Episode Summary:
Since the recording of this interview, Chandra Farley has accepted the position of Chief Sustainability Officer within the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Resilience, where her team has been tasked with assessing Atlanta’s sustainability plans, goals, and programs including updating the city’s comprehensive climate and energy plan in alignment with the UN’s Sustainable development goals (SDG’s), creating the first comprehensive food systems plan, creating a sustainable procurement strategy, as well as supporting the city to capture, utilize, and leverage federal resources from the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and especially the historic climate legislation – the Inflation Reduction Act.
In this episode, Sharon Lee talks with Chandra Farley about how climate change has impacted the energy industry and how she has managed it through initiatives such as ReSolve and the Good Energy Project, which additionally involves “equity-centered delivery infrastructure”. Chandra gives us an insight into her life as a full-time cheerleader, as an architect, and then as a clean energy business woman focused on environmental justice. She also shares how being raised by her grandparents taught her to be committed to her community and how she used that as her principal purpose on her projects.
Insights from this Episode:
- Chandra’s youth and experience at Kentucky’s University
- How did Chandra go from cheerleading full time to being involved with solar
- The projects she developed while being at the Environmental Justice Academy
- How the pandemic influenced the creation of ReSolve
- The relation between the Good Energy Project and ReSolve
- The importance of exposure for Chandra
- Chandra’s thoughts on mentorship
- What the Public Service Commission is
- Chandra’s candidacy for the Public Service Commission
- The insights of the Inflation Reduction Act
- Chandra’s experience as a black woman in the clean energy business field
Quotes from the Show:
- “Community-based organizations and grassroots organizations are so used to being under-resourced that they’re always operating in a level of scarcity, not enough resources but do incredibly amazing things with what they got”- Chandra Farley in “The Sunnyside Podcast”
- “We were talking yesterday just about how difficult it is to connect people to issues of energy and environment…its like infrastructure, nobody is thinking about it until it breaks”- Chandra Farley in “The Sunnyside Podcast”
- “When you have decision makers who don’t want to look past what a utility is telling them, who is only set up to make money, they’re delivered a very important resource and they are granted their monopoly because of that”- Chandra Farley in “The Sunnyside Podcast”
- “I never, in a million years, would’ve thought, even five years ago, that I would be able to be in conversations or spaces where I can talk about white supremacy, where I can talk about racism, where I can talk about the impact of the patriarchy and how those play out on this clean energy economy that’s been emerging”- Chandra Farley in “The Sunnyside Podcast”
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Episode transcript:
Sharon Lee:
Welcome to the Sunnyside, the podcast that makes solar energy relatable, accessible, and attainable. Join us as we journey behind the scenes with women taking amazing strides in all parts of the solar industry. I’m your host Sharon Lee, and thank you for joining us today.
Welcome back to the Sunnyside. I am so excited about today’s episode. Can’t wait for everyone to meet this month’s guest. But before I do that, I’m going to dive into Sharon’s Corner. Yes, I’m Sharon Lee with Velo Solar, and I love talking to women in the renewables industry and hear about what they’re doing and how they’re making a difference. In my personal world, I think I’m in a rut. I keep talking about having a new driver in the house, and that’s no joke. That is definitely something that is taking years off my life. I’ll have to tell you that.
My favorite recent quote from my 15-year-old was … And for some reason I was driving. I think we were going to get on the Interstate. I haven’t quite let him get on the Interstate yet. And as we’re driving he said, “Mom, do you have a road rage?” And I said, “Well, I don’t really road rage. I might complain about what somebody’s doing or something like that, but dude, life is too short. No, I don’t road rage.” And his response was, “You’re right. Life is too short. I got to get where I’m going.”
So I’m going raising a budding road rager and speed demon. I’m not sure I’m doing this right, but okay. Anyway, so aside from that, we’ve been spending time on the ball field, baseball. Football is in full swing. Oh, and college football is in full swing. So I’m going to say go balls. I can tell you my next guess will not agree with me, but there’s not many people on the planet that will agree with me. So okay. That’s all right.
The other thing is we did have our Empowered Women’s event that was just a couple of weeks ago, pulling women from around the southeast, and we met on the Beltline at Velo’s office and raised a glass to the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been newly passed into law. So that was really exciting and perfectly timed. So with that, I would like to introduce my guest from today, Chandra Farley. She is the CEO of ReSolve, founder of Good Energy Project, and former candidate for Public Service Commission here in Georgia. So welcome, Chandra.
Chandra Farley:
Thanks so much, Sharon. I’m glad to be here with you in this conversation today.
Sharon Lee:
Fantastic. Well, normally I would start the conversation with tell us about your background. How did a girl graduate of University of Kentucky in the cheerleading world and all this stuff, how did you end up in the renewable space? But I feel like for you we’ve got to back up a little bit because you’ve got a great, very interesting story going all the way back to being raised by your grandparents. So go back and tell us a little bit about where you came from.
Chandra Farley:
Happy to. And I am a Tennessee girl at heart, so I grew up in a balls household for sure. So going to University of Kentucky was something that was talked about, and I actually ended up graduating from the Art Institute of Atlanta. So I was at Kentucky for a number of years in the architecture program and I cheered there and left to pursued cheerleading full-time. I mean, I taught cheerleading camps for Varsity Spirit Corporation in the summer. In the fall I was coaching, I was judging, and I feel like everything I ever needed to know I learned growing up being raised by my grandparents, being raised in the country, a rural town area and working in our restaurant and cheerleading and going to church, all of those things.
