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A framework to centre justice in energy transition innovations

Nature Energy volume 8, pages 1192–1198 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The important role of justice in energy transition technologies has been a topic of increasing interest in recent years. However, key questions remain about how inequities influence energy transition innovations (ETIs) from their design to their widespread use, which ETIs receive more funding, and who controls ETI research, prototyping and deployment. Here we propose a framework to centre justice in energy transition innovations (CJI) and examine how three tenets of justice (recognition, procedural and distributional justice) influence each level of ETI, including niche, regime and landscape levels. We examine wind energy in Mexico and multiple ETIs in Los Angeles as use cases to show how our CJI framework can help reveal the specific inequities undermining just energy transitions at crucial analytical levels of ETI in practice. Our CJI framework offers a path for promoters, practitioners and underserved communities to target the problems these groups face and create ETIs that better address their specific aspirations, needs and circumstances.

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Acknowledgements

This work was authored in part by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the US Department of Energy (DOE) under contract no. DE-AC36-08GO28308. Funding was provided by the US DOE, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The views expressed in the Article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the US Government. The US Government retains, and the publisher, by accepting the Article for publication, acknowledges that the US Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for US Government purposes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA

    Patricia Romero-Lankao & Nicole Rosner

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Patricia Romero-Lankao & Fedor Dokshin

  3. Emlyon Business School, Lyon, France

    Christof Brandtner

  4. Department of Sociology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Christopher Rea

  5. School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Adolfo Mejia-Montero

  6. Department of Human Geography & Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands

    Francesca Pilo

  7. Department of Geography, Sheffield University, Sheffield, UK

    Vanesa Castan-Broto

  8. Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Sarah Burch

  9. Anthropology Department, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Scott Schnur

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Romero-Lankao, P., Rosner, N., Brandtner, C. et al. A framework to centre justice in energy transition innovations. Nat Energy 8, 1192–1198 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01351-3

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