The need for energy policy to manage trade-offs among multiple policy objectives is often conceptualised as a “trilemma” that requires balancing the security, sustainability and affordability of energy supply. However, the trilemma tends to place limited emphasis on procedural and recognition justice, and it downplays other facets of individual and collective wellbeing that are affected by energy supply and demand, including community cohesion, autonomy and attachment to place. Multidimensional accounts of energy justice span many of these aspects, but not all aspects of justice may be straightforward to reconcile: while ideally just procedures should make it more likely that distributive outcomes are secured, in practice trade-offs may arise. For example, policy-makers may need to decide how to prioritise limited resources between community engagement processes and community benefit schemes. Meanwhile, concerns of justice may appear to conflict with other policy objectives, e.g. in debates over whether extensive community engagement could compromise the speed of the energy transition. This underscores the need for a more comprehensive and nuanced approach to identifying and managing synergies and tensions between objectives in energy policy.
Policy coherence - an approach to policy-making that seeks to minimise conflicts among policy objectives and maximise synergies among them – offers a promising way forward. This paper begins with an overview and critical analysis of widely used frameworks that seek to integrate multiple objectives relevant to energy (e.g. the energy trilemma, energy justice frameworks and the Sustainable Development Goals). Drawing on insights from the policy coherence literature, we then argue that a policy coherence lens offers a conceptual and methodological toolkit that can yield insights on two areas: (a) how different aspects of energy justice (e.g. procedural or distributive aspects) may reinforce or undermine each other; and (b) how energy justice relates to concerns of justice outside the field of energy (e.g. social justice more broadly) and to other policy objectives (e.g. biodiversity conservation or economic development). Greater clarity on these issues can help to recognise better the multiple values that inform energy policy, and to provide a more transparent basis for public dialogue on how these values can be weighed up in practice. The analysis also demonstrates how a policy coherence lens can help to identify and manage synergies and tensions between policy objectives pursued by different levels of governance, thereby informing multi-scalar accounts of energy justice.
Throughout the paper we draw on examples of tensions and synergies between policy objectives and levels of governance in Australia’s energy transition. The case of Australia offers valuable insights because of (a) intense and longstanding political contention over compatibility between renewable energy and other objectives (e.g. export revenue and jobs associated with fossil fuels) and (b) periods of discord and collaboration between Federal and State governments in the energy field.
