The Political Economy of the Just Transition

The political economy of the just transition

PETER NEWELL* AND DUSTIN MULVANEY*Department of International Relations, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex,

Brighton BN1 9SNE-mail: [email protected]

San Jose State University, 1 Washington Square, San Jose, CA 95112, USAE-mail: [email protected]

This paper was accepted for publication in November 2012

This paper explores the political economy of the just transition to a low carbon economy. The ideaof a just transition increasingly features in policy and political discourse and appeals to the needto ensure that efforts to steer society towards a lower carbon future are underpinned by attention toissues of equity and justice: to those currently without access to reliable energy supplies and livingin energy poverty and to those whose livelihoods are affected by and dependent on a fossil fueleconomy. To complicate things further this transition has to be made compatible with the pursuit ofclimate justice to current and future generations exposed to the social and ecological disruptionsproduced by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Here weseek to identify and analyse the immensely difficult political trade-offs that will characterisecollective attempts to enact and realise a just transition. We explore procedural and distributionalaspects of energy politics and practice in particular as they relate to the just transition: energy accessfor those who do not have it; justice for those who work within and are affected by the fossil fueleconomy; and attempts to manage the potential contradictions that might flow from pursuing energyand climate justice simultaneously.

KEY WORDS: just transition, energy justice, climate justice, low carbon economy, politicaleconomy, energy poverty

Introduction

The UN has declared 2012 the International Yearof Sustainable Energy for All. How can anunevenly energy insecure world be transformedinto one of clean energy access for all? Coping withthe problems of energy insecurity, energy poverty andclimate change will require new sources of finance,novel technologies and substantial reforms to institu-tions and policy-making processes. None will be easyto deliver, nor will any, in isolation, be a panacea.Issues of equity and justice will be intrinsic to which-ever energy trajectory is pursued, however, and theyneed to be better understood and anticipated.

There is now increasing attention to the concept andpractice of climate justice (Bond 2012; Okereke 2010).But far less attention is paid to the fact that pursuingclimate justice intra and inter generationally, in asocially just way in a highly unequal world will meanhaving to address energy justice for the 1.6 billionpeople worldwide without access to electricity (Inter-national Energy Agency (IEA) 2012) that is so essentialto development, as well as the energy injustice thatcharacterises the distribution of harm and benefitwithin the current fossil fuel dependent global

economy. This is so because the intimate relationshipbetween energy and development on the one hand,and carbon and growth on the other, remain tightlycoupled. In this context there is increasing interest inthe notion of the just transition to a lower carboneconomy that recognises the trade-offs between thesecompeting needs and priorities and seeks to addressthem in an equitable manner (Swilling and Annecke2012). Pursuing a just transition to a low-carboneconomy is proposed, therefore, as one foundationupon which to build energy justice in a carbon-constrained world. In this paper we explore the proce-dural and distributional dimensions of such a transitionand the links between the two since any attempt torestructure the global fossil fuel economy will faceimmense political resistance and institutional chal-lenges that will test to the full the weak and under-developed architecture we currently have for globalenergy governance which will have to play an increas-ingly important role in steering the world towardsclimate compatible development.

We strike a note of caution about the degree ofcapacity, autonomy and willingness many state andinter-state institutions have to oversee such a justtransition in a neoliberal context in which direct

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The Geographical Journal, 2013, doi: 10.1111/geoj.12008

The Geographical Journal, 2013 2013 The Authors. The Geographical Journal 2013 Royal Geographical Society(with the Institute of British Geographers)

control over energy production and consumption isoften either shared with or delegated to the privatesector and in which global bodies notionally chargedwith governing energy have been granted few powersby their member states to strengthen themselves inways which might enable them to manage and recon-cile global trade-offs between tackling energy poverty,energy injustice and climate justice simultaneously.

