Energy Justice Research Articles

Operationalizing social equity in public policy design: A comparative analysis of solar equity policies in the United States

AbstractWhile it is widely recognized that energy injustices are prevalent in the clean energy transition process, there has been limited research attention on policy efforts aiming to mitigate these inequities. In this paper, we use solar equity policies as an empirical case study to understand how social equity considerations are conceptualized and operationalized in energy policy content. We build upon the policy design literature and code institutional statements of 54 solar equity policies adopted between 2001 and 2021 in the United States. In our comparative analysis, we focus on three levels of policy design elements that can be directly observed in written policy language: macro‐policy goal construction, meso‐policy instrument choices, and micro‐level policy settings and calibrations. We find that the policy goal of energy justice is multifaceted, with a great emphasis on solar energy accessibility and provision of economic benefits and security for disadvantaged communities. There is a dominant preference by policymakers to use redistributive policies and community solar programs to advance energy justice‐related goals. Solar equity policy instruments on‐the‐ground measures have also been calibrated to target specific disadvantaged populations in the energy system, which focus mostly on income‐based vulnerability.

Energy justice in education sector: The impact of student demographics on elementary and secondary school energy consumption

Reducing school energy costs has become an important issue, while the energy saving should consider different school systems and student backgrounds. This study investigated the impact of student demographics on energy consumption in elementary and secondary schools and explores the difference of energy consumption in different types and levels of school systems. Data were collected from 3672 schools (including 3108 elementary and 564 secondary schools, respectively) in Ontario, Canada. The number of students whose first language is not English, the number of students who receive special education services, the number of school-aged children who live in low-income households, and student learning ability are all inversely proportional to energy consumption; student learning ability has the largest negative impact. The partial correlation between student enrollment and energy consumption has a trend of gradually increasing as the grade levels increase in Catholic elementary schools, Catholic secondary schools, and public secondary schools; however, the correlation shows a gradually decreasing trend with the increase in grade levels in public elementary schools. This study is helpful for policy-makers to clarify the energy implications of various student backgrounds and the energy consumption difference in different types and levels of school systems to facilitate their formulation of effective policies.

Gender imaginaries in energy transitions: How professionals construct and envision gender equity in energy access in the Global South

The importance of gender is increasingly recognised in energy research, with growing awareness of the intersections of energy access and gender equity. Yet, a major knowledge gap exists regarding the role of professional intermediaries and institutions in reproducing and/or challenging gendered forms of energy exclusion, especially in the Global South. This paper addresses this gap by considering the gendered energy imaginaries of energy professionals in Global South contexts. Integrating literature on socio-technical imaginaries – which to date has been developed in predominantly Global North contexts – with feminist accounts of gender, energy and development, this paper investigates gendered imaginaries of energy access among energy professionals across four Global South contexts (India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana). The case-study approach involved thematic analysis of interviews with 86 energy professionals, and revealed a spectrum of gendered energy imaginaries with two archetypes at the extremes of the spectrum: (1) The Gender-Neutral Grid Imaginary (GNGI); and, (2) The Gender-Aware Decentralised Development Imaginary (GADDI). These two imaginaries are unpacked in terms of their underlying actors, practices, and outcomes. Special attention is paid to how different constructions of the ‘end-user’ within professional imaginaries work to perpetuate or alleviate forms of gendered exclusion. These visions propagate energy access outcomes by shaping women’s access to and use of technologies, decision-making, and employment in the energy sector. Findings reveal that whilst the GADDI imaginary shows better considerations for gendered energy access, existing gendered imaginaries among professionals fall short across the spectrum in generating equitable outcomes. The paper concludes by providing specific recommendations for energy practice and policy dominating the energy transition landscape in the Global South and reiterates the need to move beyond ‘gender-mainstreaming’ towards intersectional conceptions of social equity and energy justice. This is vital to address the gaps in existing professional and institutional imaginaries that shape energy access outcomes.

Energiegerechtigkeit im Windenergieausbau – Finanzielle Teilhabe als Möglichkeit zur Stärkung lokaler Akzeptanz?

