Energy justice at the end of the wire: Enacting community energy and equity in Wales

Abstract

Energy justice has emerged as a useful lens for understanding and guiding energy decision-making. However, whilst calls for greater energy justice have grown, fleeting attention has been paid to the role and agency of the very people at the heart of this agenda. Clearly, given the increasing prevalence of local energy initiatives, such projects warrant more sustained focus both to explore how energy justice is constructed between settings and to prompt greater consideration of its associated outcomes. This paper seeks to address this gap by using energy justice to assess local ownership of small scale energy generation through a study of the community energy sector in Wales. In so doing, it aids greater understanding of the energy equity dimension, understood in terms of accessibility and affordability, of the energy trilemma. From a conceptual standpoint, the research examines how energy justice is negotiated and contested at community-scale through a focus on issues of distributive and procedural justice. From a policy standpoint, the research shows that community energy is often involved in a wide range of local objectives and directs attention to how best to support such initiatives to further stimulate local action and deliver more widespread equity gains.