distribution guarantees that all communities benefit from energy access. Without intentional redistribution and careful design, renewable energy systems risk perpetuating the same inequalities embedded in traditional energy systems, leaving some communities underserved.

While Hawai’i highlights the potential of renewable energy, Port Arthur in Southeast Texas, where the largest oil refinery in the United States is located, illustrates the harsh realities faced by communities excluded from benefits. Energy justice is the idea that everyone—especially those who have borne the environmental costs of fossil fuel dependency—deserves fair access to clean energy. Through an anecdote about her childhood in Port Arthur, Baker highlights the challenging reality that marginalized communities have been exploited by traditional energy systems, with local residents bearing the brunt of pollution while others reap the economic benefits. Sulfuric air, murky brown water slicked with oil, and pervasive foul odors form not only the environment of Port Arthur but also a common landscape in refinery communities across America.

Without clean, reliable energy, issues in education, healthcare, and the economy would remain unaddressed, revealing their deep interconnections. In frontline communities like Port Arthur, where over 80 percent of predominantly Black residents on the west side suffer from heart and lung issues, healthcare access is scarce, and economic dependence on polluting industries limits options. With 30 percent of residents below the poverty line, these struggles force many, including Baker’s family members, back into harmful energy jobs. Such challenges drive Baker’s call for an energy system based on equitable access, economic justice, and restorative justice.

Most of the book offers rationales and strategies for policy advocacy, including utility reforms, justice-focused policy design, solar energy implementation, and financial support for the clean energy transition. A key part of Baker’s vision is local ownership through community solar programs and rooftop solar programs.  Such programs enable communities to benefit directly from lower energy costs and cleaner resources by preventing monopoly control by private utility companies.

Baker also advocates for designing subsidies, grants, and tax incentives to level the playing field for smaller, community-driven projects, in addition to the two main programs previously discussed. She has faith that these measures are essential for bridging funding gaps that prevent underserved communities from accessing renewable energy opportunities. Baker believes that empowering local ownership of small-scale renewable projects can foster resilience and independence, allowing communities to shape sustainable energy futures instead of relying on outside interests.

However, Baker acknowledges such proposals face significant obstacles. The current energy landscape favors centralized, corporate-owned power systems, while her vision advocates for decentralized, community-driven models. Decentralization, in her view, encompasses not only production and delivery systems but also ownership and control structures. 

Such an approach would allow power distribution to individual homes or areas with specific electricity needs. Beyond managing the physical power infrastructure, communities and individuals would also gain the economic benefits of self-generating solar energy. Instead of paying a large, investor-owned corporation, they would have ownership over their power sources.

This book is an insightful starting point for readers interested in energy equity principles and tools. By connecting the past and looking to the future, the book presents a transformative vision for renewable energy implementation that is grounded in social justice and community empowerment. 

It highlights the need for cooperation from policymakers to local communities in pursuing an inclusive energy transition, and emphasizes that public values must prioritize equity alongside efficiency. Baker concludes with a powerful call to action, urging readers to take up the tools and strategies she presents in the book: “Arm yourself with them. Make them your own. Use them to create your own revolution.”