But being raised by grandparents, that meant they remember not being able to vote. That was very present in their lives. They went to segregated schools. Those schools were later my elementary schools, and their class pictures actually of their class and their friends class lined the walls of our restaurant. There were these huge senior photos. So just being grounded in that history, they still held their own homecoming and reunion events for union high schools. So there was always a strong grounding and civil rights and social justice and a strong commitment to being committed to your community and working in your community and that civil rights, social justice, natural environment.
My great grandparents had a garden. Whatever was growing in the garden, we used that in the restaurant. We didn’t call that farm to table back then. That’s just what you did with your food, right? You grow your food, you eat the food. One of my first jobs was scraping the food off the plates into the big bin buckets, and some cousins that had a farm out of town would come and get those and feed it to the pigs. Fertilizer was made and all of that. And I didn’t have language for composting back then. So this whole life cycle around … And even younger me and my next door neighbor we used to walk around in the summer and pick up the aluminum cans because we could take them down to the dump for money. And that was our candy money, which was very important in the summer when you’re little.
So all of these civil rights, natural environment, recycling sustainability, but not that name back then is really what informed where I am today working at the intersection of the built environment and respect for the natural environment and how energy impacts both of those things positively and negatively.
Sharon Lee:
Well, and the political environment. Do I remember you saying that even the restaurant that your grandparents owned that that would be used as some campaign headquarters? And you actually jumped in to help. I don’t remember what you said you did to help out on campaigns and that sort of thing, but I mean, your political roots are from way back.
Chandra Farley:
Yeah, definitely. I had a cousin. She was vice mayor, which was a big deal, folks from our church that would run for city council. And our restaurant in the later years was closed Monday through Wednesday, and there was a period where we were closed and folks could use that for campaign meetings during the day or after we closed, campaign headquarters. So I’ve been around knocking doors for people or making flyers, whatever, for a very long time. So really being rooted in understanding politics as an important lever of power and politics as community responsibility as well.
Sharon Lee:
And I think you coined a phrase, organic circular past, and I think that’s perfect.
Chandra Farley:
Yes.
Sharon Lee:
Okay, so you had that environment. Tell me a little bit because you had some time at Southface and did some green building work and so forth. And so that started you in this trajectory, right?
Chandra Farley:
Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned that my background I started out in school majoring in architecture, and that was something else. My daddy used to buy houses and fix them up in his spare time, and he would rent those out to people from our church, some of the women that worked in our restaurant. And so I grew up stomping around on foundations, running in and out of walls that were just at stud phase or teardowns and things like that. And that really informed why I ended up majoring in architecture. But I ended up finishing at the Art Institute of Atlanta with a fine arts degree, and I focused on interior design, so still around buildings, how do buildings work, still connecting that to community, working on different projects, working with communities who couldn’t afford architects.
And so I worked with the nonprofit called Architecture for Humanity for a long time that provided pro bono design and construction services to community groups or neighborhood groups. And when the housing market crashed, my job disappeared almost overnight. I mean, we can look back at what happened to building, design and construction industry, and I went back to what I knew, which was hospitality. I had grown up in a restaurant. I had done events with cheerleading and things. I hosted speed dating parties. I did it all.
Sharon Lee:
Love it.
Chandra Farley:
And there was a restaurant I was working at and met someone who became a really dear friend of mine who was working at Southface Energy Institute, and they were looking for someone to come in as they were finishing building out the eco office, which maybe many of your listeners, at least in the Georgia, Atlanta area, have probably been to. And were looking for someone to come in and set up meetings, trainings, events. We did a lot of training. And because I also had the buildings background and understood buildings, I was on the facilities team and worked my way into leading our nonprofit energy and water efficiency programs.
It wasn’t really a jump, right? Again, it was a natural opportunity, but very unplanned, but exactly what I needed to be doing. And it was at Southface where it was like, “Okay, sustainability, or we’re doing these weatherization trainings. We’re doing these green building trainings.” It’s like energy efficiency. And it’s like, “You mean the way my great-grandmother used to put the towel in front of the door or how my mama used to tell me to shut that door because I was letting the air out or turn that faucet off, stop leaving the water running.” And so it was all of these things that I had grown up with, and this is a common story, right? I mean, people remember this, their moms or grandmoms or aunties or whatever.
I’m old enough to where my daddy used to even get onto me for talking long distance on the phone when that was a thing, especially after coming home from college and wanting to stay in touch with my roommates and things like that. So it was at Southface where I really started to investigate sustainability and these things like terms being repackaged and sold back to the very people that innovated them, the very people who had to depend on them as now something that wasn’t for them or something that was wrapped up in a very confusing utility program or wrapped up in a very confusing green building program or only apply to communities or buildings that they couldn’t afford to live in, right?
So that was really where I started to investigate my own thinking and was fortunate to be at a place like Southface on the one hand, who has long and continues to struggle with diversity and reaching into community, but was also a place that was very open and welcoming, if you could get in there, right? So that was really where I started to bring those two things together and led me to apply and get into the EPA’s Environmental Justice Academy. And that was really where I really started to focus more on environmental justice.
