The methodologies, geographies, and technologies of energy justice: a systematic and comprehensive review

Academic papers—including full-length articles and review papers—were sampled between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2019. The 12 year range was chosen in order to achieve the 'state of the art' focus the article aims for. Data was sampled from eight major peer-reviewed academic article databases (table 1) with acknowledgement that this may exclude contributions from those without ready access to major journals and that this does not capture books published on the subject (e.g. Bickerstaff et al 2013, Sovacool et al 2013, McCauley 2018, or Bombaerts et al 2020). This mirrors more qualitative review approaches used by Lacey-Barnacle et al (2020) and Sovacool (2014) and many others before them.

To identify relevant articles, we searched for the term 'energy justice' within three fields, the article title, abstract, and keywords. Papers that did not use the term 'energy justice' exactly were excluded. This included the decision not to broaden out the search to include the related terms 'energy ethics' and 'due process', for example. This also excludes the wider body of established justice literature that covers energy issues connecting with equity or power relations, including that using the environmental justice lens as well as approaches from political economy or political ecology. Although this and the decision to search only in three article fields reduces the sample—i.e. it excludes those that use 'energy justice' in the main text but not in the sample fields and those which refer to energy ethics—for example, this was deemed to be the most appropriate approach as it removed subjectivity in determining the sample (mirroring the approach of Sovacool 2014) and aided our desire to track the evolution of the energy justice literature in particular, in keeping with the aims and scope of this investigation. Only full-length, peer-reviewed, English-language research submissions and review papers were taken forward. We utilized an approach in line with Sovacool (2014) because it was well suited to a fragmented discipline (the nexus of energy and climate social science) and also captured a diversity of outputs, including books, commentaries, book reviews, notes, opinion-editorials, letters, forums, viewpoints, corrigendum and similar items were excluded. The resultant sample across the eight databases is shown in table 1. The full list of coded articles is given in appendix 1 of supplementary material (available online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/16/043009/mmedia).

Duplicates of papers were removed so that those remaining were only analysed once even if they appeared multiple times across the search terms and databases.

Our approach to categorization was both inductive and deductive. That is to say that in some instances, we started with a pre-established list of categories inferred from the literature and later amended this during the process of analysis. In other instances, such as for the coding of policy recommendations, we used a more grounded approach, developing the coding criteria as we read. This activity mirrors and extends a similar approach to that used by Sovacool (2014) and Mouter et al (2018).

During the content analysis, data was collected on a variety of aspects present in each article (table 2). To collate this data, the lead author read the title, abstract, and article keywords (when available), before searching the rest of the article for key terms and phases. This data was then analysed using descriptive statistics as well as thematic analysis, allowing the creation of a series of percentages, figures, summary tables and discussions presented in section 3 of the paper.

2.2.1. Author demographics

2.2.2. Article methodologies and research designs

2.2.3. Philosophical and conceptual approaches

2.2.4. Geographic and institutional approaches

2.2.5. Technologies, infrastructure and material systems

2.2.6. The marginalized peoples and victims of injustice

2.2.7. Policy recommendations

Of course, we acknowledge limitations to our study, as would be the case with any such systematic review, and we reflect on the most prominent issues. First, to keep the total number of articles read and coded manageable, we search for only academic literature, meaning we do not include insights from non-academic contributions such as reports, policy briefings and white papers. Nonetheless, we find merit in studying the academic literature and in the finding (below), that it does not often connect with issues of practical implementation. Similarly, our sample is composed only of full-length, peer-reviewed, English-language research submissions and review papers, so we did not capture other forms of contribution.

Second, we searched only for publications in English-language, which neglects contributions made in indigenous and European languages used throughout Africa and Asia, for example.

Third, a team of two authors were responsible for the coding, to improve the reliability of our inferences.

Lastly, though non-exhaustively, we appreciate that there may be texts that although they did not use the term 'energy justice' in the title, keywords or abstract—or indeed elsewhere in the text—may still have discussed its core approach and complementary issues. This may particularly relate to publications from non-Western contexts, where notions of 'justice' do not necessarily directly translate or carry the same meaning. It is also a similar challenge to that faced by the environmental justice literature, which is dominated by literature from the United States (Reed and George 2011).

