Abstract
Poverty, climate change and energy security demand awareness about the interlinkages between energy systems and social justice. Amidst these challenges, energy justice has emerged to conceptualize a world where all individuals, across all areas, have safe, affordable and sustainable energy that is, essentially, socially just. Simultaneously, new social and technological solutions to energy problems continually evolve, and interest in the concept of sociotechnical transitions has grown. However, an element often missing from such transitions frameworks is explicit engagement with energy justice frameworks. Despite the development of an embryonic set of literature around these themes, an obvious research gap has emerged: can energy justice and transitions frameworks be combined? This paper argues that they can. It does so through an exploration of the multi-level perspective on sociotechnical systems and an integration of energy justice at the model's niche, regime and landscape level. It presents the argument that it is within the overarching process of sociotechnical change that issues of energy justice emerge. Here, inattention to social justice issues can cause injustices, whereas attention to them can provide a means to examine and potential resolve them.
Highlights
Amidst serious sustainability challenges, transitions frameworks have evolved to either conceptualize or facilitate decarbonised energy systems that provide both security of supply and universal access to energy; a process that it is widely acknowledged will require new ways of producing, living and working with energy (Bridge et al, 2013; Heffron and McCauley, 2018; IEA, 2008; Mernier, 2007)
In aiming to implement sociotechnical solutions, governments are increasingly utilising the language of transitions, and the concept has begun to feature in the energy policies of countries including Denmark, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (UK) (Foxon, 2013; Lovell, 2007; Bolton and Foxon, 2015)
Throughout, we present three main claims, each coinciding with a level in the multi-level perspective (the multi-level perspective (MLP)) model; the niche, regime, and landscape: (1) That the energy justice concept can expose exclusionary and/or inclusionary technological and social niches before they develop, leading to potentially new and socially just innovation; (2) That in addition to using the MLP to describe regimes, the energy justice framework provides a way for these actors to normatively judge them, potentially destabilising existing regimes using moral criteria; (3) That framing energy justice as a matter of priority at the landscape level could exert pressure on the regime below, leading to the widespread reappraisal of our energy choices, and integration of moral criteria
Summary
Transitions frameworks have evolved to either conceptualize or facilitate decarbonised energy systems that provide both security of supply and universal access to energy; a process that it is widely acknowledged will require new ways of producing, living and working with energy (Bridge et al, 2013; Heffron and McCauley, 2018; IEA, 2008; Mernier, 2007). Scholars frequently envision the process by which sustainability transitions take place to be one of transformative change through transformative innovation (Hiteva and Sovacool, 2017; Schot and Steinmuller, 2016; Markard et al, 2012; Wilson and Tyfield, 2018; Wilson, 2018; Geels, 2018; Dütschke and Wesche, 2018) As a result, those advocating for transformational change sometimes argue that it has the potential to present more inclusive, robust solutions to sustainability challenges because it involves stakeholders from the outset, whether they are large organisations or small NGO groups that can effect grassroots change (Schot and Steinmuller, 2016). Across all of its parts, the paper emphasises the need for socially just sustainable energy policy as part of the re-imagined transition policy agenda We frame this as a fundamentally political process as recognition that energy justice can only be inserted into the MLP process if there is political support for it and if we understand political tensions and trade-offs it presents. Whilst several studies have emerged that consider the role of energy justice in the sociotechnical transitions process (Mullen and Marsden, 2016; Eames and Hunt, 2013; Fuller and Bulkeley, 2013; McLaren et al, 2013), we believe this is the first to explore the role of energy justice in the MLP model
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