Sharon Lee:
More intersections of all of these things in your background, for sure. So from there, let’s see, you went to the Partnership for Southern Equity as well, right?
Chandra Farley:
Yep.
Sharon Lee:
So tell me how you made that jump.
Chandra Farley:
So the EPA’s Environmental Justice Academy was focused on collaborative problem solving model that they had developed in partnership with community. And this was all about working with communities that were defined as … We say environmental justice communities, but really what they are communities of injustice, right? But this was a process that was developed to foster community collaborations with the very industries and maybe other forces that they were fighting back against.
So the academy was shaped around these nine modules of the collaborative problem solving model. So it was a nine month program, and one of the things that we had to do, everybody had to create a community project. And at the time, based on some work I had done with Architecture for Humanity, I was working with an organization called Community Movement Builders, I’m still on the board for that, in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta. Historically working class African-American community that has been and is under intense gentrification pressure after being really hard hit by the foreclosure crisis.
So as I was working on this community project, we had to do a community assessment, and at the time, I had been at Southface probably seven years, and I was really thinking about what was next. I loved so much working on buildings, working on our nonprofit energy and water efficiency program, which some folks might remember was called Grants to Green. And part of my work, which was a metro Atlanta focused program, but my work was about expanding that to a national footprint. So I was working with Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Feeding America and the Food Bank Network and Salvation Army, and I didn’t have the language for it then. Not having language for things that I was doing has been a theme so far, I think, of my life in this conversation.
But that was really the work of energy equity, because when we think about our nonprofits, they are our community anchor institutions, and they are often very behind in their buildings, right? These are not the best buildings a lot of times that they are operating out of. They don’t have the money or the knowledge sometimes or exposure to what is energy efficiency, why should we care about this? When our engineers would go out and put together a project list and we could fund half of the project cost and a Boys and Girls Club could save $1,000 a month just by changing out their LED lighting, well, that’s an additional $12,000 a year that they were realizing savings for very immediately because we were helping them with the upfront cost.
In some of these clubs, that’s an additional 300 kids they could serve a year. Some clubs could hire additional art teachers in the summer. And so then the kids were getting excited, they were talking to their parents, we were educating the staff of the clubs who sometimes had never seen their utility bill because it might be going to an administrative office. So it was this really exciting movement, and as much as we wanted to do more in working with the kids with education programs or the staff, our job was to come in and do the technical work and the education around why this makes sense.
So the combination of that work and the Environmental Justice Academy, I just started to realize that I really wanted to get closer and back to working more with the people and the communities that the building shelter serves, and having the technical knowledge that I had, I was able to act as a community translator around why energy, water, and resource efficiency was so important and could deliver actual tangible benefits to improve material conditions in community.
Sharon Lee:
Right. And nonprofits and I guess even a commercial business for that matter. You spend so much time on your day-to-day that you think you don’t have time to look into those sorts of things. And then when you realize the results of them, you go, “Oh my gosh, why didn’t I do this a long time ago?” But I mean, it’s always-
Chandra Farley:
It’s all the same. Yeah. The Better Buildings Challenge that was so big in Atlanta, which is how I got to Southface, was because they were expanding because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the money that was pumped into energy efficiency and all of this. It’s a capacity issue, right? Building owners, especially the facility managers, they got plenty to do. And we were also able to bring these nonprofits into those conversations, so being able to connect those nonprofits to the commercial buildings that were also going through, and having those non-profits highlighted just like we were having those big commercial buildings highlighted was really some of the most important work I’ve ever done.
So it was through that process that I decided to take the opportunity at Partnership for Southern Equity to build out their just energy work, which had just been getting off the ground. A lot of people were familiar with a coalition called the Just Energy Circle. And so it was a great opportunity for me to really bring all my passions together, community, people, social justice and energy and buildings.
Sharon Lee:
Well, so then you go through the housing bubble and you think you’re smooth sailing and then the pandemic hits, right? There’s so many different pandemic stories from people that had so many different, whether it was a challenge or whether just facing different sorts of things, but not Chandra. You decide to reinvent yourself one more time, and that’s where the creation of ReSolve came from, right? Can you talk about that?
Chandra Farley:
Yeah, absolutely. So like a lot of us during the pandemic, I say a lot of us just talking to folks about different businesses they were started or craft business, all of these things. And I had been at Southface for eight years, and when I made the transition to Partnership for Southern Equity, I was growing in my personal life and my professional life. I knew that how was I setting myself up for what I wanted to do next as I was learning about the things I really, really liked to do as a part of the work and the things I really didn’t enjoy about some of the work. ReSolve became a platform for me to be picky about what kind of projects I wanted to do, but then also to add another layer around environmental justice and energy justice, which was capacity building for the organizations that carry so much of the community work.
And we talked about capacity issues with commercial building owners and facility managers that are running commercial buildings or nonprofits. Well, this is the same thing that is happening with community organizations. There’s so much work to do, there’s so many things to do, and community based organizations and grassroots organizations are so used to being under resourced that they’re always operating at a level of scarcity, not enough resources, but do incredibly amazing things with what they’ve got, which is the plight of women, which is the plight of poor people, the plight of marginalized groups, just knowing how to survive and do more with less, and that just doesn’t have to be, right? Scarcity is really false in a lot of cases.
