A new article, written by Dr Kirsten Jenkins, CIED Director Professor Benjamin Sovacool and Dr Darren McCauley at the University of St. Andrews, promotes greater engagement with the energy justice approach when planning for a low-carbon transition. The researchers argue that throughout the process of change, issues around justice can emerge leading to innovations that are unfair and exclusionary.
The paper calls for the integration of the energy justice framework into the so-called multi-level perspective (MLP), an approach often used to give an account of technological change and systems innovation over time. This approach identifies three levels:
- Niche: where radical and revolutionary innovation is developed and generated
- Regime: comprises dominant institutions and technologies, and a set of routines and practices that sustain them
- Landscape: contains slow changing external factors, it represents broader political, social and cultural values and institutions of society
The researchers make the case for introducing the energy justice approach on all three levels, as it can provide opportunities to expose injustices as well as help develop new means to solve them.
Read the full paper.
Find out more about CIED’s work on Energy Justice.