Across all articles analysed in the sample, a total of 378 author affiliations were listed, covering all five of the major academic families mentioned above. In total, 76% of authors listed themselves as being associated with social sciences and management disciplines, with 10% appearing as not listed/indeterminate, 4% engineering and technology, 2% life sciences and medicine, 4% natural sciences, and 2% arts and humanities figure 1(A). The arts and humanities affiliations included contributions from a Professor of Theatre and Consecrated Layman, illustrating the full diversity of energy justice scholarship. Of these affiliations, only 3% could clearly be considered as 'non-academic'. Whilst Sovacool (2014) identified an underrepresentation of social science and humanities perspectives on energy research, the energy justice research therefore seems far more balanced in this area.

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Yet of the papers analysed, only 16 papers were explicitly identifiable as having interdisciplinary authorship, meaning that despite an increasing shift in academic pedagogy towards interdisciplinary approaches, many authors continue to work in the confines of one of the five listed categories—arts and humanities, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine, natural science, and social science and management—even when working across different institutions and countries.

Authors reported affiliations with all six global regions used for the analysis. This implies positive global representation, although figure 1(B) shows that there was a heavy bias towards European contributions, which amounted to 60% of the sample, whilst authors in universities from the Asia-Pacific region (including Australia and New Zealand) totalled 16%. Of those from Europe, 41% were from the UK. Particularly underrepresented global regions include universities from Africa (2%), Middle East (1%) and Latin American and the Caribbean (1%), although we do note that our sample only selected papers written in English from major databases, which may not be readily accessible in some global regions.

For author gender, shown in figure 1(C), whilst male contributions did dominate (59%), female authors were represented at 38% of the total sample leaving 3% of the research sample as unidentifiable. Sovacool (2014) recognizes in his content analysis of social science research in the energy field, that of 9549 papers analysed, only 15.7% could be identified as female. Although our sample is smaller, our analysis shows that the energy justice literature is currently more gender progressive than the general energy studies literature.

In terms of publishing journal, and despite a wide range of publishing outlets (with 41 journals represented overall), 98 of the articles in the sample of 155 came from just three journals; Applied Energy, Energy Research and Social Science and Energy Policy (figure 2). This corresponds partly with journals publishing special issues on the topic but given that these contained between 14 and 20 papers a time, it also suggests these are enduring targets for this area of scholarship.

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Examining the methodological approach of published articles allowed an assessment of the most dominant research approaches. In total, 39% of articles contained no stated methodology, where subjectively, most of these appeared as conceptual advancements based largely on non-replicable reviews (e.g. Jenkins et al 2016) or in-depth case studies with no openly recorded method for data collection or analysis (figure 3; Sovacool 2016). In contrast, 45% used qualitative primary data and 35% secondary data. 48 papers also included one or more methods, such as Sareen and Haarstad (2018) who employ field observations during site visits to solar energy projects, expert interviews and documentary analysis of media reports and policy documents. Likewise, Lacey-Barnacle and Bird (2018) use participatory action research methods, focusing on interviews and focusing groups, whereas Liljenfeldt and Pettersson (2017) develop models on the basis of secondary data. As a particularly novel case, Osnes (2010) reports the findings of participatory theatre exercises used to engage women in energy development projects, such as the rollout of fuel-efficient cook stoves.

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One caveat must be stated. Although the research field has a mix of conceptual and empirical studies, these findings may not suggest a lack of attention to methods from all researchers, and instead it could be that the type of papers produced may not have needed a specific methods section. Nevertheless, even in disciplines with divergent codes of practice and norms about research design, we find the dearth of detailed methods sections troubling on grounds of both transparency (fully accounting for techniques and assumptions in research design) and replication (giving the community the ability to try to replicate findings and methods if they so desire).

Within the field of energy justice, a range of tenet frameworks have emerged. Our analysis showed that the dominant framework in the sample papers was that of distributional justice, justice as recognition and procedural justice (38%), a finding that corroborates the results of a recent review from Lacey-Barnacle et al (2020). In our results, this was followed by mentions of cosmopolitan justice (9%), distributional justice and procedural justice on their own (8%) and the eight principles approach (7%). A cumulative category of 'other' (8%) captured papers using 'energy systems justice', 'spatial justice', 'energy sufficiency', 'assemblage' and 'energy mobility', 'restorative justice' and 'capabilities approaches' alongside a 10 principles approach. Table 5 gives an overview of the different approaches and the frequency of their appearance.

