Many roads to justice: A longitudinal analysis of global scholarship on energy transitions

Over the last decade energy justice has rapidly emerged as an important research and policy agenda across disciplines. It seeks to address dilemmas between accelerated decarbonisation and democratisation of energy systems. However, different articulations and interpretations of energy justice have been co-opted into the dominant framework of the three tenets approach which risks (re)producing top-down and western centric knowledge on what counts as just (energy) transitions. Through this systematic literature review we address this gap by examining scholarship at the intersection of energy transitions and energy justice. From a total of 158 articles, we identified sixteen themes categorised into four groups – approaches to development, power and agency, policy and governance, and science, society and technology. Through these, we illustrate how nuanced articulations of justice emerge based on theoretical underpinnings, conceptual framings, geographical landscapes and historical contexts. Our findings suggest a need for mainstreaming feminist and postcolonial perspectives, and place-based community driven governance of energy systems- which reveal alternative traditions of ethics and philosophy for more equitable and just transitions. Our review concludes that plural conceptualizations of energy justice must be respected by scholars, renewable energy developers and policymakers to ensure that transitions are context sensitive and contribute to a larger societal, technological, political, environmental, and economic transformation that is just, equitable, and sustainable for people, communities and the planet.