Energy Justice Framework Meets Chronopolitics: A Case Study of Czech Coal Regions Energy Transition.

The energy transition is often conceived as a question of justice, but considerably less so through the temporal dimension (frame of urgency, formulation of priorities, etc.). However, the dimension of time is inherent in considering justness in energy transition. This theoretically oriented paper proposes employing chronopolitics theory in studying energy justice issues (Mccauley et al., 2013; Sovacool, Dworkin, 2015), especially if the research subject is energy transformation/transition. Chronopolitical analysis concerns time as an object of political relations and investigates how power struggles shape or engage time as both a representation and a resource (Cohen, 2018). Two basic objectives are to 1) examine the relationship between the political behavior of social actors and their time perspectives (Wallis, 1970), and to 2) question how change is understood and managed (Esposito, Becker, 2023). We posit perspective of chronopolitics is relevant for two reasons. Firstly, if objective of the energy justice framework is to liberate our understanding of transformation by examining its various (mis)appropriations (cf. Stirling, 2015; Morena et al., 2018), it is beneficial to explore the different discursive configurations of time and future that are trying to advance political projects of transition in the present (Oomen et al., 2021). Secondly, it will help to elucidate how trade-offs and conflicts arise between different tenets of justice in different contexts as individual tenets may have different temporal emphases. This can shed light on the nature of some of the social conflicts associated with energy transformation and the structural incoherence of some policies, leading potentially to failure (Uffelen et al., 2024). To demonstrate the aforementioned benefits of incorporating chronopolitics into an energy justice analytical framework, the analytical part of the study shows the political implications of specific political ideas about the course/nature of the regional transition process and ideas about the (energy) future on 1) the redistribution of hopes and opportunities to participate in the creation of future scenarios (who is the "appropriate" actor/target group for the success of the transition and is the idea of a desirable future shared? ), which is related to the identification of what is priority and what is secondary (what needs to be done first and what needs to be postponed or omitted altogether). Moreover, it shows 2) how the relationship between past, present, and future is utilitarian framed, especially in legitimating industrial and established interests. We apply this perspective on the case of the Czech coal regions’ energy transition. Coal regions have to seek trade-offs between their development goals and ambitious EU climate policy. Thus, they serve as valuable cases for examining the emergence and impact of ideas regarding the energy future and provide insight into the various conflicting temporalities involved in the energy transition (Hermwille et al., 2023; Hine et al., 2024). We draw on discourse analysis of strategic documents associated with the EU Just Transition Fund and semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in Fund’s implementation.