Abstract
The shift from carbon-intensive to low-carbon energy systems has profound justice implications as some regions are likely to lose as much as gain from decarbonization processes. Increasing calls have been made to adopt a ‘whole systems’ perspective on energy justice. Drawing on the Multi-level Perspective on socio-technical transitions this paper presents a new comprehensive framework of energy justice in system innovation, proposing to map injustices along three dimensions: 1) multiple spatial scales (regional, national, international); 2) different time horizons (currently experienced vs. anticipated injustices); 3) connections to transition dynamics (injustices related to the optimization of the currently dominant system, destabilization of the incumbent system or the acceleration of alternative solutions in niches). The framework is applied to analyse the ongoing energy transition in Estonia, involving interactions between the incumbent oil shale based regime and wind, solar, nuclear and bioenergy as emerging niche challengers. The content analysis of news items in Estonian media reveals an inventory of 214 distinct incidents of energy injustices across 21 different categories. We find that many experienced and anticipated injustices are deployed, often strategically, by certain actors to advocate specific energy futures and to influence current political choices. From the justice perspective our analysis thus raises a question whether it is ethical to use probable yet currently unrealized injustices related to regime destabilization and niche acceleration as a means to perpetuate injustices related to the optimization of the currently dominant regime.
Highlights
The unfolding climate crisis has exacerbated the need to shift from fossil fuel based to lowcarbon energy systems
In this paper we have borrowed insights from sustainability transitions literature to extend energy justice literature in two directions: 1) taking into account the role of already experienced but anticipated injustices; 2) connecting injustices to transition dynamics in order to exemplify issues associated with different energy futures
Applying the framework to Estonian energy transition, we revealed an inventory of 214 distinct incidents of injustice across 21 different dimensions and 5 clusters, showing the dominance of national/regional and short-term anticipated injustices in media coverage
Summary
The unfolding climate crisis has exacerbated the need to shift from fossil fuel based to lowcarbon energy systems. The emergence of multi-scalar ‘whole systems’ approaches that attempt to map injustices related to the production, distribution and consumption of energy on regional, national and international levels (Sovacool, et al, 2019, 2020) Despite these advances, the existing literature on energy justice remains limited by its descriptiveness, i.e. empirical studies often producing extensive lists of injustices (see Sovacool et al, 2019; Heffron et al, 2020, for some recent examples) without, having a clearer theory of the interactions of these injustices over time. We use MLP to make the resulting complexity manageable by connecting our identified injustices explicitly to transition dynamics We argue that this requires a conceptual shift from the traditional tenets of energy justice - recognition, procedure, distribution - to regime optimization, regime destabilization and niche acceleration injustices.
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