Conflict and the energy crisis: Conflicting claims of energy justice

Abstract

For the section “policy conflicts as default” at the ECPR general conference 2022 this panel addresses energy justice as a source of policy conflicts that arise in the transition towards carbon neutral societies. The dominant role of governments and businesses in these transition processes leads to growing concerns about the distribution of costs and benefits in society, about who is involved in decision-making processes and about how actors and their needs are recognized. High stakes for policy and corporate elites can lead to the interests of other actors being compromised. The transition towards carbon neutral societies may thus contribute to unjust outcomes and exacerbate already existing social inequalities. This panel addresses the conflictual nature of energy justice claims by studying how different conceptualizations of energy justice may expose different sources of conflict, and by empirically investigating elite coping strategies, and various policy practices in which energy justice claims arise.

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