As particular observations, in seven papers, the approach of distributional justice, justice as recognition, and procedural justice was used alongside the '8 principles' decision-making framework approach, which calls for attention to (a) availability, (b) affordability, (c) due process, (d) intra-generational equity, (e) sustainability, (f) transparency and accountability, (g) equity and (h) responsibility (Sovacool et al 2016). This may be considered a particularly profitable avenue that blends a key conceptual approach to energy justice within one intended to have more of a decision-making and practical influence. Moreover, it is worth noting too that some authors switched between approaches either through time or across different papers over the same timescale. Tentatively, this suggests that the literature may still be evolving in shape or critically, that new authors are joining and seeking to contribute their own perspectives and agendas. In this regard, there is a tension between simultaneously 'opening up' to new authors, disciplinary perspectives and conceptual and decision-making approaches, whilst 'closing down' through the continued dominance of distribution, procedure and recognition.

Out of the total sample of 155 papers, 125 drew on what we would classify as geographical case studies. Though it should be noted that this does not mean that the others contained no geographical or institutional approaches at all, only that the references were very passing without exploring them in significant depth. Comparative case studies of countries appeared in just 24 papers (15%). As an indicative example, Siciliano et al (2019) look at large dam construction in the global South using case studies in Cambodia, Malaysia, Ghana and Nigeria

Compared to the comparatively limited geographical scope of the universities where contributing authors are, this geographical scope of application shows real breadth in the reach of energy justice scholarship, mentioning 61 different countries across the world (figure 4) ⁷ . Although a subjective claim, one of the most novel case study was from the African Island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, where Sovacool (2016) explores the notion of 'prudence' in fossil fuel use where energy resources out to be maximized for future use, and utilized to better the communities living near them. However, in keeping with Lacey-Barnacle et al (2020) we also demonstrate a neglect of case studies in particular regions of the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa, South American and Asian contexts. There is also a notable lack of research in Arctic countries, even though these countries face some daunting energy justice concerns (McCauley et al 2016).

Whilst technological cases were less prevalent than those relating to different geographical and institutional approaches, they were similarly diverse, considering both production and consumption technologies such as shale gas, solar, thermal power plants, smart meters and domestic lighting. Out of the total sample of 155 papers, 102 drew on technological case studies (appendix 2). Fifty-four of the total number had no discernible technological focus, though again it should be noted that this does not mean that they contained no examples at all, only that they were either very broad (e.g. 'fossil fuels' and 'renewables') or contained only very passing reference to particular technologies without exploring them in significant depth. A total of 17% of the sample could be considered 'technologically comparative', meaning it compared energy justice manifestations for more than one technology. Roddis et al (2018) consider community acceptance for onshore wind and solar in the UK, for example, and Rudolph et al (2018) which considers wind, wave and tidal energy.

Of the technologies, infrastructures and material systems mentioned, solar (33 papers), wind (18 papers) and heating/cooling technologies (17 papers) were the most common (figure 5), a surprising finding given that fossil fuels and nuclear power are known to have more severe externalities and social and economic costs than low-carbon or renewable energy systems (Roth and Ambs 2004, Sundqvist 2004, Healy et al 2019, Kalkuhlm et al 2019) ⁸ . For heating/cooling technologies in particular, the instances were almost entirely in the context of fuel poverty concerns. We also note the comparative neglect of emerging technologies such as hydrogen (although they have been noted in more recent publications, e.g. Scott and Powells 2020), which although it was discussed in passing in nine papers was not explored in any real depth. Despite from the fact that that 'the energy justice concept can expose exclusionary and/or inclusionary technological and social niches before they develop, leading to potentially new and socially just innovation' (Jenkins et al 2018, p 67) this demonstrates that energy justice scholars may not yet be proactively exploring upcoming justice issues of concern (with the exception, perhaps, of studies on smart metering and smart grids (e.g. Hielscher and Sovacool 2018, Milchram et al 2018 and Xu and Chen 2019).

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Out of the total sample of 155 papers, 136 contained reference to at least one social group of concern or enhanced vulnerability to energy injustice; a reference to the marginalized peoples and victims of injustice. In total, 34 different coding categories emerged (table 2). These categories included demographic characteristics, such as individual's health, disability status, age and care responsibilities around children, as well as a wider set of material conditions (e.g. inhabitants of particular building types), social performances (e.g. whether groups were procedurally disenfranchised or 'resisters' to a form of socio-technical change) and wider contextual changes (e.g. victims of war, conflict and corruption or the unemployed in the context fossil fuel production closures). In some cases, the categories shown in figure 6 and appendix 3 represent a grouping of concerns; 'poor and economically marginalized' includes those suffering from financial poverty, energy poverty and fuel poverty for example, and 'socially marginalized' captures a range of stakeholders facing restrictions in their social mobility through class, caste status, illiteracy or the use of English as a second language, for instance. On the whole, almost all papers carried statements of who we should be concerned about in achieving energy justice outcomes, illustrating to a complex web of different social, material and socio-structural vulnerabilities.