Onshore wind energy development is often delayed or even prevented by local resistance. Against this backdrop, we discuss financial participation as a measure to promote local acceptance by positively influencing the perceived experience of justice. Building on the concept of energy justice, this paper investigates the extent to which different forms of financial participation are suitable for better distributing costs and benefits, creating opportunities for participation, and examining who can participate financially. In addition to a comprehensive literature review, interviews were conducted with wind turbine planners and operators. These show that stakeholders engage in financial participation to different degrees across different projects and that the preferred form of participation varies from one region to another. Moreover, no model of financial participation appears to be suited to address all dimensions of energy justice, as all models are characterised by certain advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, the availability of financial participation options alone is unlikely to increase local acceptance. Such options can, however, be effective when combined with other measures to increase acceptance.

An insurrection in energy research: a dialogue between Carlos Tornel and Alexander Dunlap on energy justice, capitalist warfare & decolonization

ABSTRACT This interview discusses energy justice, the university, academic research and autonomous politics. This dialogue expresses concern with energy, but also environmental, justice scholarship and movements. This entails the failure to adequately connect the continuity between (neo)colonialism, capitalism and statism in theory and action, which simultaneously subordinates anti-authoritarian and autonomous politics to liberal academic frameworks (e.g. recognition, procedure, distribution). Extractive development is not adequately challenged by energy justice, meanwhile academic decolonial theory tend to ignore combative struggles and discussion in the Global South or North. Academic decolonial theory remains selective about struggles, simplifies them and/or remains detached from societies-in-movement, which results in tokenizing and ignoring the complexities of autonomous and insurrectionary struggle. Discussing a range of intense topics, this dialogue suggests the need to advance decolonial and anarchist critique of energy and environmental justice scholarship, suggesting the need to move away from justice framings and towards autonomous political conceptions.

Safe havens for energy democracy? Analysing the low-carbon transitions of Danish energy islands

AbstractDenmark has long been known as a pioneer in renewable energy technology development. Apart from technological leadership, Denmark has also been the home to many community-based renewable energy initiatives. Citizen involvement in local energy projects has been key to increasing and maintaining acceptance to wind, solar and biomass. Three Danish islands (Bornholm, Samsø and Ærø) have been particularly active in promoting renewables. All three have claimed the title “energy island” and two of them have established specific institutions to promote further RE projects. In this article, we investigate community energy projects on two of the islands (Samsø and Ærø) through an Energy Democracy lens. The purpose of this investigation is to understand how the development on these islands relate to the concept of Energy Democracy: we outline how democratic processes and institutions shape the development of the local infrastructure and how this development, in turn, shaped local democracy. We found that many of the features of Energy Democracy were present in the two cases. Our research highlights a number of shortcomings of the concept of energy democracy, most importantly, a certain disregard for questions of energy justice and a blindness towards questions of scale.

Where the power lies: Developing a political ecology framework for just energy transition

AbstractThis critical review lays down the fundamentals for rethinking just energy transition. It reviews the theoretical perspectives of energy justice, socio‐technical transitions (STTs), and political ecology and presents a plausible and useful way to approach a just low‐carbon transition using Political Ecology as a broad framework. This Political Ecology framework for Sustainable Energy Transition (PESET) addresses power issues associated with low‐carbon transition, while also identifying the role of inclusivity and justice in low‐carbon transition. As energy transition studies have primarily focused on the Global North and the extraction and production of large technologies, this framework provides a more radical means to achieve just transition objectives with particular relevance for application in the Global South—a region largely overlooked in transitions scholarship and where mundane/simple technologies (e.g. Solar Home Systems and clean cookstoves) typify transitions processes to date. The PESET framework presents a novel contribution, linking the concepts of energy justice, STTs, and political ecology to provide a more comprehensive means of framing and analysing just energy transitions. It thus provides a novel overarching framework linking energy studies, sustainability transitions, development studies and innovation studies especially in an era where the globe is moving toward a clean and affordable energy for all (Sustainable Development Goal 7).

EU climate action through an energy poverty lens

Carbon pricing can steer energy choices towards low-carbon fuels and foster energy conservation efforts. Simultaneously, higher fossil fuel prices may exacerbate energy poverty. A just portfolio of climate policies therefore requires a balanced instrument mix to jointly combat climate change and energy poverty. We review recent policy developments in the EU aimed at addressing energy poverty and the social implications of the climate neutrality transition. We then operationalise an affordability-based definition of energy poverty and numerically illustrate that recent EU climate policy proposals risk raising the number of energy poor when not accompanied with complementary measures, while alternative climate policy designs could lift more than 1 million households out of energy poverty through income-targeted revenue recycling schemes. While these schemes have low informational requirements and appear sufficient to avoid exacerbating energy poverty, the findings suggest that more tailored interventions are needed. Finally, we discuss how insights from behavioural economics and energy justice can help shape optimal policy packages and processes.

