Reconceptualising Energy Justice in light of Normative Uncertainties

At 17 January 2025 at 10:00, Nynke van Uffelen will defend her dissertation at the TU Delft.

Description:
Energy storage, and energy systems in general, can give rise to local and global injustices, and thus it is important to develop, deploy and regulate energy systems responsibly and in a just manner. However, there is normative uncertainty about what ‘energy justice’ implies for (decisions about) energy systems, as different stakeholders have different ideas about when something is (un)just. Energy justice scholarship has two aims, namely to (a) describe, understand, and causally explain claims of injustice (descriptive aim) and (b) to evaluate energy systems in terms of justice and propose policy and design recommendations (normative aim). However, existing energy justice frameworks have limited capacities to achieve both aims because they insufficiently acknowledge normative uncertainties. This dissertation aims to strengthen the conceptual foundations of energy justice in light of normative uncertainties, which helps achieve both aims. To do so, the dissertation leverages literature and methodologies from the social sciences and political philosophy, more specifically Critical Theory. The conceptual contributions in this dissertation help analyse, detect, and evaluate energy conflicts and claims of injustice and include a revisited energy justice framework, a reconceptualization of recognition justice, and the hidden morality heuristic. This dissertation stresses the importance of acknowledging normative uncertainty in energy decision-making, the need for justification of normative claims, and thus the importance of a critical dialogue on ‘energy justice’, both in academia and society, to help guide decision-making towards more just energy storage systems.