What this short exploration of the interface betweenclimate justice and energy justice suggests, therefore, isthe need to be alert to the political economy of globalenvironmental justice, characterised as it is by unevenpower relations, conflict and often violence, andshaped as it is by a global political economy in whichthe interests of global elites are more often than notmisaligned with the energy needs and environmentalvulnerabilities of the worlds poorest people.The praxisof the just transition will be have to centrally addressthe key political economy questions of who wins, wholoses, how and why as they relate to the existingdistribution of energy, who lives with the side effects ofits sites of extraction, production and generation, andwho will bear the social costs of decarbonising energysources and economies (Newell et al. 2011). Thisemphasis locates our paper in the more critical strandsof environmental justice scholarship (McDonald 2002;Cole and Foster 2001) that emphasise the ways inwhich uneven exposure to environmental benefits andharm is often not accidental and unintentional, butrather a product of a particular way of organisingproduction and its constitutive social relations. It alsoreiterates the importance of comprehending the globaldimensions of the issue in the everyday, increasinglytransnational, organisation of production and con-sumption through global supply chains (Iles 2004)rather than though the dramatic, site-specific and morevisible instances of environmental justice conflicts andmobilisations which feature in much of the literature(Martinez-Alier 2002).

Before we proceed further, let us first introduce theconcept of the just transition.

The just transition

The term transition has gained increasing currencyin political parlance amid plans from governments fortransitions to a lower carbon future. In academiccircles the term derives from a set of literatures onsocio-technical transitions (Geels 2005; Geels andSchot 2007) that are also increasingly being appliedto questions of energy policy and politics (Scarse andSmith 2009; Kern and Smith 2008). The term socio-technical transitions refers to deep structural changesin systems, such as energy, that involve long-term andcomplex reconfigurations of landscapes with technol-ogy, policy, infrastructure, scientific knowledge, andsocial and cultural practices towards sustainableends. There is an increasing recognition, however, ofboth the need to address the politics of transition

(Meadowcroft 2009) and to ensure proposed transi-tions are (socially) just in a way which goes beyondthe more apolitical and managerial origins of theconcept (Goldthau and Sovacool 2012). We wouldadd that such transitions also need to be environmen-tally just by ensuring that existing environmentalinequalities in terms of exposure to ill-health andlocalised degradation are not reproduced or exacer-bated, while aiming to alleviate a global environmen-tal threat such as climate change.

In policy terms the call for a just transition is oftendirected to states. Governments will have to play a keyenabling and steering role in improving levels ofsupport and access to clean energy and mediating thecompeting powerful interests at stake in any effort totransition to lower carbon forms of energy productionand consumption. This raises a whole series of proce-dural issues about how decisions are taken, optionsassessed and trade-offs made between differentenergy futures or around what Bradshaw (2010) refersto as the global energy dilemma nexus. There wassome discussion at the UN Conference of the Partiesto the climate change convention in Cancn in 2010around the idea of just transitions: interpreted as howto ensure moves towards a low carbon economy areequitable, sustainable and legitimate in the eyes oftheir citizens. It builds on interventions such as that bythe Argentinian government in the Ad Hoc WorkingGroup on Long-term Cooperative Action, whichcalled for mechanisms to ensure a fair transition forworkers who might suffer socio-economic impacts ofmeasures taken to effect climate mitigation. Thisimplies economic resources and technology transferto poorer countries, as well as the strengthening of keyinstitutions to oversee industrial restructuring in a waythat generates sustainable jobs (UNEP et al. 2008;SecAyDS 2009).

Indeed, one of the earliest formulations of theconcept of a just transition was developed in the1980s by the US trade union movement in responseto new regulations to prevent air and water pollu-tion, which resulted in the closure of offendingindustries. The UKs Trade Union Congress has cam-paigned for the same principles to be applied toindustries in the UK that will be affected by low-carbon restructuring (Trade Union Congress 2008)and such claims have been reiterated by tradeunions in South Africa anxious about the socialimpacts of the restructuring of the worlds mostcarbon-intensive economy. The International TradeUnion Confederation (ITUC) at a workshop inDurban in July 2011, for example, stated:

Climate is also our issue because addressing it impliesrecognising the need for a huge transformation in oursocieties, in our production and consumption systems,and therefore also on jobs. And recognition alone is notsufficient. Leadership by the labour movement is neededfor transforming the system. Unless we fight for making

2 The political economy of the just transition


this transformation work for the people, ensuring a JustTransition towards a truly sustainable model, we will onlysee superficial changes towards more inequality andenvironmental degradation.

