Many roads to justice: A longitudinal analysis of global scholarship on energy transitions

Ritaj Kalaskar () and Stuti Haldar ()
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Ritaj Kalaskar: Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Postal: India
Stuti Haldar: CIRCLE, Lund University, Postal: CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden

No 2024/22, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: Over the last decade energy justice has rapidly emerged as an important research and policy agenda across disciplines. It seeks to address dilemmas between accelerated decarbonisation and democratisation of energy systems. However, different articulations and interpretations of energy justice have been co-opted into the dominant framework of the three tenets approach which risks (re)producing top-down and western centric knowledge on what counts as just (energy) transitions. Through this systematic literature review we address this gap by examining scholarship at the intersection of energy transitions and energy justice. From a total of 158 articles, we identified sixteen themes categorised into four groups – approaches to development, power and agency, policy and governance, and science, society and technology. Through these, we illustrate how nuanced articulations of justice emerge based on theoretical underpinnings, conceptual framings, geographical landscapes and historical contexts. Our findings suggest a need for mainstreaming feminist and postcolonial perspectives, and place-based community driven governance of energy systems- which reveal alternative traditions of ethics and philosophy for more equitable and just transitions. Our review concludes that plural conceptualizations of energy justice must be respected by scholars, renewable energy developers and policymakers to ensure that transitions are context sensitive and contribute to a larger societal, technological, political, environmental, and economic transformation that is just, equitable, and sustainable for people, communities and the planet.

Keywords: energy justice; equity; just transitions; socio-technical transitions; capability approach; energy democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 O33 P18 Q40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2024-12-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-hme
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2024_022

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