So with ReSolve, I was able to make myself available to maybe organizations that were more technically focused, who were interested in bringing an energy justice lens to their work, educating their boards on energy justice and why it might be important to adjust their theory of change, adjust their strategic plan to really incorporate justice as a core component of the work versus it being something like, “Oh yeah, we heard about this. Yeah, we want to do something about that, but we’re not going to change the way we do our work.” Which that just doesn’t work.
Sharon Lee:
So that’s what you check off, right?
Chandra Farley:
Yeah. Right. This is not box checking. This is about systems change, and it’s hard work. So that was really the platform that I’ve been continuing to build with ReSolve and also that layer of working with those organizations who have been under resourced, working with marginalized communities on the organizational development, just basic process, because I had to build those things, right? Also being in organizations that might be considered more premier organizations, if you will, as far as budget size or staff size. But we know when we get in there with some of the programs that we do, depending on what it is, you hand to mouth with grants sometimes. So I’ve had to wanting to offer my experience and having to build infrastructure, build equitable infrastructure to move work so we have more impact with our missions.
Sharon Lee:
Right. Well, and then how did the Good Energy Project spin out of that? Is that the best way to say it, that it spun out of that? Or is it just a completely different entity? Tell me about the distinction there.
Chandra Farley:
Spinoff might be. I mean, I was thinking about them at the same time, so they really are … ReSolve is a business. This is about being able to offer business services, consulting services, but still very mission oriented as I am. The Good Energy Project, I mean, obviously sprouts from everything I’ve learned in my work, but the more I continue to dig down, particularly when we look at the disparities related to access to renewable energy, who was disproportionately impacted by high utility bills, women are heads of households, who was disproportionately impacted by the most negative outcomes and most negative impacts of climate change. These are black communities led by black women, and also black women are community anchors. You think about in certain communities there’s that, and who’s the most dependable voting block? Black women.
What do we need to make change in our clean energy industry so it is more equitable? Well, we need to change who’s in decision-making seats, because when we have more women in, we know all the studies, and we didn’t need a study to tell us that we know how to make decisions, right? I mean, we know what we’re doing, and women are caretakers. We’re caretakers of our communities, and so we just make decisions very differently with that in mind. And so the Good Energy Project was how do I … And I’m still thinking about it. I just met with the young woman who I admire so much, Diamond Spratling, who worked at Greenlink for a while and has now launched her on nonprofit called Girl + Environment.
And we were talking yesterday just about how difficult it is to connect people to issues of energy and environment when … It’s like infrastructure, right? Nobody’s really thinking about it until it breaks. As long as the light comes on, nobody’s thinking about there’s five people in Georgia that make the decision about how much that’s going to cost you, right? They just see their utility bill, and you can either pay it and it’s on auto pay and you’re blessed to be able to do that, or you can’t pay it and it’s a point of stress, it’s a point of low self-esteem because you’re blaming yourself, “Why can’t I afford to pay my energy bill?” And so all of these compounding things. So I wanted to laser focus in on voting, civil rights, power, equitable decision-making and mixing that with the power of black women as another way to take care of our community.
Sharon Lee:
Well, and you coined another phrase. You’re my queen for the phrases, for sure. I’m going to have to do this little side t-shirt business with all your phrases on. You said you can’t be what you can’t see, and I love that. So explain what you mean by that.
Chandra Farley:
Exposure is everything. If I hadn’t grown up padding around buildings and watching my daddy tear down houses or build them up again, I may not have done it because that was it. I was like, “What am I going to major in?” I wasn’t really sure, but I knew I was really interested in that work. I was like, “Oh okay, well, I got an architecture school,” and went on from there. Or I think you could talk to anyone about anything that they are interested in. If you can see it and if you can see someone that looks like you doing it, then you think it is something that you can also do. And that is critically important, particularly for maybe children and people who don’t have the best support system or who are living in communities that struggle where you’re … Who’s seen a solar panel? Right? I may have never even seen one if I hadn’t been doing this kind of work. Because where are they? They’re up on somebody’s roof.
Sharon Lee:
Exactly.
Chandra Farley:
Unless you’re driving through South Georgia and you know to look for it, right? So you can’t be what you can’t see is just about the importance of exposure and making sure that we are being intentional about reaching out to communities who we know are not exposed to these technologies because they’re still too expensive or their communities have been disinvested in. And if you can’t be what you can’t see, you can’t ask for something that you don’t know might help you.
Sharon Lee:
Right. Well, and this is a perfect segue way into mentorship. That’s something else that we had talked about. And generally, as I’ve spoken with women, they don’t have a formal approach to mentorship. So tell me how you go about it and your angle on mentorship.
Chandra Farley:
Yeah, I enjoy this part of our conversation. I definitely think of mentorship in a untraditional way. I was a coach with cheerleading, coaching cheerleading, teaching cheerleading. You’re coaching young women and men, young people around not just the motions, not just the stunts and skills, but how to be a good teammate, conflict resolution, which you can imagine working with teenagers or kids, but even on up to college. So these different team building, conflict resolution, professional and personal development, how to be comfortable with yourself. All of these things we were learning together. I was also growing up.
