Linking Energy Justice and Energy Modelling: Co-Creating a Just and Effective Energy transition

Local and regional governments face significant challenges in energy transition planning. They must reduce CO₂ emissions to meet national climate targets while addressing local aspirations and ensuring a fair and just transition for all societal groups. This process is complex, involving diverse stakeholders with differing interests and resources. To guide decision-making, decision-makers often rely on computational models. These tools model the techno-economic aspects of the energy system and as of today they are rarely able to address the social and political aspects of energy transition planning such as energy justice considerations. Bridging the gap between energy justice and energy modeling is becoming essential as is evident from recent efforts to incorporate justice into energy modeling. While some progress has been made, key gaps remain. Firstly, justice is often reduced to quantifiable metrics, with a disproportionate focus on distributive justice and less attention to procedural and recognition dimensions, which are harder to quantify. Secondly, multi-modeling approaches, which could address justice's multidimensional nature, remain underexplored. Optimization remains the dominant modelling approach, with only a few studies leveraging benefits of alternative approaches like agent-based and system dynamics modelling. Finally, participatory modeling methodology, while promising, lacks clear guidelines to effectively represent energy justice in decision-making. In this paper, we propose a new way of thinking that is centered on participatory multi-modeling approach towards just energy transition decision-making. We draw from the disciplines of energy justice, multi-modelling and institutional/system change with the goal of facilitating co-creation of just and effective energy transitions at the local & regional levels.