Legitimacy and Justice in Permitting Nordic Green Energy Initiatives: A Systematic Review

Energy transitions based on rising use of renewable energy and electrification, have had an accelerating trend. They were first stimulated by policies on climate change mitigation, but more recently by lowering prices of new energy technologies and energy security concerns, arising after 2022. The transition has also created a rising need for critical raw materials used in new energy technologies, digitalization and defence technology. In the EU, its Nordic states Finland and Sweden, and Norway externally to the EU have high potential for raw materials production. The Nordic region is emerging as a key player in Europe’s battery ecosystem. Denmark, Sweden and Finland have above average shares of wind power in electricity generation, whereas Norway and Sweden are high hydropower producers. In recent years, research on legitimacy, justice and acceptability of ‘green energy initiatives’ has increased (Ellis et al., 2023; Shejale et al., 2025). It has focused on local questions (Van Bommel and Höffken, 2021) but influenced by national/EU legal frameworks (Heffron, 2022). Legitimacy and justice as concepts are interlinked but with different meanings and implications for the energy transition. Legitimacy has been defined in a context of new technologies and systems, as alignment “with its surrounding institutional environment, including rules, norms, and regulations” accomplished when relevant stakeholders perceive the technology’s attributes to be fitting and useful (Weckowska et al., 2024). It is a rather broad concept where multiple different objectives and values can be behind the achieved legitimacy, e.g., economic, social, environmental or security -based values. It can be associated with public policies, specific technologies or organisations (Genus and Iskandarova, 2020). Institutions play a role in legitimacy building and disruption (Binz et al., 2016; Weckowska et al., 2024) and, hence, this paper argues that permitting systems and how they are used by the associated actors play a specific part in institutional legitimation processes. Legitimacy can be contrasted with the concept of justice, which can be one of the values behind legitimacy but one that may clash with other values – especially economic ones. Justice refers to the fair distribution of benefits and costs of transition, policies or new investments (distributive justice); considerations towards more vulnerable and/or special societal groups (recognitive justice), and; inclusive and fair processes of participation in policymaking processes around transitions (procedural justice). Considerations for justice can be temporally and geographically broad, capturing global and intergenerational dimensions. Given the advancement of the Nordic countries both in social democracy and the progress of energy transition – with increasing political pressure to decarbonize and increase the domestic production of cleantech materials/components – we conducted a qualitative systemic review on legitimacy and justice in Nordic green energy initiatives in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We focused on the institutional aspect of energy initiatives (from mining of critical raw materials, via new electricity grids, to renewable energy installations): permitting. The review sought to capture how legitimacy and justice are portrayed in scientific articles that focus on energy initiatives in these four countries that also address the permitting process.