2024 Carnot Prize Policy Lecture and Award Ceremony

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.

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.

About Jacqueline Patterson

Jacqueline Patterson is the recipient of the 2024 Carnot Prize and is the founder and executive director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. The mission of the Chisholm Legacy Project is rooted in a Just Transition Framework, serving as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with the resources to actualize visions.

Prior to the launch of the Chisholm Legacy Project, Patterson served as the senior director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program for over a decade. During her tenure, she founded and implemented a robust portfolio which included serving the state and local leadership whose constituencies consisted of hundreds of communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice. She led a team in designing and implementing a portfolio to support political education and organizing work executed by NAACP branches, chapters, and state conferences.

Patterson has dedicated her career to intersectional approaches to systems change. Working with frontline communities from Kampala, Uganda to Kansas City, USA to Kingston, Jamaica, her passion for social justice led her to serve as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United; Senior Women’s Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid; Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health, Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University, and U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica.

Patterson holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves on the Advisory Boards for Center for Earth Ethics, Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship, and the Hive Fund for Gender and Climate Justice, on the Governance Assemblies for Mosaic Momentum, and Collectrify, as well as on the Boards of Directors for the Institute of the Black World, the Bill Anderson Fund, Movement Strategy Center, the Just Solutions Collective, the National Black Workers Center Project, and Ceres.

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The Kleinman Center routinely hosts energy policy-focused speakers, panels, and discussions at our home at the University of Pennsylvania in conjunction with campus organizations, visiting scholars, and partners. Take a look at our calendar of and of past events.

Host or Publisher Kleinman Center for Energy Policy