And so when I think about mentors, I definitely have people older than me, whatever that might be, who have so much experience that I might point to. But I mentioned Diamond Spratling who is younger than me, but who I was like, “Tell me how you did that.” We just recently had a meeting, or Ciannat Howett at Emory University and I have known each other since my Southface days, and the United States Green Building Council. Our Atlanta group has been doing Women in Green every year, which you might be familiar with. And a couple of years ago they asked certain women to choose their mentor, and Ciannat chose me. And that was, again, one of those … I was like, “Well, Ciannat, you’re my advisor and my guide.”
And she was like, “No, I just learned so much from you,” particularly because of how I had begun to create this capacity around my own knowledge around environmental justice and equity as it relates to energy and environment. So that’s the other thing, right? It’s not just about this traditional like, “Oh, I’ve got to find someone older than me to give me experience.” But we’ve got experience in different things that can combine to all help us be better people professionally and personally. So I think that mentorship relationship.
And Carla Harris is someone who I’ve learned a lot about mentorship from. She is a big time black woman executive at, I don’t know, some financial. I don’t know the name of it. And she’s written a few books all around mentorship that talks about the different kinds of mentorship. There’s mentors, there’s sponsors, and there’s advisors. And so I also think about that and have started to … When I was mentoring a young man on my team, I was like, “You need to read Carla Harris’ book and you need to …” So even the gender breakdowns of mentorship and what that means or things that inspire me when we talk about mentorship.
Sharon Lee:
And you did a speaker series for the Volt Energy Utility, right? Talk a little bit about that too and anything that had come out of that.
Chandra Farley:
Yeah, absolutely. So Volt Energy Utility is a black-owned solar utility, and Gilbert Campbell has created a really exciting initiative called the Sharing the Power Foundation and doing some really innovative things around how to leverage investment in some of these utility scale solar projects for community benefit. So there’s some really exciting things happening there with Volt Energy utility and doing that through the Sharing the Power Foundation as their philanthropic outreach arm.
And so as a part of the Sharing the Power Foundation, they just launched a fellowship program this year and brought in some fellows who just all happened to be black women. I don’t think they meant for it to be women, but we usually show up first for things as we do as women. So just a really incredible group of young women college. I think they’re probably getting close to graduating. And so they had a summer fellowship and they did a speaker series and I was able to come and be one of the speakers, and just always these are the young women that I want to be working for. These are our leaders, our emerging leaders, and the people who are going to be shaping what we’re going to be talking about and wanting to get advice about.
So that’s another level of mentorship, just being able to show up and talk to people like, “Hey.” I was supposed to have another one tomorrow. It was put off, but someone reached out to me, and she’s like, “Yeah, I just want these kids to know what the Public Service Commission is and just how you decided to run. They really need to see someone who has done this.” And so, again, back to you can’t be what you can’t see, right? And in talking about building power and getting women and people in decision-making seats who have real lived experience with the big hairy societal challenges that we are trying to address to make our communities better. Well, we need those people to bring those perspectives to decision-making as well.
Sharon Lee:
Right. Well, and you mentioned the Public Service Commission, the PSC. That’s Georgia based. So before I go into why you are interested in being a part of that and that sort of thing, let’s talk about defining what that is. What is it here for? You want to start there?
Chandra Farley:
Sure. So in Georgia, we have the Public Service Commission, and that is a five member body that makes all decisions about where our energy comes from and how much we pay for our utilities on the simplest of terms.
Sharon Lee:
Right. And so this is an elected body.
Chandra Farley:
It’s an elected body. They serve six year terms, six year staggered terms. And most people don’t know that. Most people don’t know. In some other states it’s called the PUC. I feel like public service is a Southern thing. I haven’t looked at the list of PUCs and PSCs, so you might have a Public Utility Commission or a Public Service Commission. Georgia’s one of 11 states that elect their commissioners. Most other states appoint their commissioners or the governor appoints them or the legislature might appoint them. And it’s interesting in Georgia. All of our commissioners really at this point have started out as governor appointments. And so once they are appointed by the governor, then they get to run as an incumbent no matter how long they’ve actually been in office. So that can also be very confusing to people, because when you have an office and you don’t know what it is, it’s like judges are for me sometimes. There’s so many and trying to figure out who they are and if they’ve been appointed.
You might go to vote and you don’t know who it is. They get an I next to their name as an incumbent, which means they show up first on the ballot. And I have defaulted to this in the past, “I don’t know who this is, but they’ve done it before.” But the more I started to learn about the Public Service Commission, it’s like, “No, you really got to dig into this,” because you think this person has done it before and actually they haven’t. They just got that seat for a few months. But yeah, that’s the Georgia Public Service Commission. It’s a very obscure body, and it was very interesting to run for that office.
Sharon Lee:
Well and they regulate Georgia Power, but not all of the co-ops around or the munis or any other bodies like that. It’s very specific to Georgia Power, right?