Grid‐Scale Electric Energy Storage in a Net‐Zero Emissions Energy System

The electric system in the US is expected to become larger and more pervasive as the existing energy system transitions to net‐zero emissions, alongside a transition to new forms of generation that are less dispatchable, being governed by the temporal and spatial variability of renewable energy. In addition to decarbonization drivers of change in the electric system, there are also likely to be increases in grid‐edge generation and energy management, efforts to reduce energy injustice, and global developments in innovation and trade. In this context, electricity storage for the electric grid, commercial and residential buildings, industrial facilities, and vehicles will increase to manage meeting electricity demand with supply. This article examines the technologies that may play a role in grid‐scale energy storage in the US energy system.

Socio-Technical Energy Systems: Configurations That Work Better for Some

The political character of the energy transition requires a fine-grained perspective on the power games occurring to bring it about. There are approaches specifically geared towards calling out the identity-based inequalities in such social processes termed as grand challenges, and then there are those specialised in studying the role of technology in the energy system and how actors in that system interact with these technologies. Feminist social scientists have highlighted the entanglements of intersectionality with technology in general and energy more specifically. At the same time, the literature on Science and Technology Studies (STS) emphasizes a social dimension, e.g., how technology is co-constructed by societal actors or how large technical systems structure our daily lives. Of relevance for feminist social scientists, STS approaches are well-positioned to analyse how technology creates, re-enacts, or mirrors power asymmetries. STS approaches understand technologies as socio-technical systems that inadvertently incorporate societal realities in production and consumption which allows an analysis of the covert seats of power in socio-technical systems. Similarly, energy systems have been a popular research object in STS due to their large-scale, often high-tech character, especially when considering modern energy technologies. Regardless of the common scope of intersectionality and STS regarding power asymmetries, there is still significant room for “hybridization” of these approaches. Although the energy domain has seen efforts being made with the development of notions such as energy poverty, energy justice, or energy democracy, the hybridization effort with STS has not been taken further significantly. This paper, we contributes to the hybridization of the STS and intersectionality lenses.

Prospects and challenges of Islamic finance instruments for low-carbon energy transitions: a legal analysis from an energy justice perspective

Recently, there has been a discussion of ‘energy justice’ in academic and conceptual settings, with a focus on analysing the term from a policy perspective. Recent studies have investigated how energy justice principles can be incorporated into new energy business models and emphasised the need to implement them into policy decision-making processes. However, there has been no comprehensive study from a justice viewpoint on the mobilisation of capital, including state, commercial or public financing. Islamic finance is emerging as an alternative means of financing that could significantly advance sustainable growth in the international financial markets, including the energy industry. However, there are challenges to incorporating Islamic finance into the energy industry, and further empirical and theoretical analyses are necessary to determine its sustainability. This research aims to theoretically explore how Islamic financial instruments could play a role in the energy transition and unlock the challenges of Islamic finance in the energy industry from an energy justice perspective. It also offers valuable insights into the legal framework for a fair and eco-friendly energy transition, conceptualising the nexus between the principles of energy justice and the applications of Islamic finance structures in different stages of the energy system.

Implementing energy justice through a new social contract

The relationship between the energy sector and society is one that remains mired in controversy. There are multiple problems such as climate change, environmental impacts, economic and governance issues. With these problems continuing to exist, the energy sector has lacked any fully successful solutions. This conceptual paper calls for implementing the key theoretical perspective of energy justice as a solution. If energy justice is implemented through a new social contract with society, then transformative change could happen. This new societal social contract is a vital development needed throughout the world where there is already a climate emergency, as declared by the United Nations. A social contract between different stakeholders in society has always been an issue in society. It was a brought to the fore in France through the work of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century. One of Rousseau’s major theories was that a civil society should ensure its citizens’ rights and well-being. The energy sector is the key reason that this is not happening today. Therefore, such a new social contract could implement energy justice and achieve transformative societal change, protecting rights and ensuring well-being for all, and hence delivering a just transition to a low-carbon economy.