ITUC (2011)

In this rendition of the concept, a just transition aimsto take appropriate measures to protect jobs in vul-nerable industries. This will be important where thereis a risk that job losses would simply mean the transferof carbon-intensive activities to other countries, orwhere organisations are failing to take sufficient stepsto prepare for the low-carbon transition. Where joblosses are unavoidable, adequate support would beneeded for people and sectors that stand to lose out asa result of decarbonising the economy through com-pensation and retraining for new employment oppor-tunities. It would also ensure that new jobs created inlow-carbon sectors provide decent jobs (which pay aliving wage, provide decent working conditions, areaccessible to people with a range of skills and offerclear career progression opportunities) (Bird andLawton 2009).

Aside from calls for just transitions in internationalarenas and by organised political interests, there havebeen movements mobilising around this idea, goingbeyond a focus on transition towns which have beeninitiated in the UK, for example, to prepare for a worldafter oil (Bulkeley and Newell 2010), to emphasise thesocial justice elements of such a transformation. Theseseek to get the support of a broad range of actorsbehind difficult policy choices and engage with localinitiatives sharing similar goals. This can be doneeither through engagement with a broad-based set ofsocial movements and community actors in definingan alternative vision for a region or by seeking to bringtogether a coalition of actors to provide and financejust energy as has happened in South Africa as weshow below.

Concrete examples of interventions and mobilisa-tions aimed at realising elements of a just transitioninclude the following. The Just Transition Alliance is acoalition of environmental justice and labour organi-sations based in California. Together with frontlineworkers and community members living alongsidepolluting industries, the coalition seeks to createhealthy workplaces and communities. It focuses oncontaminated sites that should be remediated, and onthe transition to clean production and sustainableeconomies. For example, on issues such as clean coalthe Just Transition Alliance voices objections based onlocal as well as global impacts, including local airpollution, working conditions and the detrimentalenvironmental impacts of mining on local landscapesand water use (Just Transition Alliance 2011). Mean-while, more proactively, Just Energy is an innovativecollaboration between a development NGO (Oxfam),an engineering firm (Arup), a legal firm (Simmons &Simmons), a university (MIT) and consulting compa-

nies (McKinsey and Marmanie). Based in South Africa,it aims to enable low-income communities to developrenewable energy (RE) enterprises as a means of gen-erating revenue and employment opportunities,aiming to provide a fair return on renewable energy forlocal people and investors alike (Just Energy 2011). Ithas set the following goals to be achieved by 2020: todevelop 20 RE enterprises of 1080 MW of cleanenergy, starting with wind farms in South Africa, then todevelop enterprises across Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica; to generate income streams of 3 million peryear for social and economic development in low-income communities; to reduce carbon emissions by1.8 million tonnes annually; to create jobs and transfernew business and technology skills to local people;and to transform RE markets in developing countries sothat low-income communities receive fair value forwhat they bring to the project.

