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2024 Carnot Prize Policy Lecture and Award Ceremony
Event Summary
This year marks our ninth annual Carnot Prize for distinguished contributions to energy policy—and our 2024 recipient is Jacqueline Patterson, a trailblazer in environmental justice and a champion for frontline communities.
Patterson is the founder and executive director of The Chisholm Legacy Project, a resource hub for Black frontline climate justice leadership. Before this, she served for over a decade as the senior director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program—a program she founded. During her tenure, Patterson designed and implemented a robust portfolio that supported state and local leaders, with a reach that extended to hundreds of communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice.
Join us for a lecture in her honor by Shelley Welton, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy with the Kleinman Center and Penn Carey Law.
About the Policy Lecture: Designing Institutions for Clean Energy Justice
It is now understood that a clean energy transition is not necessarily a just energy transition. Whether cleaner energy results in a more equitable, racially just, and democratically legitimate energy system depends on how the transition is designed: who it benefits, who pays for it, and where it is located, among other considerations. Underpinning these questions is the fundamental question of who decides the shape of this transition. Communities and activists have sophisticated visions for mobilizing a just energy transition.
However, incorporating these visions into energy infrastructure decisions proves challenging within the technocratic institutions where U.S. energy policy is made. The landmark 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, further complicates this landscape, as it provides new opportunities but also raises new challenges for promoting a just transition. This lecture considers the links between the legal and structural design of energy institutions and the project of clean energy justice, including reforms to promote more democratic and responsive regulation of the U.S. energy system.
Jacqueline Patterson
Founder and Executive Director, The Chisholm Legacy ProjectJacqueline Patterson is the founder and executive director of The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. She is the recipient of the 2024 Carnot Prize.
Shelley Welton
Presidential Distinguished ProfessorShelley Welton is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy with the Kleinman Center and Penn Carey Law. Her research focuses on how climate change is transforming energy and environmental law and governance.
Sanya Carley
Mark Alan Hughes Faculty DirectorSanya Carley is the Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center and Presidential Distinguished Professor of Energy Policy and City Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
Frederick Steiner
Dean, Stuart Weitzman School of DesignFrederick Steiner is dean of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design and a member of the Kleinman Center Advisory Board.
Learn more about the history of the Carnot Prize and see previous winners.