Pathways of scholarship for energy justice and the social contract

The energy sector is increasingly out of date and in need of a new direction. There continues to be a myriad of issues emanating from the sector, most notably with climate change, environmental impacts and economic governance. Climate change continues at pace and with the United Nations having already declared there to be a climate emergency. Yet the response of energy sector stakeholders with the power to make the necessary changes in society remains slow. Too much investment continues in the old traditional energy sources. This research accepts these positions and that therefore the relationship between the stakeholders of the energy sector is imbalanced. In order to change this relationship so that it is fair, equitable and inclusive it is necessary to place (energy) justice at the core of a new social contract between the stakeholders of the energy sector (which includes policymakers, private and public energy companies, and citizens). This research advances 10 key pathways for scholarship on energy justice and the social contract. These topics need to be addressed from local to national and international levels. In resolving these research problems society can address the fundamental imbalances that exist between energy stakeholders and ensure a just and brave new world established through this new energy-just social contract.

Just energy business needed! How to achieve a just energy transition by engaging energy companies in reaching climate neutrality: (re)conceptualising energy law for energy corporations

Public administration and energy regulators provide policy and economic support to achieve climate neutrality; however, the role of key stakeholders in energy transition, such as energy companies, is critical to a just energy transition. Corporate voluntary incentives to guide, support and pressure companies to disclose their climate-related risks are becoming commonplace internationally. Yet, formal legal frameworks to engage energy companies in reaching net zero emissions have largely been confined to financial risk disclosure and voluntary regulation. In this context, the article offers a normative solution that enables the effective implementation of obligations imposed on energy companies related to the 2050 energy transformation, addressing the concept of ‘energy-just companies’. It also proposes the management of this process by illustrating a different, proactive approach to the role of effective obligations in the transformation process based on a novel understanding of energy law principles. These legal solutions consist of ‘corporate energy transformation plans’ based on energy justice applied by energy companies.

Identifying typologies of synthetic energy justice: Eco-centric and anthropocentric perspectives

Since the concept of energy justice emerged, studies have conceptually, but rarely empirically, explored energy justice. In addition, studies on energy justice have mainly focused on anthropocentric values toward energy justice. This study aims to categorize Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries’ energy justice using synthetic energy justice via two aspects: eco-centrism and anthropocentrism. Each aspect of energy justice is sub-divided into distributive, substantive, and procedural justices. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis methodology via a statistical program, we suggest typologies of 35 OECD countries for each aspect. Eight types of energy justice for each aspect are extracted, and four types of synthetic energy justice groups are identified among OECD countries. Austria, Iceland, and Luxembourg show the best performance in synthetic energy justice, but do not reach a complete contestable status from an eco-centric perspective. This study provides practical policy implications for OECD countries to self-evaluate each country's macroscopic policy direction in the energy sector, and to ultimately pursue synthetic energy justice with a balanced perspective for our environment and us.

The human right to energy: drawing lessons from the development of the human right to water

This article addresses the discourse on the prospective human right to energy and assesses challenges to its full recognition, drawing on an analogy to the human right to water. Initially, we offer a bird’s eye view of the normative framework that governs the human right to energy by discussing its development. Our discussion is based on the issue of energy access, and is supported by the concepts of sustainable development and energy justice. Subsequently, we argue that the intractability of the challenges associated with the recognition of a right to energy are more apparent than real. Finally, to facilitate the recognition of the human right to energy, we suggest making the inherent link between energy services and human dignity more explicit.

Global gas flaring and energy justice: An empirical ethics analysis of stakeholder perspectives

Global gas flaring harms human and non-human health and well-being while contributing to climate change. Flaring activity in the global oil and gas sector is a significant matter of energy justice – concerning the distribution of risks, benefits and harms, recognition of rights, and decision-making influence within gas-flaring-affected communities. This mixed method empirical ethical analysis of gas flaring and energy justice combines Q-methodology and stakeholder interviews with representatives of 14 gas-flaring-affected countries (n = 35) to evaluate the context-sensitivity of distributive, procedural, recognition, and cosmopolitan justice principles to gas-flaring governance. Four dominant normative perspectives emerge around this topic. These perspectives concern: a) government-led zero flaring policy; b) multi-scalar economic governance; c) business responsibility and social license; and d) localism and community empowerment. We find that: first, there is strong stakeholder support for zero-flaring globally. Second, coordinated multi-scalar governance from international-national-local regulatory authorities is desired to protect marginalised communities. Third, egalitarian rights-based approaches are prioritised over utilitarian approaches in planning for oil and gas extraction. Fourth, business responsibility necessitates transparent communication of flaring activities and impacts and the Polluter Pays Principle of environmental redress to affected communities. Finally, stakeholder disagreement centres upon the practical mechanisms to achieve just outcomes - including compensation, the role of local authorities, regulatory agencies, Environmental Impact Assessment, and efforts to tackle rent-seeking and corruption. We conclude that further stakeholder engagement is needed on the implementation processes for gas flaring elimination, rather than the goal itself, through carefully facilitated dialogue and negotiation.