Another example of maximising the co-benefits ofclean energy interventions comes from retrofittingbuildings in Los Angeles. Here a grassroots coalitionof community-based organisations, trades unions andenvironmental groups (the LA Apollo Alliance) cam-paigned to ensure that city council programmes toimprove energy efficiency and deploy RE also broughteconomic benefits to disadvantaged people living inthe city. This included retrofit of public buildings inlow-income communities, jobs for poorer people andsupporting businesses owned by local minorities andwomen. Other just transition experiments are aimedat coping with the flight of fossil fuel-based industry.Gelsenkirchen, Germany was once renowned as anindustrial hub for coal, steel and glass industries untilthe relocation of heavy industry. In the 1990s localofficials decided to regenerate land abandoned by theindustry and set up an energy technology park. Sup-ported by the European Union, the federal govern-ment and the utility RWE, solar technology becamethe new focus of development. In 2001 the city passeda voluntary carbon reduction target aimed at trans-forming it from a city of a thousand furnaces to a cityof a thousand suns. Similarly, in Australias HunterValley, community distress about the cumulative localecological and human health impacts of coal minesand power stations and alarm about global climatechange has given rise to a vocal, growing and globallylinked social movement that is challenging theprimacy of coal, and demanding a transition from coaldependency to a clean energy economy (Evans 2010).Key aspects of a just transition include boosting resil-ience and adaptive capacity, public investment in REindustries and alliances between the climate justice,environment and labour movements (Bird and Lawton2009).

The global political economy of a just transition

Whatever these episodes reveal about the potential oftrying to articulate and enact a just transition in

The political economy of the just transition 3


practice, there is a larger political economy of energyjustice and injustice that needs to be addressed if ajust transition is to be realised globally in a world ofhigh levels of energy interdependence. In otherwords, seeking to ensure the uptake of lower carbonenergy is sensitive to the distribution of social harmand benefit is just one side of the story. Addressingjustice issues in the prevailing global fossil fueleconomy presents an even greater challenge.

Cheap energy is the engine of industrial economiesand the foundation of consumer culture. As Bradshaw(2010, 276) notes, The fabric of our economy, andsome would argue our political system (carbondemocracy) is dependent upon the plentiful and rela-tively inexpensive supply of fossil fuels.Yet people andplaces unevenly experience the costs and benefits ofenergy extraction, generation, financing, distributionand consumption (Practical Action 2010). Inequality ispresent throughout many energy commodity systems,most evidently where nations export vast energy richesyet remain mired in energy poverty. These expressionsof energy injustice are shaped by an array of actors,institutions and interests whose actions affect interna-tional flows of energy provision and consumption,affecting barriers to, and the terms of, energy access.The everyday governance of energy (or lack thereof)shapes matters of distributive justice. At the same time,patterns of uneven development pose key governancechallenges such as providing energy to those livingin poverty (energy access); supplying energy in aregular, fair and predictable manner (energy security);and minimising the environmental externalities andunequal burdens of energy extraction, provision andconsumption (energy and climate justice).

Questions around energy poverty and strugglesover particular sites of energy production and extrac-tion have been raised in other work on environmentaljustice (Seze 2005; Newell 2007), but the globaljustice dimensions of energy have received less atten-tion. Yet the global justice aspects of energy access,security and the relationship between energy andclimate change deserve greater scrutiny (Caney 2011).Exploring energy justice forces questions of security,violence and structures of production centre stage indebates about global environmental justice. Becauseenergy relates so closely to economic growth, securityand war, it assumes a prominent place in the geo-political and economic strategies of ruling elites. Thishas implications for the distribution of impacts fromenergy production (Who benefits? Who experiencesburdens?) and how this relates to decisionmakingprocesses (Who participates and influences policy?).Hence questions of power are central to any inquiryinto energy justice.

As important as distributive struggles are, issues ofparticipation and recognition are equally important,therefore. Indeed, some environmental justice schol-arships attempt to bring all three concerns together(cf. Schlosberg 2004 2007). Procedural justice is criti-