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Although at times the identification of some social groups was only briefly stated—e.g. in a list or as a series of short sentences—a number of papers engaged with their articulation in more depth. By example, Finley-Brook et al (2018, p 182) include overview tables of the 'victims of injustice', showcasing concern for 'climate change hard to future generations', 'harm to wetlands and biodiversity', those affected by the 'forced buy-out of homes', and 'harassment of threats to protestors and opponents'. Likewise, Bartiaux et al (2018) illustrate the complexity of households affected by affordable warmth, including whether inhabitants were urban or rural, tenants or owners, single or multiple occupants or even their educational status. Taking a notably different approach, Chatterton et al (2016, p 85) focus on the highest consuming members of society, arguing that, 'Energy justice work in the context of energy consumption has tended to focus on ensuring that certain sectors of society identified as fuel poor receive support in order to allow them to meet their fundamental energy needs at a cost that is affordable by them. However, here we argue that in terms of both the just targeting of climate policies to reduce energy consumption, and strategies to create a more equitable use of national energy systems, there is a need to broaden the justice lens to consider not just the lower end of the consumption spectrum, but also the higher end too'. This perspective raises ongoing questions about notions of 'justice by whom', in addition to 'justice for whom' concerns.

It is worth noting that considerations of 'poverty and the economically marginalized', 'racial and ethnic minorities' and 'climate change victims/refugees' shows some overlap with groups that would typically be recognized with the environmental and climate justice literatures, albeit in an energy-systems context.

In total, 43% of the sample of papers contained policy recommendations, spanning a total of 21 categories derived from inductive coding. For the 57% of studies that did not include policy recommendations, this is a fairly common trend in the literature. Marsden and Reardon (2017) examined the field of transportation governance and found that many studies were one-step removed from policymaking and that research did not contribute to understanding options and opportunities to intervene and improve policy processes.

Where recommendations were present, they were largely in publications from the journal Energy Policy (figure 2), a trend largely explained by the journal's author guidelines that require it to integrate a 'Conclusions and Policy Implications' section in every manuscript. Across all papers in our sample, the recommendations ranged from context-specific suggestions for particular organizations or countries to broader, systematic statements spanning technological development and improvements for policy practice and monitoring. The most frequently mentioned categories were (a) attention to local contexts, (b) supportive financial structured, (c) widening recognition, (d) collaborative procedure and decision-making, and (e) targeted technological investments (figure 7). This speaks to the scalar applicability of the energy justice concept, with intended applications in local, national and international settings.

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In keeping with Lacey-Barnacle et al (2020), our findings showcase a policy emphasis on increasing participation, with less explicit discussion on how to reduce the power of elites (except, perhaps, through the work of Chatterton et al 2016). It should be noted too, that some recommendations were provided for social groups beyond traditional policy 'elites', including recommendations for utilities, activists and developers. By way of illustration, Rudolph et al (2018, p 106) suggest that 'developers should therefore be urged to consider, reveal, discuss, and justify openly what is achievable and expectable in terms of community benefits when engaging local communities' and Liévanos and Horne (2017, p 209) recommend 'that utilities be particularly clear in their information-sharing efforts with disadvantaged communities'. For the policy recommendations in particular, indicative quotes for each coding category are given in table 6.

Now, when considering the prevalence of policy recommendations in the energy justice literature, one important caveat merits mentioning. Our review paints a useful picture as to the frequency by which policy recommendations appear in the literature, but it does not speak to the quality by which those recommendations are crafted, grounded in data, or presented in actionable ways to policymakers. It could be that few of the policy recommendations in table 6 are sufficiently contextually specific to be useful, or feasible enough to be meaningful. However, it does still tell us the intent of the authors to take policy implications into serious consideration. Moreover, past trends may not be predictive of future ones: overall, the energy justice scholarship may now be at a phase where policy outcomes are perhaps more likely.

As a final observation, it is also worth considering the potential role of currently under-explored or under-emphasized policy mechanisms, including the role of cost–benefit analyses (CBAs) as a particular facet of supportive financial structures and impact assessments, for example, which were infrequently mentioned across our sample but widely used in non-academic circles. Other options include impact benefit agreements, truth commissions, and the use of prohibitive or punitive environmental bonds as ways to enforce energy justice principles (Sovacool and Dworkin 2014). This is necessary both so that we can deploy a broader array of policy tools, as well as better understand their potential and to develop impact beyond silos, given that these mechanisms are frequently applied beyond the ivory tower. To that end, and as indicative examples of areas in which more research is required, we further reflect on the potential role of CBAs and some forms of impact assessments in sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.2.