Fleeting energy protections: State and utility level policy responses to energy poverty in the United States during COVID-19

Millions of American households suffer from energy poverty, threatening their continued access to electricity. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has unveiled the entrenched environmental and energy injustices that threaten public health at the household level and has inspired energy protection responses to address pandemic-caused economic hardship. While policies supporting energy protections have been in place for years, they vary spatially. Moreover, the scholarly research that explores energy protection responses during the pandemic is limited. This paper explores energy protection responses to the pandemic implemented in 25 major metropolitan areas in the United States. We employ a content analysis of policy language to examine the response time, authorization level, and type of energy protections deployed during the initial months of the pandemic. We demarcate authorization level as either mandatory or voluntary measures and characterize ‘energy resiliency responses’ as a suite of residential energy protections required to reduce vulnerability to energy poverty and build resilience during the pandemic. We examine the total number and type of responses relative to household energy burden. We find differences in residential consumer energy protections among low-income and highly energy burdened households and conclude that protections are unevenly deployed across the country. Our findings motivate contemporary national, state, and local energy poverty recognition and responses that center personal and economic wellbeing during and after crises.

Between decentralization and reintermediation: Blockchain platforms and the governance of ‘commons-led’ and ‘business-led’ energy transitions

Digitalization will play a vital role in the achievement of successful transitions towards more flexible, reliable and sustainable energy systems. The progressive availability of data from meters and sensors deployed across end-users and energy supply-chains constitute a first step towards this direction. Leveraging on such cross-sectorial trend, business developers find in decentralized ledger technologies (DLTs) – such as the blockchain – opportunities for value creation across a broad range of participants in energy systems. Peer-to-peer energy trading platforms interconnect legacy and novel participants leveraging renewable and storage capacity (small and utility-scale) with grid operators and within local microgrids or markets. In this way, near real time (bi-directional) exchanges can be secured and validated via tokenization and smart contracting. The proposed configurations enable governance arrangements between legacy and novel participants at the platform and sectorial level. This paper focuses on investigating the decentralized governance characteristics proposed by peer-to-peer energy trading platforms and briefly discusses their implications on legacy systems from a broad ‘relational’ (i.e. actor network, sociotechnical transitions) and ‘normative’ (i.e. energy justice) set of theories. The paper draws upon prior surveys and publicly available whitepapers from business initiatives (start-ups). For the purposes of this study, whitepapers constitute official written texts and potential sources of information for the study of emergent ways of governance and collective action leveraging this technology. Results from ground theory method (qualitative) leveraging an inductive content analysis approach, built four (4) main categories that explain: (1) the digital features of these platforms, (2) the participants and incentives involved (3) the purposes and benefits of the solutions and, (4) the governance dynamics arising from trading tokenized energy via smart contracting. Results reveal complex multi-level socio-technical interrelations at different layers and points towards opportunities for private and community-based solutions, end-user empowerment, democratic energy systems and polycentric governance while considering fractal planning in policy design.

Wind energy and noise: Forecasting the future sounds of wind energy projects and facilitating Dutch community participation

This paper presents a case of a digital device – a noise app – employed by a wind farm operator as a response to growing noise annoyance by residents living next to their wind farm in the Netherlands. This noise app communicates predicted sound levels to the residents and monitors their noise annoyance. We analyse the noise app as a digital framing device that governs concerns around wind turbine sound through three processes: capturing, channelling and managing. We show how in the process of capturing, the app uses a particular definition of ‘the public’ and construes ‘noise’ as a matter of concern. We use the term channelling to highlight who is involved in the interpretation of the data about annoyance, and how certain conclusions come to be seen as legitimate. Finally, we discuss how in the process of managing, specific kinds of solutions are proposed that fit with this problem definition. The framing process of the noise app also leads to unforeseen effects in the form of overflows. Particularly, we see that concerned residents develop an expectation to be more actively involved in decision-making around the wind farm, and that residents resort to alternative forms and channels for expressing existing and new concerns. We conclude by reflecting on the broader energy justice implications of digital framing and overflowing in terms of recognition justice, procedural justice, and distributional justice.