cal to energy governance. Decisions to allocate, useand consume energy in particular ways for particularpurposes are mostly made out of the public eye andrarely in democratic forums. Whether for reasons ofcommercial confidentiality or geo-strategic sensitivi-ties, public participation and deliberation aroundquestions of energy governance has traditionally beenvery weak. Even when public participation is encour-aged, it often serves more to legitimate preordaineddecisions than to involve stakeholders in shaping out-comes: inviting consultation on a limited range ofpolicy choices based on models and forecasts whoseassumptions are not open to scrutiny. The case fornuclear energy, for example, is often premised on anenergy gap between demand and supply which takeslittle account of the potential for energy conservationand efficiency, such that demand can only be met byan energy source such as nuclear which is presentedas the obvious solution. Where energy injusticesoccur it is even difficult to hold parties, often powerfulelites or multinational corporations, to accountbecause energy provisioning is in the private sector.This is especially the case where states have eitherrelinquished control over, or been required to liberal-ise, energy sectors as part of reform programmes oftenoverseen by multilateral development banks (Wamu-konya 2003). What is particularly disconcerting is thatenergys political and economic sensitivities makenations reluctant to cede control over energy policy toglobal bodies, resulting in the weakness and under-development of institutions of global or even regionalenergy governance: arenas in which key prioritiesmight be set and pursued, conflicts identified andmediated, and issues of injustice evaluated andresolved (Florini and Sovacool 2009; McGowan2009). The following sections explore challenges tothe pursuit of global energy justice that arise fromefforts to provide energy access and security, whiletransitioning to low-carbon energy sources.

Improving energy access in the just transition

A just transition will have to address how decarboni-sation strategies allow for increased access to electric-ity for those currently coping with energy poverty.Alleviating energy poverty is central to achieving themillennium development goals. A total of 1.6 billionpeople in the poorest regions of the world still have noaccess to electricity and under most scenarios 1.3billion people will still lack access to electricity in2030. Worldwide, 2.7 billion people rely on tradi-tional biomass for cooking and heating and anotherbillion are connected to unreliable electricity net-works (World Energy Outlook 2010). Accordingly, thegoal to halve extreme poverty by 2015 cannot beachieved without policies specifically designed toaddress energy poverty.Yet policymakers have system-atically neglected energy poverty (Sanchez 2010).Activists describe this scenario as an injustice, even



invoking the language of apartheid to highlight thestark inequalities in energy use (Corbyn 2010).

Attempts to balance developing countries right todevelop with the need to decarbonise the globaleconomy, amid calls for developed countries to paycarbon debts and deliver climate justice, are gener-ating significant stalemate in international climatechange negotiations (Bond 2012). Such debates aremore complex than the narrative of developed versusdeveloping countries, as responsibilities and impactsare distributed unevenly within nations along the linesof urban/rural, rich/poor as well as gender, race andclass as we discuss further below (Newell 2005).Attempts to address energy poverty are also repletewith contradictions. Chinas development of coal-firedelectricity generation will increase energy access to thepoor, but with severe consequences for environmentalquality and climate change. Likewise, theThree GorgesDam increases energy access to millions but results inenvironmental refugees displaced by the mega-project(Tan and Yao 2006). Inter-generational, inter-nationaland intra-national trade-offs of this sort strongly char-acterise the global politics of energy justice.

Addressing energy injustice in the global fossil fueleconomy

Fossil fuel energy resources are unevenly distributedand commonly implicated in patterns of violence andinsecurity. Rising energy costs and consequences foreconomic activities are often invoked as rationales tomobilise military forces to secure energy supplies, asseen in recent conflicts in the Middle East and NorthAfrica. Energy commodity chains linked to zones ofconflict raise questions of basic security and freedomfrom violence associated with securing energy sup-plies to support consumption patterns of the globalNorth. These create a boomerang effect (Beck 1990),whereby energy procurement creates injustice forothers in ways that come back to haunt consumersthrough insecure access, costly military engagementsor price rises. This suggests that energy justice cannotbe delivered by, or contained within, the borders ofthe nation state in a globalised economy. A globaljustice framework is required.

Conflicts and contradictions between energy secu-rity and human rights are found throughout globalenergy commodity chains. Some claim that develop-ing nations awash in energy and natural resources particularly those heavily reliant on exports forforeign exchange earnings are prone to theresource curse where, as Ross puts it, Countries thatare rich in petroleum have less democracy, less eco-nomic stability and more frequent civil wars thancountries without oil (Ross 2012). The injustices ofpetro-violence and human rights abuses by petro-states are well known features of the global oil com-modity complex (Watts 2005). The interests ofdominant actors are poorly aligned with those of

marginalised groups who remain without energy orwhose land and livelihoods lay in the path of lucra-tive state and private revenue. This dynamic isclearly illustrated by numerous conflicts betweenand within indigenous groups and the state, actingon behalf of state-owned and multinational enter-prises (Kimerling 1996).

