Evaluating equity and justice in low-carbon energy transitions

Abstract

A low-carbon energy transition is essential for mitigating climate change, but can also cause energy justice and equity impacts on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), low-income, and other frontline communities. Examples include exacerbating energy burden, inaccessibility and unaffordability of low-carbon energy and electric end-use technologies, property value loss and displacement from renewable energy siting, and unequal health benefits and employment losses from fossil fuel retirement. To avoid perpetuating historical and creating new injustices, an equitable and just energy transition will require careful planning and execution. To this end, measuring and evaluating the effects of existing and proposed programs and policies aimed at decarbonizing energy systems is critical. However, methods and metrics for evaluating equity effects vary across disciplines and transitions, making it challenging to identify effective evaluation strategies. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the equity implications of low-carbon energy transitions and identifies key metrics that have been used across disciplines to quantify energy injustices and equity impacts. We focus on four key low-carbon energy transitions: (1) renewable energy deployment; (2) fossil fuel infrastructure retirement; (3) transportation electrification; and (4) residential building decarbonization. We classify energy justice and equity metrics into the dimensions of health, access, and livelihood, and construct an analytical framework that supports policymakers, planners and other stakeholders in identifying important equity considerations and quantitatively evaluating the effects of decarbonization initiatives. While our framework can serve as a starting point for evaluating justice and equity impacts of energy transitions, further work is needed to address the limitations of existing metrics and additional evaluation methods will be critical to effect energy transitions that are truly equitable.

Renewable energy investments in South Africa: Potentials and challenges for a sustainable transition - a review

“…As also highlighted, legacy energy production infrastructure militates against the incentive to adopt RE options as the government seems to lag in investing in new tech-driven facilities required for RE production. 51 For instance, this is true in wind energy, which is hampered by farm location. Akinbami, Oke and Bodunrin 20 indicated that most wind farms in South Africa are often in remote areas, making a connection to the grid challenging.…”

Powering the Future: An Integrated Framework for Clean Renewable Energy Transition

“…Another issue is the subjectivity of selecting metrics. Kime et al (2023) in their study, aiming to review metrics addressing equity in energy transition highlighted that this may cause ignoring important metrics while studying one of the dimensions. Whether it was unintentional or not, this may affect decision-making and reduce transparency.…”

“…This is also another reason why these metrics are more common than other metrics. Also, with the increase in interest in justice, and equitable issues as well (Barlow, J, Tapio, R, Tarekegne, B, 2022), more metrics have been used in studies to assess the social impact, some of these metrics require qualitative tools to be measured, this has increased the share of social metrics used (Kime, S et al, 2023).…”

“…As countries strive to meet their climate goals, understanding the metrics that drive effective planning and decision-making becomes paramount. Despite the extensive body of literature on studying the impact of renewable energy transition and energy resilience, the majority of studies focus on one area such as evaluating energy equity (Kime, S et al, 2023), resilience (Mar, A., Pereira, P., Martins, J. ), and social, economic, and environmental sustainability (Akella, A. K., Saini, R., and Sharma, M., 2009).…”

Emerging environmental justice issues at the intersection of transportation and electricity systems

“…Energy justice is frequently described as consisting of three major tenets: distributional justice, focused on how benefits and burdens are distributed across populations; recognition justice, which recognizes vulnerable communities and the causes of past and present inequities; and procedural justice, which focuses on just processes and inclusion in decision making processes [9]. Energy justice scholars have described important dimensions of equity including health, access, and livelihood, and have suggested that key components of an equitable energy transition include renewable energy deployment, fossil fuel infrastructure retirement, transportation electrification, and residential building decarbonization [10]. Others have suggested additional dimensions including consumer energy consumption, wealth creation, ownership, and autonomy; multi-scalar supply chain equity; and comparative country-level equity [11].…”