Politicizing energy justice and energy system transitions: Fossil fuel divestment and a “just transition”

TitlePoliticizing energy justice and energy system transitions: Fossil fuel divestment and a “just transition”
Publication TypeJournal Article
AuthorsHealy, Noel, and John Barry
JournalEnergy Policy
Volume108
Pagination451-459
ISSN0301-4215
AbstractThe burgeoning energy justice scholarship highlights the importance of justice and equity concerns in the context of global decarbonization and the transition to a green economy. This paper seeks to extend current conceptualizations of energy justice across entire energy lifecycles, from extraction to final use, to offer an analytically richer and more accurate picture of the (in)justice impacts of energy policy decisions. We identify two key areas that require greater attention and scrutiny in order to enact energy justice within a more democratized energy system. First, we call for greater recognition of the politics, power dynamics and political economy of socio-technical energy transitions. We use the example of the fossil fuel divestment movement as a way to shift energy justice policy attention upstream to focus on the under-researched injustices relating to supply-side climate policy analysis and decisions. Second, the idea of a “just transition” and the distributional impacts on “and the role of” labor in low-carbon transitions must be addressed more systematically. This focus produces a more directly political and politicizing framing of energy (in)justice and a just energy transition.
URLhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517303683
DOI10.1016/j.enpol.2017.06.014
Short TitlePoliticizing energy justice and energy system transitions
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