The thirst for steady, affordable and reliable energyresources is also driving land grabs by wealthy coun-tries and multinational firms to meet rising andexpected future energy demands. While the WorldBank sees an opportunity for the poor to benefit fromlarge-scale land acquisitions (Li 2011), others simplycharacterise the process as enclosure or accumulationby dispossession (Harvey 2003; Borras et al. 2010).Biofuels development is one area where such landgrabs are actively moving forward, but other resourcesare undergoing these processes. The natural gas indus-try experienced a land grab for shale resources in theUSA over the past decade, while Russia is mappingthe Arctic energy frontier to claim untapped mineralwealth there. Likewise, electrification of automobilesmay set in motion land grabs for territories with new-found value, such as the Altiplano in Bolivia orAfghanistan, where there are vast deposits of lithium(Romero 2009; Risen 2010), leading some to arguethat foreign oil dependency will simply be replacedby dependence on other imported materials, repro-ducing energy insecurity.

What this suggests is that decarbonisation strategiesmay well be characterised by similar patterns ofexploitation and dispossession that characterise thecurrent global political economy unless some of thesesocial and environmental consequences are takeninto account as part of a just transition. Technologi-cal innovation and the search for new sites of accu-mulation can produce injustice in surprising andunpredictable ways, including around the develop-ment of clean (low carbon) technologies (Zehner2012). In 2010, rare earth elements (REEs) essentialto many clean tech commodities like wind turbinesand electric vehicle batteries emerged in main-stream geopolitical discourses on energy security.China, who supplies 99.9% of REEs, cut off the supplyto Japan and threatened to reduce exports. This set inmotion a World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade suitand the reopening of a Mojave Desert REE mine thathad previously closed because of water pollutionimpacts upon a downstream community.

There is a tendency to treat all clean technologies ashomogenously green. Yet solar photovoltaic tech-nologies rely on semiconductor technologies thatrequire hazardous chemicals, complex global supplychains, and contract manufacturing (Silicon ValleyToxics Coalition 2009). The legacy of environmentalinjustice in the wake of the semiconductor manufac-turing in the 1970s and 1980s toxic waste sites andoccupational health problems in mostly immigrantwomen workers reminds us that all commodities



come at unequal costs (Pellow and Park 2002). Theembrace of biofuels as a clean energy resource isanother example of how attempts to address energyinsecurity produce patterns of injustice in their wake.Today Brazil is self-reliant in fuel for passenger carsbecause of domestic sugarcane ethanol production.Programmes initiated in the 1970s increased sugar-cane production and mandated that new cars haveflex fuel engines to run on ethanol. A strong andcoherent policy fostered this technological pathway.But the industry is continually confronted with accu-sations of poor working conditions, including slaveand child labour (Dos Santos 2007). In the USAenergy security policies have mandated increases incorn ethanol production, raising concerns about thetrade-offs between food security and energy security.Corn-based ethanol demand contributed to risingglobal corn prices, causing tortilla riots by Mexicancampesinos reliant on corn as a staple food.

Similarly, energy pathways that require intensivewater use may have implications for water justice.Whether it is the usurpation of water rights for hydro-electric power generation, cooling towers or waterquality impacts from extracting natural gas from shale,there will be emerging conflicts between futuredemands for water.

Issues of justice will be intrinsic to whicheverenergy trajectory is pursued within and beyond thefossil fuel economy and they need to be better under-stood and anticipated by future efforts to secure a justtransition around questions of extraction, labour andthe distribution of benefits.