Chandra Farley:
Correct. The investor-owned utilities, we will call them. So they regulate investor-owned utilities, so George Power, Atlantic Gas Light. And this would be true for other states as well where, I believe, most regulate the investor-owned utilities. So our electric membership cooperatives and our municipal utilities are technically unregulated utilities. Now in Georgia, they do still sometimes have to come in front of the commission for territorial issues. So this is why broadband comes in front of the commission sometimes because they need to share the poll infrastructure to expand broadband, and just recently happened in a case in front of the commission maybe two years ago now, but over the last year. So sometimes they have to come in front, but the commission does not set their rates, but these EMCs and municipal utilities do often buy a certain amount of power or depend on George Power, the investor-owned utility, for some of that generation. So it’s interrelated. So the Public Service Commission doesn’t set the rates for an EMC, but you can bet some of those EMCs that are bought into Plant Vogtle are filling those rate impacts as well.
Sharon Lee:
That’s right.
Chandra Farley:
And the municipal utilities.
Sharon Lee:
So with all of your background that you have talked about, and then you made the decision to run for the Public Service Commission, so tell us a little bit about what your platform was for your candidacy.
Chandra Farley:
Yes, so I ran for Public Service Commission based on the work that I had been doing, which was really centered around … Particularly at Partnership for Southern Equity was very largely focused on how do we bring people who are most impacted by energy and utility issues into this process. So that was a lot of trying to organize people to tell them what the commission was, why it was important, try to get them up to the commission to make public comment. And in watching all of that, Sharon, this loops back to my earlier background of growing up in politics, for lack of a better, and understanding the importance of being engaged in those processes.
So I had always thought I might engage in politics in some way. I worked in local government just because of various partnerships from different organizations I’ve been in. I never thought I wanted to be the candidate, but after going through a round of our regulatory year with the integrated resource plan and the rate case, and standing in front of people who have no interest, no understanding in the actual people who are on the other side of those decisions, unless it’s wrapped up in a big business, right, but the actual people, people who actually flip a light switch, just don’t factor into that decision-making at all. And that requires a change in who those decision makers are.
And I was like, “The people need a seat on that commission.” So that was really what my run was all about. I was running to be the people’s commissioner because the people need a seat on that commission to make sure their interest are weighed and their lived experience is respected and valued just as much as the professional and practitioner expertise that is brought in front of those proceedings.
Sharon Lee:
And you had said that climate change is a defining issue of this generation. So this puts you in the position to make your impact in that way.
Chandra Farley:
Absolutely. And I came and come at Climate from the built environment and energy impact on climate, right? So buildings, 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions, right? And thinking about, unfortunately we do this a lot, how climate change has become such a polarizing topic politically. And that also plays into why our commission makes decisions the way they do, because instead of this being a very scientific economic decision point, it becomes something political. And when you have a commissioner that says, “I don’t believe in climate change, or don’t talk to me about climate change,” it’s a problem because … I know your audience can’t see me, but I’m a hand talker and I’m like [inaudible 00:38:10].
Sharon Lee:
I can see you. I can see those hands.
Chandra Farley:
You can see me, right? It’s like, “What do you mean?” When we talk about where the top carbon polluters in the entire nation are, they’re in Georgia, they’re in Alabama, they’re here in the South. When we talk about the South as a place where 80% of counties are persistent poverty counties, these are counties that experience poverty for three decades or more are in the South. And then when we talk about the concentration of black people that are in the South, so we’ve got this rural, we’ve got this racial, we’ve got this economic, we’ve got this environmental, all of these things compounding on us.
And when you have decision makers who don’t want to look past what a utility is telling them, who is only set up to make money, right? I mean, they deliver a very important resource and they are granted … They’re monopolies because of that. But that doesn’t mean you just get to treat people any way you want to. And our intervention point on that are these decision-making bodies like the Public Service Commission?
Sharon Lee:
Well, and so this is not a Georgia thing, but to layer onto that, we just newly, I say newly, recently signed into law the new Inflation Reduction Act, which maybe can bring more of that intersection that you’ve been talking about together because you’ve got federal funding and that sort of thing. So it’s just very attainable for a local business, a local nonprofit, for the people you’ve been talking about, representing them. That this is something that is accessible. So tell us about any insights that you’re seeing in that act and what you’re seeing might come out of that.
Chandra Farley:
Historic, right, period. That’s what we can say. There’s a lot of tension in the environmental justice community related to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. A writer put this way more eloquently than I did, and I can’t even remember the title of it right now. But basically she said trying to insert environmental justice into climate policy is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The two just don’t go together. And this is not news. This is why the clean energy industry has a diversity problem. This is why certain communities are disproportionately impacted by fossil fuel infrastructure or polluting infrastructure. This is not news. These disparities exist, and that is why there’s so much work and focus on equity, so much work and focus on justice or DEI, if we’re talking about companies and corporations and things like that.
So this was a historic thing that happened. It also has the potential, if we do not stay intentionally focused on the access piece that you talk about, to further enshrine environmental injustice, because there’s some things in there, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, what a lot of EJ communities might call false solutions around hydrogen, carbon capture sequestration. So these are things that are in conflict with a climate justice movement and environmental justice movement. But it is historic, and it is a tidal wave of investment between the American Rescue Plan, between the IIJA, Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act, and now this reconciliation bill with the Inflation Reduction Act.
