Understanding the energy transition is crucial for determining future business, societal and ecological trajectories. Upcoming economic, environmental and social change will depend on how energy policy will model energy transition and adapt to connected transformations. This paper has the purpose to draft a possible agenda to forecast and react to those changes. Opting for a sustainability perspective, the paper presents a possible roadmap, based on selected areas of intervention for the upcoming energy transition – knowledge, jobs, education, empowerment, regional cases, politics and policy action. The research argues that by acting on these pillars and consolidating duly action, the upcoming energy transitions will be more likely to experience desirable energy futures. 

The energy futures we want: A research and policy agenda for energy transitions

The climate crisis, the renewed importance of energy security and geopolitics, and economic interests are fuelling interest in the hydrogen economy. While still in its nascency, if financial and political commitments are an indication, the hydrogen economy is likely to rapidly develop. Many scholars have noted, however, the significant lack of social assessments of the hydrogen economy. This work addresses this gap through a normative energy justice assessment across the hydrogen economy value chain to provide an initial proactive mapping of potential energy injustices that could occur from its development across four injustice perspectives (distribution, procedural, cosmopolitan, and recognition). Further, this work suggests potential abatement actions that could be taken to reduce the identified injustices. Lacking research on the social impacts of the hydrogen economy due to its nascency, this work benchmarks to energy justice assessments as well as abating actions from other transitions to provide this first mapping. The results of this work show that potential injustices could arise from unjust decision-making, socially irresponsible development, and the poor sharing of ills/benefits on the consumption end. While the hydrogen economy's development pathway is still largely unknown, this work hopes to provide foresight to policymakers and future researchers (who can then study them in more detail) about potential injustices along the hydrogen value chain with the goal of avoiding or reducing them. Being aware of and reducing these injustices during the development of the hydrogen economy should serve to foster public support for its proliferation. • A proactive systemic overview of social impacts across the hydrogen economy is needed. • Energy justice assessment used to provide a first mapping of potential injustice drivers and impacts across it. • Abatement actions for these injustices were further suggested. • Results showed that social injustices could occur across the value chain. • Policy makers should address these social injustices when formulating hydrogen policies. 

A ‘just’ hydrogen economy: A normative energy justice assessment of the hydrogen economy

Beyond the triangle of renewable energy acceptance: The five dimensions of domestic hydrogen acceptance

When indicators fail electricity policies: Pitfalls of the EU's retail energy market Barrier Index

Multi-criteria evaluation of the effectiveness of energy policy in Central and Eastern European countries in a long-term perspective

Energy justice has become a leading interdisciplinary energy research topic over the last decade. There has been a realisation that the energy sector was missing an overall raison d'etre, and that is to have justice permeating throughout the sector. This expert insight opens the door to a more practical element that is needed within this energy justice research. It focuses on how energy justice can be applied and implemented into the energy transition. All energy researchers can connect with the topic of justice, and as such, it should be the same when thinking of the energy sector. Normatively all researchers and practitioners should have a common goal and vision of how the energy sector should develop over the coming decades. This common goal and vision is not just brought on due to technological change that has created the energy transition but also the provision of a more fair, equal, equitable and inclusive transition (i.e., justice). National legal systems define what this justice will be and these institutions will create what in essence are the ‘rules of the game’ for the energy sector. This expert insight explores how these institutions act, enforce and create those rules of the game when they resolve disputes that arise. In solving these disputes between different parties, law creates the rules of the game as they interpret how law is applied in practice to different stakeholders. The legal system allocates different stakeholders rights and obligations, and ultimately decides on a hierarchy of these rights. This expert insight provides a brief overview of analysis from 100 legal cases from across the world and demonstrates which forms of justice and human rights are being implemented in the energy transition today. This represents a starting point, and the aim is that society needs to go far beyond this in order to ensure we meet in an accelerated way our future climate goals and ambitions for a sustainable world.

Raphael J. Heffron

Papers

Applying energy justice into the energy transition