The climate justice dimension

Confronting climate change will require drasticchanges in energy production and consumption. Thepolitical decisions that drive this transition have enor-mous implications for climate justice. The decision tostabilise atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 450parts per million or reduce current concentrations to350 parts per million will put some communities atgreater risk. But the question of who pays for thetransition is also a matter of justice. Avoiding the worsteffects of dangerous climate change implies radicalchange to the current energy order. Developing coun-tries will not accept proposals to cut back globalcarbon emissions that do not take account of their rightto development and need to confront energy poverty.

Patterns of energy use raise issues of energy justice inthe form of responsibility (current versus historical) andentitlement (whose needs are most pressing and whodecides who can emit how much). Various climatechange policy proposals have sought to address theseissues, each balancing issues of equity, efficiency andeffectiveness differently in their attempts to rapidlyreduce greenhouse gas emissions. Proposals includecontraction and convergence, an idea promoted bythe Global Commons Institute and supported by many

developing nations. This framework aims to contractoverall carbon emission safely below a thresholdwhich avoids runaway climate feedbacks and keepswarming within tolerable limits. At the same time,overall per capita carbon emissions would convergeby redistributing emissions entitlements. Others, suchas the Greenhouse Development Rights (GDR) frame-work, developed by a coalition of NGOs and researchorganisations, seek to reconcile the right to develop-ment with the need to drastically reduce greenhousegas emissions on the basis of a metric incorporatingpopulation, GDP and cumulative emissions contribu-tion. Different justice principles are invoked in each.Proposals based on grandfathering favoured by theUSA take the status quo as the most legitimate startingpoint, while contraction and convergence and GDRproposals place intra- and inter-generational equityprinciples more centrally. Pursuing a just transition,therefore, means having not only to handle trade-offsbetween competing actors and interests now, but alsoaddressing sensitive questions about historical respon-sibility which impinge upon who has to reduce mostnow based on previous inequitable use (overconsump-tion) of global atmospheric space. In other words, howshould current generations be held accountable for theemissions generated by prior generations? On the onehand, the consequences of these emissions were notknown when emitted. On the other hand, currentgenerations have materially benefited from thoseemissions.

Advancing a just transition will also mean dealingwith the potential production of injustice throughexisting market-based efforts to tackle climate change,which can enrol the resources and impact the liveli-hoods of many poorer people in the global South. Asmajor industrialised economies fail to significantlydecarbonise their energy sectors they instead searchfor low-cost abatement opportunities in the globalSouth through the Kyoto Protocols Clean Develop-ment Mechanism (CDM). The pursuit of clean energythrough projects supported under the CDM has led tostruggles over land and the distribution of revenuesderived from the carbon credits in countries wherethey are hosted (Newell and Bumpus 2012). Thedevelopment of wind, biomass and solar powerprojects have intensified land pressures, leading toclaims that peoples land rights are being usurped andaffected groups have not adequately been consulted(Bhm and Dabhi 2009). Hence, revenue streams thatsupport action on climate change can entrench pro-cedural inequalities in decisions that affect access toland and livelihoods.

One of the key challenges for energy justice is howto reconcile efforts to tackle energy poverty andclimate change simultaneously. The controversial useof World Bank climate funds to support the construc-tion of the Medupi coal-fired power plant in SouthAfrica illustrates these tensions at work. The WorldBank argued that their mandate to tackle energy



poverty meant lending support to large-scale infra-structural projects (rather than small-scale renewa-bles), and that supporting cleaner forms of coalcombustion ensured this occurred in a less carbon-intensive way. Critics meanwhile claimed the projectwould mainly benefit large-scale industry rather thanpoorer consumers and that the World Banks ambi-tions to serve as a key institution of climate financewere damaged by offering unwavering support forconventional fossil fuel projects. So-called cleancoal technology might allow some reduction incarbon emissions, but requires 30% more coal use forthe same amount of energy (Ansolabehere et al. 2007)and increased coal demand will have far-reachingimplications for coal-producing communities and thedozen mines that will feed the Medupi coal plant.

