In person icon Unsettling the Governance of Energy (In)justice

Abstract

This session seeks to develop new perspectives and unsettle dominant understandings of the governance practices that underpin energy-related inequalities across the world. In particular, we critique narrow readings of energy justice within the conventional ‘procedure-distribution-recognition’ (Barragan-Contreras, 2022) triad, seeking to expand the conceptual and practical horizons of knowledge enquiry and policy action. We highlight the embeddedness of energy (in)justice in diverse forms of political activity, underpinned by unequal power relations and practices. The session brings together a series of inter-disciplinary, multi-method contributions predicated upon a whole-systems lens on energy justice (Abram et al., 2022), incorporating activities throughout the ‘energy continuum’ (Hernández, 2015) - from sites of energy production to sites of energy demand. As a whole, the papers interrogate and expose the intersecting processes of infrastructural violence and extraction (Post, 2022) that are constitutive of energy inequalities. Rather than stemming from tightly delineated path dependencies, decisions and provision systems, the papers in the session view energy-related injustices as the product of conscious policy decisions, choices and failures. These forms of inequity cannot be reduced to procedural, formalized and institutionalized interactions between individuals and the state, but instead require a deeper engagement with the ‘contingent political disruptibility of the existing order’ (Koga, Bouzarovski, & Petrova, 2025, p. 1). Within the session, there is a strong emphasis on the social and scalar relationality of place within energy justice governance. Understanding the genesis of energy injustices requires the consideration of governance practices across multiple territorial and material registers. This requires an engagement with the manner in which energy governance practices are practiced among and within places, involving e.g. differences between rural and urban sites (Baltruszewicz et al., 2023), between economically ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’ areas (Sovacool & Furszyfer Del Rio, 2022), or in relation to (post-)colonial forms of resource appropriation and dispossession (Barragan-Contreras, 2022). Energy-related health and well-being disparities can worsen health outcomes in some communities, while intensifying the impact of antecedent forms of exclusion and deprivation (Oliveras et al., 2021). The papers in the session demonstrate how the severity of place-based energy injustices is exacerbated in areas that are already subject to other forms of governance failure. References: Abram, S., Atkins, E., Dietzel, A., Jenkins, K., Kiamba, L., Kirshner, J., … Santos Ayllón, L. M. (2022). Just Transition: A whole-systems approach to decarbonisation. Climate Policy, 22(8), 1033–1049. Baltruszewicz, M., Steinberger, J. K., Paavola, J., Ivanova, D., Brand-Correa, L. I., & Owen, A. (2023). Social outcomes of energy use in the United Kingdom: Household energy footprints and their links to well-being. Ecological Economics, 205, 107686. Barragan-Contreras, S. J. (2022). Procedural injustices in large-scale solar energy: A case study in the Mayan region of Yucatan, Mexico. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 24(4), 375–390. Hernández, D. (2015). Sacrifice along the energy continuum: A call for energy justice. Environmental Justice, 8(4), 151–156. Koga, H., Bouzarovski, S., & Petrova, S. (2025). Unsettling mainstream academic debates on community-based energy governance: Exploring the Japanese experience. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 207, 114994. Oliveras, L., Peralta, A., Palència, L., Gotsens, M., López, M. J., Artazcoz, L., … Marí-Dell’Olmo, M. (2021). Energy poverty and health: Trends in the European Union before and during the economic crisis, 2007–2016. Health & Place, 67, 102294. Post, E. (2022). Hydroelectric extractivism: Infrastructural violence and coloniality in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico. Journal of Latin American Geography, 21(3), 49–95. Sovacool, B. K., & Furszyfer Del Rio, D. D. (2022). “We’re not dead yet!“: Extreme energy and transport poverty, perpetual peripheralization, and spatial justice among Gypsies and Travellers in Northern Ireland. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 160, 112262.

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