TY - JOUR
T1 - Ending the Energy-Poverty Nexus
T2 - An Ethical Imperative for Just Transitions
AU - Biswas, Saurabh
AU - Echevarria, Angel
AU - Irshad, Nafeesa
AU - Rivera-Matos, Yiamar
AU - Richter, Jennifer
AU - Chhetri, Nalini
AU - Parmentier, Mary Jane
AU - Miller, Clark A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work by Clark Miller, Angel Echevarria, Yiamar Rivera-Matos, and Nafeesa Irshad supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office under grant number DE-EE-0008570. This material is also based upon work by Clark Miller, Saurabh Biswas, Nalini Chhetri, and Mary Jane Parmentier supported by the Energy and Economic Growth Program managed by Oxford Policy Management and funded by UK AID (Grant number A0534A ‐ 30035).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/8
Y1 - 2022/8
N2 - Arguments for a just transition are integral to debates about climate change and the drive to create a carbon-neutral economy. There are currently two broad approaches rooted in ethics and justice for framing just energy transitions. The first can be described as internal to the transition and emphasizes the anticipation, assessment, and redressing of harms created by the transition itself and the inclusion in transition governance of groups or communities potentially harmed by its disruptions. In this article, we propose a second approach to ethics and justice in an energy transition, which we describe as systemic or societal in scope. This approach complements attention to the proximate dynamics and impacts of the transition process with a focus on the distant societal and economic outcomes the transition brings into being and how they compare to conditions prior to the transition. It poses the question: do the transformative social, economic, and technological changes wrought by energy systems create more just societies and economies, or do they instead reinforce or recreate long-standing injustices and inequalities? We illustrate this approach with an assessment of one of the most significant existing forms of energy injustice: the energy-poverty nexus. We argue that the energy-poverty nexus reflects configurations of socio-energy systems that create complex, extractive feedbacks between energy insecurity and economic insecurity and, over time, reinforce or exacerbate poverty. We further argue that just energy transitions should work to disentangle these configurations and re-design them so as to create generative rather than extractive feedbacks, thus ending the energy-poverty nexus and creating long-term outcomes that are more just, equitable, and fair.
AB - Arguments for a just transition are integral to debates about climate change and the drive to create a carbon-neutral economy. There are currently two broad approaches rooted in ethics and justice for framing just energy transitions. The first can be described as internal to the transition and emphasizes the anticipation, assessment, and redressing of harms created by the transition itself and the inclusion in transition governance of groups or communities potentially harmed by its disruptions. In this article, we propose a second approach to ethics and justice in an energy transition, which we describe as systemic or societal in scope. This approach complements attention to the proximate dynamics and impacts of the transition process with a focus on the distant societal and economic outcomes the transition brings into being and how they compare to conditions prior to the transition. It poses the question: do the transformative social, economic, and technological changes wrought by energy systems create more just societies and economies, or do they instead reinforce or recreate long-standing injustices and inequalities? We illustrate this approach with an assessment of one of the most significant existing forms of energy injustice: the energy-poverty nexus. We argue that the energy-poverty nexus reflects configurations of socio-energy systems that create complex, extractive feedbacks between energy insecurity and economic insecurity and, over time, reinforce or exacerbate poverty. We further argue that just energy transitions should work to disentangle these configurations and re-design them so as to create generative rather than extractive feedbacks, thus ending the energy-poverty nexus and creating long-term outcomes that are more just, equitable, and fair.
KW - Energy ethics
KW - Energy transition
KW - Sociotechnical systems
KW - Solar energy
KW - Users
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135855908&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1007/s11948-022-00383-4
DO - 10.1007/s11948-022-00383-4
M3 - Article
C2 - 35947226
AN - SCOPUS:85135855908
SN - 1353-3452
VL - 28
JO - Science and engineering ethics
JF - Science and engineering ethics
IS - 4
M1 - 36
ER -