Darren McCauley

The concept of energy justice across the disciplines

Over the last decade, ‘Energy Justice’ is a concept that has emerged in research across many disciplines. This research explores the role and value of the energy justice concept across the disciplines. It provides the first critical account of the emergence of the energy justice concept in both research and practice. A diagrammatical image for examining the energy justice concepts is presented and this is a tool for interdisciplinary engagement with the concept. In this context, restorative justice is introduced and how it results in energy justice applying in practice is detailed. Energy research scholarship at universities is assessed and it is clear that through universities there is a platform for energy justice scholarship to build on the interdisciplinary energy scholarship at universities. Further, the role of education is vital to policy-making, and the understanding and development of the energy justice concept. Finally, in analysing how the energy justice concept can impact on policy-making, there is a critical examination of the energy justice and its relationship with economics, and how it can transfer directly into practice by assisting in balancing the competing aims of the energy trilemma.

Global Energy Justice

Energy justice is an innovative and emerging framework that is central to this book. A new approach to global energy policy is identified in this set of literature through exploring the themes of accessibility, availability and sustainability. It allows us to explore the justice implications and potential solutions for both high- and low-carbon energy sources in focus in this book: fossil fuels, nuclear, hydropower and wind. Before outlining the new energy justice framework, this chapter summarises the current standing of the global energy system from production to consumption. It provides the reader with some basic assumptions on energy. Further consideration is paid to the historical and future trajectories of energy and justice literature. I conclude with a new synthesis of approaches for exploring injustices in our global energy system.

Wasting energy? Campaigns against waste-to-energy sites in France

The proliferation of waste incinerators in France has stimulated widespread policy conflict and social mobilisation. French government has struggled to follow a coherent waste management strategy. Its initial preference for landfills as a waste disposal solution was replaced by waste incineration. This sparked a nationwide programme of construction in both urban and rural areas. Recent technological advances in waste-to-energy have further cemented incineration as a major policy solution in its management mix. Local anti-incinerator campaigns have emerged throughout France in response. A resource-opportunity analysis is employed to explain why some campaigns succeeded when others did not.

The Political Economy of Energy Justice: A Nuclear Energy Perspective

Energy justice has recently emerged as a new crosscutting social science research agenda. In this chapter, its core tenets are explored: distributional justice, procedural justice, and justice as recognition. Using a case study approach of nuclear waste in Canada, nuclear reactors in the UK, and uranium mines in Australia, the manifestations of energy justice in practice are illustrated from a political economy perspective through analysing the nuclear energy sector. This focus allows us to identify both winners and losers with regard to energy justice throughout the nuclear energy system. Through promoting the application of this triple-pronged approach across the energy system and within the global context of energy production and consumption, recommendations for its operationalisation are advanced. Of significance, the political economy focus highlights the key areas for conflicts and trade-offs amongst the core tenets of energy justice as the concept makes policy ground.

An Energy Justice Road Map—Six Key Considerations

The energy justice framework allows us to consider the ways in which fairness and equity should be at the heart of our efforts to re-balance the energy trilemma . As energy scholars, we are acutely mindful of the energy transition from high- to low-carbon technologies. This chapter sets out six key considerations for those involved in driving energy decisions and research, including government, business, research organisations, charities and individuals. They correspond directly to the three dimensions of energy justice—distribution , recognition and procedures —as well as the central issues of availability , accessibility and sustainability . Reflections on all six help us to develop a better picture of how energy policy should develop in the future. It then concludes with some indications on fruitful future research opportunities.

Protest, politics and produce: a resource account of anti-genetically modified organism activism

Activism research is over-reliant on social psychological frameworks emphasising framing or ideological-based explanations. The current underdevelopment of resource-based accounts requires urgent attention from social movement scholars. Stressing the rationality of social movement actors, resource mobilisation theory is used to assess and understand the empirical validity of resource-driven social mobilisation. Anti-genetically modified organism (GMO) activism in France is selected as a uniquely ripe context for exploring resource mobilisation. A resource-based examination reveals why, when and how key anti-GMO movement actors differentiated their strategies on the basis of protest, politics and produce. A new framework is proposed to encompass key variables around material, human and network-based resources. It is argued that resource mobilisation research designs need to move beyond financially driven causal arguments.

Alternative Energy Sources and Energy Justice

The imperative of climate change is driving significant investment in low-carbon technologies. Justice scholars need to be cognisant of emerging injustices that are inherent to alternative low-carbon energy sources. This chapter assesses the main justice implications for the three energy sources: nuclear, hydro and wind. It spans the range of low-carbon technologies from the leading large-scale options in the form of nuclear and hydro as well as the more modern micro-solutions in wind energy. It includes an examination of resource availability including production and security concerns, accessibility in relation to consumption patterns and trade flows as well as broader sustainability questions. The energy justice framework is then applied to each low-carbon source in a similar manner to the previous chapter.

Reshaping Energy Governance in the Arctic? Assessing the Implications of LNG for European Shipping Companies

Future estimates indicate that the reduction of the Arctic ice cap will open up new areas and increase the viability of the region to be increasingly used for international shipping (Liu and Kronbak, J Trans Geo 18(3):434–444. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2009.08.004, 2010). The Arctic sea routes and related coastal area are therefore gaining increasing levels of interest, as they become a more attractive alternative for maritime transport. This demand for new infrastructure and development in areas where there has previously been little or none, presents a unique situation to analyze. The increased interest and demand for new development along Arctic sea routes through an environmentally sensitive region make the Arctic an ideal area of which to study the transition toward liquefied natural gas becoming the prominent marine fuel.

Fossil Fuels and Energy Justice

Fossil fuel systems are routinely associated with injustice. The inherently carbon-intensive nature of fossil fuels poses serious questions for the future of oil, gas and coal. This is only part of the picture. I explore, firstly, the different characteristics of each energy source, including significant differences in carbon emissions. The chapter broadens its assessment beyond carbon emissions to consider the wider energy context of resource availability, accessibility and sustainability. This includes an assessment of natural reserves, patterns of production and consumption, trade flows, price and long-term trends as well as carbon dioxide emissions. The energy justice framework is then applied to each energy source with a detailed coverage of their respective distributional, recognition and procedural global inequalities.

Framing injustice in green criminology : activism, social movements and geography

Abstract Injustice is perceived, experienced and articulated. Social movements, and their constitutive parts, frame and re-frame these senses of injustice. Two often-overlapping accounts of social movements are in focus in this chapter. Human geography has been flooded with movement-based analyses of environmental justice (EJ). Sociology (more appropriately political sociology) has provided insight into social movements in the form of ‘contentious politics’ (CP). Building on both sets of literature, this chapter seeks to advance thought in human geography through a detailed exploration of master and collective action framing. It argues, firstly, that framing analysis challenges activist researchers to retain ‘spatial constructs’ as their central focus, rather than discourse. It calls, secondly, for us to unbind injustice as much as justice in our analysis of framing. And lastly, it demands a multi-spatial perspective on framing beyond simply scalar accounts.