A justice and wellbeing centered framework for analysing energy poverty in the Global South

Approximately one billion people in the Global South, a large proportion of which reside in rural sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian sub-continent, live without access to electricity. Meanwhile, there is a growing appreciation of the vital role that energy access plays in advancing human wellbeing. This is epitomised by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal Seven, which ambitiously aspires to achieve universal access to modern energy by 2030. I argue that while such global initiatives represent important normative pursuits, their technical orientation tends to occlude consideration of issues relating to justice in energy systems. Drawing upon recent critical scholarship, I demonstrate how issues of distributive, recognition and procedural injustice are generated in the course of provisioning energy services for populations in the Global South. I argue that a failure to recognise and address these injustices has negative consequences for the wellbeing of several populations, including future generations. In order to better elucidate these issues in Global South contexts, I build upon Brand-Correa & Steinberger’s (2017) analytical energy-wellbeing framework to include an ethical imperative to ensure energy justice when provisioning energy services. The paper concludes with three avenues for future research that can help mobilise this analytical framework in practice.