Does Rapid Mean Unfair? Rethinking Participation in the Final Acceleration Phase of Net-Zero Transitions

Justice and contestation have been recognized as fundamental challenges and trade-offs in net-zero transitions, particularly during phases of acceleration and rapid change (Sovacool et al., 2025). The academic literature often presents an antagonistic relationship between justice and acceleration, suggesting that fast-paced transitions may undermine justice goals, and vice versa (Newell et al., 2022, Skjølsvold and Coenen, 2021, van Bommel and Höffken, 2023). However, empirical evidence on this relationship remains scarce, particularly in the advanced phases of rapid change, as few countries have reached this stage in sectoral net-zero transitions. Drawing on the case of Germany’s electricity transition, our article challenges this prevailing perspective and provides new empirical evidence on different forms of participation and their role in contributing to procedural and distributional justice, while explaining how these factors can positively influence the speed of transitions. Here, we examine how public participation influence both the rate and direction of change in the advanced phase of electricity transitions. Our central research questions are: How do justice-related factors manifest in an advanced acceleration phase, and does participation facilitate or impede net-zero transition outcomes? Empirically, we follow a sequential mixed-methods approach, moving beyond the predominant focus on expert interviews. We performed an extensive empirical study on the impacts of participation in renewable energy projects in Germany. Here, we define participation very broadly including financial benefit sharing, ownership, local engagement and communication as well as regional added value creation. Through desktop research, a survey (n=189), and interviews with various stakeholder groups (n=55), we collected data on wind, solar, and grid energy projects across Germany. This dataset includes information on different participation formats, conflicts, project implementation pace, and community and political acceptance of individual projects. Contrary to the prevailing notion that justice is compromised by urgency in energy transitions (van Bommel and Höffken, 2023) and that acceleration is hindered by justice claims, we hypothesize that accelerated transitions do not necessarily undermine distributional and procedural justice in the local implementation of wind and solar projects. Instead, justice-related approaches become even more critical in preventing stalemates, delays, or backlash. Our findings challenge the assumption that public participation necessarily slows energy transitions. They also indicate that the notion of a required balance between distributional and procedural justice is becoming less relevant in advanced transitions, as communities place greater emphasis on securing direct and tangible local benefits. Conceptually, we contribute to the growing literature on the acceleration of net-zero transitions (Rosenbloom and Meadowcroft, 2022) by broadening the understanding of different forms of justice in shaping both the speed and direction of sociotechnical transitions in their advanced phases. We explore the mechanisms and conditions under which justice and acceleration are not antagonistic but complementary dimensions of transition processes. By doing so, we bridge the gap between the literature on innovation, technology diffusion, and policy on one hand, and perspectives that emphasize social inequalities while advocating for expanding climate and energy democracy through new participatory practices on the other(Skjølsvold and Coenen, 2021).