Foregrounding citizen imaginaries: Exploring just energy futures through a citizens' assembly in Lebanon

Abstract

Energy injustice is driven by structural inequalities that are evident in differential electricity provision, access and affordability that harm different groups in different ways. When an uprising began in Lebanon in 2019, the issue of energy justice emerged as a prominent grievance. We experimented with a combined democratic-justice approach to energy future-making through a Citizens' Assembly (CA) on energy justice. We emerged with four imaginaries based on the discourses and narratives expounded on during the deliberation sessions of the CA. The citizens’ dystopic imaginary sits alongside a state-centric petro-masculine imaginary. The empirical findings from the CA demonstrate that to move society towards a just transition, the politics of energy can subsume sustainability and the 'ecological fix' imaginary. Justice principles require to add more urgent priorities like better access and affordability for all. The CA experiment demonstrates how critical political moments can make way for more radical and alternative visions of sustainable energy futures but also how competing imaginaries can complicate questions of sustainability when a justice approach is used.