This is a title wave of investment we have never seen before. And for all the people who worked so hard for years, decades to make this happen, we have to remember that we can’t continue to leave these voices and these communities behind that are raising these issues. So it’s very exciting to talk about all the opportunity, but access and opportunity does not happen on its own, right? That’s the core of an equity issue. Equity doesn’t happen on its own. Clean energy isn’t equitable just because we all like it and it’s better for the environment. Lots of things are better for the environment that don’t benefit all the people who need to benefit for it. So it’s just people are ready to launch back into work.
I was just on a call earlier today talking about the trackers that are needed with a lot of the initiatives that have sprouted up in the advocacy community supported by philanthropy to make state to federal initiatives, right? How do we help states and local partners on the ground, local governments track where the money is going, track where it’s coming from and track what they can do with it? How do we make sure these state agencies and local governments have money to build capacity within their agencies to deliver on things like Justice40, which was born of President Biden’s executive order on racial equity, which says that 40% of the benefits of infrastructure investment should be directed to what they’re defining as disadvantaged communities, which isn’t the best term, but that’s what they’re using. But there’s got to be someone to hold that, right? People just don’t know.
I still talk to people. They have no idea what Justice40 is, and these are local government people, these are agency people. The royal we know what that stuff is. So now the hard work begins to make sure that we are able to hold the people who are going to be able to receive these dollars accountable to things like Justice40, accountable to partnering with communities and community partners who have been driving that work.
Sharon Lee:
Well, and I love how you don’t just stay in your own backyard. I guess I should say it that I love the fact that you outreach pretty continuously. So we were talking about how you had just gone to Montana and met with a group there. So talk a little bit about why you went and what came out of that, what you learned from there.
Chandra Farley:
So I was fortunate to be invited to a convening of some leaders around energy and climate in Montana for a foundation. And this is a foundation that is planning to incorporate an energy strategy into their grant making, and they want to make sure that it’s done through a lens of equity, and their focus areas are Georgia and Montana. So it was a very interesting what you think might be a mismatch, but part of our conversations that we were about the commonalities between our two states and some of the issues that we face related to advancing a clean energy agenda grounded in equity and justice. So really interesting conversations around that.
And one of the things that we had a lot of conversation about and something that I still think about is we, the royal we, I feel like if we’re talking about advocacy and just the national conversation now, how it has shifted to be able to even talk about racial equity or to even be able to talk about environmental. To have that language coming from the federal government is a huge shift that we should all be very clear about what a historic shift just even the conversation is, first of all, at that level.
And so the other piece of that I wanted to talk about is with that, because clean energy is moving, that train has left the station, it’s leaving people behind because there are younger folks and people who’ve been committed to clean energy and environmental justice working on clean energy, we’re putting a lot of our eggs in the clean energy, renewable energy industry basket to fix our societal problems with racism and to fix our societal problems with environmental injustice. And a lot of that is deserved. A lot of those eggs do belong in that basket because we’re talking about infrastructure, we’re talking about unprecedented investment. So we do have to put the onus on where that investment is going and who’s got the power to make these decisions and have access to this investment. So we talked a lot about that. We talked a lot about winners and losers. There’s always a trade off, always. And how do we mitigate that?
I mean, we just talked about the Inflation Reduction Act. A lot of that language essentially it’s said a lot nicer and more eloquent than what I’m saying, but it is really a conversation about who’s going to be the winner and who’s going to be the loser and how do we make sure that a trade off doesn’t mean somebody has to lose. How do we make sure that because we have to prioritize this over here, that doesn’t mean that someone’s getting the short end of the stick over here or a community isn’t able to benefit from new infrastructure or that their voice is being drowned out. It’s complex. This is a big term, and I don’t say it that much, but I was having a conversation earlier with some friends of mine from a very technical focused organization and they were talking about struggling with DEI and how it’s all been that way, and it’s like, “Not letting y’all off the hook, because you got some work to do. It’s not new.” But it is hard.
We have to lean into this hard word. We can’t be afraid to have the hard conversations. I never in a million years would’ve thought, even five years ago, that I would be able to be in conversations or in spaces where I can talk about white supremacy, where I can talk about racism, where I can talk about the impact of the patriarchy and how those play out in this clean energy economy that’s been emerging. I never would’ve had. Even on the building side and technical, we didn’t even talk about climate change because we were working with a very traditional conservative building industry, right? So just again, let’s give ourselves a little bit of credit, but keep our feet moving, right? We got to keep our feet moving because this is really hard work and it takes all of us. And I don’t want to be sitting around 10 years from now and thinking I didn’t do whatever I could at every juncture to make sure that people who stand to benefit the most, people who have an opportunity to pull themselves out of poverty because of the opportunity that awaits them, that I didn’t do everything I could to help make that happen.
Sharon Lee:
So that leads me perfectly into say what is next for you? What’s your next chapter?
Chandra Farley:
I’m still giving that a lot of thought, Sharon. I committed to myself after the campaign and all the craziness that even followed that with our Public Service Commission. There’s a really landmark federal decision related to voting rights. So again, this full circle with our Public Service Commission in Georgia that the at-large method, meaning that you have to run to represent a district, but you run statewide. And the judge ruled.
Sharon Lee:
It’s very confusing.