The low-carbon electricity produced from nuclearpower plants likewise is often advocated as a responseto the climate challenge. The recent nuclear renais-sance is largely driven by its reinvention as a cleanenergy solution to the climate crisis. Yet, as the Fuku-shima accident reminded us, it can reproduce crisesof its own. Likewise, presenting nuclear power asclean when environmental injustices associated withuranium/yellow cake mining and long-term nuclearwaste storage problems are taken into account is animpressive discursive achievement made possible bycarbon reductionism devoid of social context. Onething is clear from these examples. The burdens of thetransition to a low-carbon economy will be unevenlydistributed, particularly if clean energy is pursuedwithout attention to energy justice.

Towards global energy justice?

Who defines what is just, and for whom, will bedetermined by power struggles in particular contextsas measures aimed at achieving energy and climatejustice are simultaneously deployed. But the globaldimensions, interconnections and spill-overs thatcharacterise patterns of justice and injustice in thefossil fuel economy complicate how a just transitionwill have to be pursued. The social and spatial dimen-sions of energy and climate justice force us to con-sider the scope for stronger forms of energygovernance beyond the state that are able to addressthese complex relationships.

A lack of attention to the justice implications ofenergy access and the links between climate andenergy justice is, in part, a product of weak and inco-herent global energy governance (Florini and Sova-cool 2009; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen 2010). Internationalinstitutions with missions related to energy, includingthe International Energy Agency, OPEC (Organizationof the Petroleum Exporting Countries), UN-Energy, theGlobal Environment Facility, as well as publicprivatepartnerships such as the Renewable Energy andEnergy Efficiency Partnership and REN21 do not cur-rently amount to a substantive, coherent or effective

architecture of global energy governance. The actorsthat wield the most power on energy issues arenations, albeit often beholden to multinational energycorporations. The geopolitical sensitivity and strategicimportance of issues of energy supply and accessleads most states to prefer to maintain autonomy andcontrol over energy pathways, even if powerful statesor firms also seek to secure control over weaker andpoorer countries energy supplies.

In this regard those chapters of regional and bilat-eral trade and investment agreements dealing withenergy have proven to be among the most sensitive tonegotiate. The effect of this is that the space for claim-making around energy justice within global arenas ishighly restricted because few bodies exercise directauthority over energy resources. Where energy fea-tures in trade and investment agreements, and whenkey decisions about energy access and securityexclude broader publics, NGOs, trades unions andindigenous peoples movements have mobilised todemand both procedural justice (the right to partici-pate in deliberations which affect them) and distribu-tional justice (either defence of their land from energyexploration and extraction or greater access to therents extracted from the resource exploitation), oftenforming transnational alliances (such as the Hemi-spheric Social Alliance) to do so, in an attempt toopen up policy to demands for environmental andsocial justice, where it is feared energy sector liberali-sation will compromise energy security, sovereigntyand access for the poor (Newell 2007).

As calls for universal access to secure, low-carbonelectricity intensify, it is possible that pressures forstronger institutions to govern energy will increase.There is a complementary nexus between efforts totackle energy poverty, security and climate changesimultaneously (Casillas and Kammen 2010) in spiteof the conflicts and trade-offs described above. Butstronger forms of governance to manage these trade-offs globally have yet to seriously emerge, despiteenergy security long being a feature of G8/G20agendas. Hence the pursuit of energy justice as part ofa just transition requires strategic reflection aboutwhich arenas are most likely to deliver outcomes ben-eficial to those living without energy, with the injus-tices created by the energy choices of others, or withthe effects of climate change generated by existingand past systems of energy production and consump-tion. This will be critical to the success of collectiveefforts to address the scenario sketched out by theIEAs World energy outlook:

It is no exaggeration to claim that the future of humanprosperity depends on how successfully we tackle twocentral energy challenges facing us today: securingsupply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting arapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and envi-ronmentally benign system of energy supply

IEA (2008, 37)



Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the reviewers andeditors for helpful comments on an earlier version ofthis paper.

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Documents

The Political Economy of the Just Transition