Here, we explore three key areas which, in light of our experience and the findings discussed above, highlight critical areas of refinement for academic practice. As noted above, almost about two-fifths of articles (40%) had no research design or no methods section at all. This lack of attention to methods and empirical reinforcement may limit the insight gained from and the applicability of energy justice research, particularly as energy justice remains, to some degree, conceptual and not applied. It also would preclude any sort of replication study or a study seeking to confirm initial results. Therefore, it seems important to push professional researchers, and even the next generation of students, to strengthen their ability to offer more methodologically transparent and at times rigorous assessments. Universities may also recommend continuous training for energy justice researchers, similar to what the legal profession does with its continuing legal education (CLE) requirements (Overland and Sovacool 2020). CLE requirements ensure that all practicing lawyers remain professionally certified on a continuing basis well after they pass the bar or become a law professor. Implementing a similar approach for energy justice or even broader social science work could be fairly easily done via a multitude of options and permutations. At the institutional level, university departments, faculty congresses or senates, or university colleges could all make this training as a requirement for employment. At the level of research councils, it could be made a condition of funding (one must show they have been certified) by particular initiatives, or across entire programs. It could lastly supported or implemented by various professional bodies and associations, even those with a disciplinary focus, i.e. the International Studies Association for international relations, or the Royal Geographical Society for geographers in the United Kingdom, or the Society for the History of Technology or Society for the Social Studies of Science for those in technology studies.

Furthermore, we call on researchers to consider more intersectional forms of energy justice analysis that go beyond many of the simple binaries implicit within current research, e.g. gender (male and female), income (rich and poor), or race (black and white), categories which frequently appeared across our sample, but often not in intersection. Groundbreaking work in this regard from the energy justice community includes that of Mulvaney (2013) (examining justice and solar commodity chains), Adams et al (2012) (examining justice and whole systems analysis of microgeneration technologies), and Healy et al (2019) (embodied energy injustices). Groundbreaking work from the energy studies community includes Lennon (2017) (intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender), Ryder (2018) (intersections of feminism, class, and power), Johnson et al (2020) (gender and class/equity), Lieu et al (2020) (intersections of indigenousness and gender), and Newell (2021) (race and class).

In reality, many people suffer energy injustices due to a confluence of these factors; they live the experiences of injustice due to their gender, income and race but also their age, religion, and even location. Sovacool et al (2020, p 14) documented this extensively in their assessment of the injustices facing cobalt miners in the Congo, who often dig up cobalt to provide materials for low-carbon energy systems such as solar panels or electric vehicle batteries. As their research indicated, 'there are ethnic dimensions to vulnerability, also, as the system is predicated on displaced persons working for artisanal mining bosses trying to stay rich and keep others, less experienced miners or different ethnic groups, poor as a result. So socioeconomic class mixes with ethnicity for vulnerability' and 'inequalities in terms of work conditions map onto and reinforce existing inequalities of ethnicity, race, class, and social status'. These intersectional injustices demand more robust conceptual frameworks that account for the complexity of lived experiences across space and time.

Finally, many of the cosmopolitan concerns identified in the literature remind us that justice impacts are multi-scalar and do not occur only in a single country (see figure 8) and yet our sample shows that geographically and technologically comparative studies were not common. This may include nuclear reactor designs being exported, cheap electricity trade, uranium mining, and nuclear waste for nuclear energy; low-wage manufacturing in China and material inputs for solar energy; copper and cobalt (DRC), e-waste (Ghana) for smart meters; and extractive industries (cobalt, lithium) for EVs, e-waste, cheaper/dirtier cars flooding other markets (Sovacool et al 2019a). Cleaner and lower carbon energy may be a human right, but securing it currently forces trade-offs with other human rights, leading to 'green on green' and even 'poor on poor' conflict. We must avoid conceptual approaches or research designs that obscure or mask this emerging spatial divide to energy justice.

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Looking outward, we offer suggestions about better incorporation energy justice into assessments of costs and benefits, as well as how it can improve energy planning and policymaking. Here, we recognize the work on increasing participation and information sharing captured above, but point towards less common but potentially very beneficial and complementary mechanisms.

4.2.1. Improving real-world (economic) policy assessment through energy justice

4.2.2. Improving energy planning policy assessment through energy justice