Applying energy justice into the energy transition

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'être, 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.