Justice Displaced, Justice Denied? Political Turbulence, Institutional Fragility, and Evaluation of Energy Justice in the US

Energy justice has gained prominence in contemporary energy policy, particularly in the context of the low-carbon transition, electrification, and infrastructure investment. Yet far less attention has been paid to the institutional conditions that make justice measurable over time. This article examines how political turbulence and institutional instability affect the evaluation of energy justice in the United States between 2021 and the beginning of 2026. Drawing on scholarship that discusses governance amidst turbulence, long-term policy theory, and institutional political economy, this article adopts a qualitative institutional audit. This includes statutory texts, executive orders, agency guidance, public dashboards, litigation records, and secondary reporting. This article traces how justice metrics were built into federal policy under the Biden administration through initiatives such as Justice40, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It examines how those metrics were disrupted following executive turnover, regulatory reinterpretation, funding shifts, administrative restructuring, and judicial interpretation. The argument is that justice becomes more fragile when institutional foundations—such as stable definitions, reporting practices, agency authority, and administrative capacity—are unsettled. This undermines the ability to define, measure, and compare energy justice over time. Under sustained political contestation, measurement becomes a place of conflict, and comparisons lose reliability. The findings show that energy justice depends on institutional continuity. When that breaks down, justice becomes harder to evaluate, defend, and sustain.