Governing the energy transition at scale: the frameworks and politics of energy justice

Abstract

Energy transitions are governed through frameworks – policy instruments, measurement systems, supply chain architectures, geopolitical arrangements, and multi-level institutional structures – that shape what counts as progress, whose interests are recognised, and which harms are made visible. This panel examines those frameworks critically, asking not only whether they deliver just outcomes, but whether the dominant logics organising energy governance factor in justice claims at all. The politics of energy justice at scale is partly a politics of frameworks: which objectives get built into policy instruments, which populations and burdens get counted in measurement systems, and which harms acquire normative recognition in governance arrangements. Papers in this panel interrogate these questions across a range of contexts and scales. Some examine how dominant framings, such as the energy trilemma, manage or marginalise diverse dimensions of justice alongside the familiar policy objectives of energy security, energy affordability, and environmental sustainability. Others ask whether critical minerals governance and global supply chains render justice claims visible, or systematically obscure them behind logics of economic competitiveness and geopolitical security. Two papers address measurement, asking how equity considerations are operationalised across research and energy security indices in developing economy contexts, and which populations, burdens, and transition risks they leave outside the frame. Each of these papers helps to demonstrate that making justice legible within energy governance frameworks is not a technical challenge but a political imperative, and that the analytical work of naming, measuring, and contesting the terms of justice is inseparable from the political work of achieving it. The collective contribution of this panel is to highlight that achieving energy justice at scale demands more than just better implementing existing frameworks; it requires contesting the terms on which those frameworks are constructed, and the political will to make justice a central logic of energy governance. This panel is designed to complement its partner panel, ‘Centring those most affected in energy transitions: energy justice, voice, and the politics of vulnerability’, which tackles the same questions of what energy justice means and requires, but takes as its starting point the experiences and perspectives of those who stand to be most adversely affected by an unjust transition. We encourage you to attend both if you can.

Title	Details
Critical minerals and the politics of a just energy transition: examining justice, participation and resilience in global supply chains	View Paper Details
Beyond the energy trilemma: how a policy coherence lens can reveal and manage synergies and tensions in the pursuit of energy justice	View Paper Details
Measuring energy security during the energy transition: Development of a composite energy security index and evidence from Vietnam	View Paper Details
Operationalizing energy-related equity and inequity in developing economies: A systematic literature review	View Paper Details