Chandra Farley:
Yeah, very confusing. People don’t get it. When I talk to people from not just Georgia but from other states, they’re like, “Y’all do what? What do you mean?” And just how confusing that is. But it is also a violation of the Federal Voting Rights Act. And so it’s not just confusing. It’s a violation of our voting rights is what this case … Very sound data presented focused on this. And how do you let elections continue under this manner when you have a finding? Even though it’s under appeal or whatever, you can’t unsee. You know what you know, but now it’s like, “We have a federal ruling here that proves this.”
So in the midst of all of that, should I decide to run again? I’m on about a 15 to 18 month trajectory of, “Okay, what do I really want to dive into head first and run hard with in this moment?” And there’s some really incredible opportunities. There’s so much exciting work happening with very uncommon allies that may never have done work together before who have been coming together to try to solve some of these really gnarly challenges in the corner that they can solve them, right? This is why grassroots local solutions are so important because this is super hyper local work. What works for me over here in Midtown Atlanta is not what folks need in Pittsburgh that is just 15 minutes away from me in Pittsburgh, Atlanta.
What we do in City of Atlanta isn’t necessarily in all cases what Savannah needs who is on the coast, or Brunswick, Georgia, those folks on the coast, folks in coastal erosion, flooding, the ports. Energy utility work is super hyper local, and there’s some really exciting local solutions happening. And so on the one hand it’s like can I dive in super deep on Georgia, because we got a lot of work to do here, but maintain that ability to learn from and help influence and share learnings from what we do down here in the South with the national global audience this really is. So I’ve always been really interested in the tie from the local to the global, so maybe something within that sphere, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten, Sharon.
Sharon Lee:
Okay.
Chandra Farley:
Right now I’m just focused on trying to maintain my summer break, and I mean summer as an Equinox summer, not Labor Day.
Sharon Lee:
I like it. Well, I look forward to staying in touch and seeing how your path where it’s getting more focused along the way during that time. But if people want to reach out to you, talk to you about what you’re doing and your thoughts on things like that, tell them how to reach you.
Chandra Farley:
Yes, so I’m most active on LinkedIn, so you can find me Chandra Farley on LinkedIn and Twitter @ChandraFarley on Twitter. And if you send me a LinkedIn message, I’m probably going to get it. My email is chandra@re-solve.org. You can reach out to me there as well. But those are the easiest ways to get in touch with me. And I do have a LinkedIn page and an Instagram page for the Good Energy Project. So you could follow the Good Energy project on LinkedIn or Instagram. I’m just getting up to … This is why I was talking with Diamond yesterday about resources to start being more active with that and maybe looking for a community manager. So if there are folks out there who understand that sphere, definitely reach out to me.
Sharon Lee:
Okay. Well, that’s fantastic. Well, thank you. I cannot thank you enough for joining us today on the Sunnyside. This has been a great conversation. It is so exciting. It’s hard not to get wrapped up in your passion and your energy and all of that, and so I hope everyone has enjoyed our conversation today. You’re a breath of fresh air and I look forward to seeing great things out you.
Chandra Farley:
Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Sharon Lee:
Sounds good. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.
Thanks for listening to the Sunnyside Podcast. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. You can also email questions, suggestions and compliments to Sharon at velosolar.com. The Sunnyside is produced by the Podcast Laundry production company and executive produced by Sharon Lee.
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Sharon Lee:
Sharon Lee taps over a decade of solar sales experience, having led the creation of a solar division for a leading manufacturing/construction firm, resulting in over 17 MW of solar in its portfolio as well as solar ultimately becoming its highest-grossing revenue vertical. Lee has been involved in the GA Solar Energy Association, serving on the board of directors as the marketing chair, organizing the annual conference, as well as vice-chair, and ultimately the first female chair of the organization in 2015. She is also a charter member of the Professional Women in Building chapter of the Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association, a member of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), and Women in Solar Energy (WISE). Lee earned her B.S. degree in communications with double minors in marketing and psychology from Middle Tennessee State University, after spending three years at the University of Tennessee in the pre-health curriculum. Lee is the mom of two boys, ages 14 and 11, and a rabid college football fan. She and her husband, John, spend most of their free time at the baseball or football fields unless they can steal away for a quick round of golf.
Chandra Farley:
Chandra Farley is the Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Resilience. She also serves as the CEO of ReSolve, a consulting practice with a mission to increase the impact of climate justice initiatives by creating an equity-centered delivery infrastructure. Farley also founded the “Good Energy Project ” with a vision to connect the transformational power of Black Women to the movement for just and equitable clean energy. With a career history at Southface Energy Institute and Partnership for Southern Equity, Farley is well-known in energy, utility, and climate justice circles. She has formed national partnerships to improve the environmental and financial sustainability of nonprofit facilities and developed equity-centered strategies to advance energy and climate justice at local, regional, and national scales. Farley is the Co-Chair of the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice Advisory Board, chair of the Georgia NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Committee, a graduate of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Academy, President Emeritus of the Environmental Justice Academy Alumni Association, and serves on the Board of Directors for Community Movement Builders, Georgia Conservation Voters Education Fund, the People’s Justice Council/Alabama Interfaith Power & Light and Greenlink Analytics.
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