Danielle Stokes and the energy discussion

In her office at Richmond Law, associate professor Danielle Stokes, ’13, wears many hats. Some are official, others are self-styled, but all of them are purposeful.

Stokes teaches property law, environmental law, and environmental justice courses. She mentors law students, undergraduates, and campus groups. She sits on universitywide committees, collaborates across disciplines, and organizes conferences with national reach. Amid it all, she’s quietly building a body of scholarship that could redefine the legal landscape of renewable energy development.

It’s a heavy lift. But for Stokes, it’s deeply personal.

“I want to see the world in the way it could be,” she says. “Striving for an ideal — that’s my why.”

Stokes is an undergraduate alumna of the University of Richmond, a fact that infuses her work with a sense of loyalty and history. “I’m from rural Virginia,” she says. “Coming here as an undergrad, I was overwhelmed. It was a major shift — academically, socially, personally. But those years were some of the most defining of my life.”

That perspective grounds her now as a professor at Richmond Law. She remembers what it felt like to be stretched in new ways. She remembers the professors who knew her name, who told her when her work wasn’t her best, and who showed her what it meant to belong even when she felt out of place.

Today, she’s paying it forward — not just in the classroom, but across the institution. She serves on sustainability initiatives and has facilitated a campus women’s group through the Hub for Student Inclusion and Community, aiming to support Black women navigating university life. “I was part of that group when I was a student,” she says. “Leading it was a full-circle moment.”

Although Stokes is often labeled an environmental law professor, she sees her work through a different lens: land use.

“People hear ‘environmental law’ and think about the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the big federal statutes,” she explains. “But I’m more focused on how we use land — how local and state decisions shape energy development and environmental outcomes. That’s where law meets place, and that’s where justice issues get real.”

Her courses, including Environmental Justice and Property, explore these intersections head-on, and she’s adamant about connecting classroom theory to the outside world. Her students don’t just read about justice — they see it in action.

In recent semesters, she’s taken students to explore solar panels atop a local high school, partnered with the Science Museum of Virginia to explore community-led air quality monitoring, and invited county sustainability officers to discuss their policies. “Students need to understand that these decisions aren’t made in a vacuum,” she says. “People live with the outcomes. That’s why we have to ask: Who’s being heard, and who’s being left out?”

These questions are at the core of Stokes’ research and her most recent collaborative project: Just Transitions and Place.

The project — a multistate, interdisciplinary grant effort — examines how energy policy intersects with local communities in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Kansas, and Florida. Alongside geographers, planners, and legal scholars, Stokes studied not just where renewable energy projects are being built, but how those locations are chosen — and what it means for the people who live there.

“Community engagement is central,” she says, “not just because it’s fair, but because it makes projects better. Local knowledge, lived experience — those are forms of expertise. But too often, our property laws don’t make room for that kind of input.”

The project reveals a frustrating pattern: Even as solar and wind power expand, many of the same injustices of the fossil fuel era are being repeated. Pollution burdens disadvantaged communities disproportionately. Underrepresented voices still struggle to access the decision-making process. Land use laws often hinder equitable energy development. And technical conversations about grids and siting rarely include discussions of justice.

That’s where Stokes wants to intervene — not by fighting the transition, but by shaping it to be smarter, fairer, and more responsive to real communities.

In March 2024, Stokes brought these ideas to life with a groundbreaking event: Managing a Just Transition, a works-in-progress colloquium hosted by the school’s Robert R. Merhige Jr. Center for Environmental Studies.

Held at Richmond Law, the daylong event brought together scholars, policy experts, and practitioners to tackle the complexities of energy justice. It wasn’t a typical academic conference. It was something deeper.

“I wanted to create a space that was collaborative, not performative,” Stokes says. “We had grassroots organizers, engineers, lawyers, scholars. We talked about real projects, real challenges, and real opportunities to make this transition just.”

The morning panel featured professionals hard at work in those areas from multiple angles, from nonprofit movements to on-the-ground energy grid management. The afternoon session shifted gears, allowing participants to workshop current research and emerging ideas. Each presenter tackled a different thread of energy justice — from how AI impacts energy grids to rural access, from legal frameworks to climate equity.

“It was the kind of exchange that reminds you why scholarship matters,” Stokes says. “We’re not just theorizing. We’re contributing to how these policies get written, how these systems get built.”

The participants included faculty, students from the law school and undergraduate environmental programs, and members of the community. Stokes emphasizes that keeping the event accessible was crucial.

“I didn’t want this to be academic gatekeeping,” she says. “Environmental justice is everybody’s business.”

At the heart of Stokes’ work is a deceptively simple premise: laws shape land, and land shapes lives. If we want a cleaner energy future, we must ask who is setting the terms — and who’s left navigating the consequences.

“I’m fascinated by the legal frameworks that structure our decisions,” she says. “Why is this solar farm built here? Why does this neighborhood get upgraded infrastructure while another is ignored? Those answers live in zoning laws, property codes, public hearings. That’s where law and justice meet.”

Often, those spaces are inaccessible to many of the people most affected by decision-making. Public hearings happen when people are at work. Permit applications require resources and legal literacy. Regulations are written in ways that prioritize speed or scale over equity.

Stokes is working to change that — not by slowing the energy transition, but by deepening it. A just transition, in her view, is one that builds relationships as well as infrastructure.

“We talk about solar farms as if they’re just panels on land,” she says. “But if we think about them as community members — something that contributes to the place where it lives — we have to think differently. That’s the shift I’m interested in.”

Even with all of this work, Stokes still sees the classroom as her primary sphere of influence. “What happens in class shapes how students see the profession,” she says, “and how they see their own power.”

She’s conscious of how her presence carries meaning for students. “Sometimes it’s not what I say,” she reflects. “It’s how I show up in the world and in the profession. That’s part of the lesson.”

She makes the most of her platform. Her environmental justice course combines doctrinal learning with community engagement. She encourages all students to question assumptions and to see law as a tool — not just for winning arguments, but for improving lives.

She’s also closely connected with the PPEL (Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law) undergraduate program, of which she’s an alum, and now serves on its advisory board. “The program was just starting when I was a student,” she says. “To come back and support it now feels like another full-circle moment.”

In 2023, Stokes was named the University of Richmond’s “Rising Star” nominee for the State Council on Higher Education. It was an unexpected honor — and one that prompted reflection.

“It made me sit down and think about why I care so much,” she says. “Why it matters that I’m doing this work, in this place, right now.”

The answer lies in the blend of past and future. She’s shaped by her rural upbringing, her undergraduate experience at UR, and her deep belief that law can be both precise and humane. She’s motivated by the urgent climate crisis, the complexity of energy systems, and the quiet power of a zoning ordinance or public hearing.

Above all, she’s committed to being the kind of educator, scholar, and community member she once needed — and still aspires to be.

“It’s not just about teaching the law,” she says. “It’s about preparing students to use it well. That means asking harder questions. That means listening more closely. That means showing up.”

And show up she does — at panels, in classrooms, on field trips, in community centers, and across academic disciplines. Her work is expansive, and her presence is grounding.

Energy policy and environmental justice are regular headlines, and Stokes is helping to widen the path, make space for new voices, and build a more inclusive landscape of what’s possible.