Abstract iii

Table of Contents iv

Figures and Tables vi

Acknowledgements 1

Abbreviations 2

Executive Summary 4

Chapter 1. Introduction 6

  Defining Equity and Justice 7

  Why Energy Equity Matters 7

  California’s Commitment to Energy Equity 8

  Existing Frameworks for Assessing Energy Equity 8

  Limitations of Current Analytical Approaches 9

  Case Study of Natural Gas Powerplant in California 11

  Objective 12

  Research Questions 12

  Organization of this Thesis 12

Chapter 2. Methods 14

  2.1 Shapes of Justice 17

  2.2 Instantiating the Analytical Architecture for California Natural Gas Power Plant Phaseout 19

  2.3 Equity Component Classification 45

  2.4 Ranking Methodology and Sensitivity Analysis 47

  2.5 Planning Exercise: CPUC Gas Capacity Not Retained Ranking 49

Chapter 3. Results 52

  3.2 Plant Rankings Under Three Shapes of Justice 52

  3.3 Referencing Against CPUC Gas Capacity Non-Retention Methodology 64

Chapter 4. Discussion and Implication 67

   4.1 Can distributional, contextual, and procedural equity be operationalized in a quantitative decisionsupport model, and what design requirements does doing so impose? 67

  4.2 Does incorporating those equity indicators into a decision-support model produce meaningfully different phaseout rankings than a model relying on distributional equity indicators alone? 69

  4.3 Which plants are ranked similarly across different shapes of justice, making them stronger candidates for robust policy action, and which plants are ranked differently, suggesting a need for further stakeholder deliberation? 70

  4.4 Commentary on the LLM-RAG-based Weight Extraction Method 73

  4.5 Limitations and Future Work 75

  4.6 Conclusion 77

Appendix A. Selected List of Indicators Not Included in the Model 79

Appendix B. Cross-Model Consistency of LLM-Based Weight Assigned to indicators and Metrics 83

Appendix C. Cross-Model Consistency of Equity Component Classification of Indicators and Metrics 87

Appendix D. Top 20 Powerplants by Median for Early Phaseout Under Each Shape of Justice. 90

Appendix E. Indicator Direction and Normalization Treatment 93

Appendix F. Prompts 95

References 101