Beyond Labor: The Expanding Scope of the Just Energy Transition

The term “just transition” has its roots in organized labor movements and has traditionally referred to the idea that workers in the fossil fuel economy must find security in the green energy economy of the future as well. Yet, increasingly, this understanding of what a just transition entails is viewed as overly narrow and failing to address broad structural realities in our energy system that, if not addressed, will perpetuate a range of social, environmental, and economic inequalities.

This lack of a common definition extends to the highest levels of the global climate effort, with the United Nations acknowledging that the perception of what a just transition entails varies from country to country, potentially impacting the outcome of just transition efforts at the local level.

Kleinman Center visiting scholar Kirsten Jenkins explores the definition of the term just transition and how varying interpretations of it might limit, or enhance efforts to address broader inequalities that are inherent in our energy system. Jenkins, who is a senior lecturer in energy, environment and society at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, also discusses the need to expand just transition beyond its labor roots to a broader view on justice, and explores policies to put this broader view into practice.

Full Transcript

Andy Stone: Welcome to the Energy Policy Now podcast from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m Andy Stone. The term “just transition” has its roots in organized labor movements, and has traditionally referred to the idea that workers in the fossil fuel economy must find security in the green economy of the future as well. Yet increasingly, this understanding of what a just transition entails is viewed as overly narrow in failing to address broad structural realities in our energy system that if not addressed, will perpetuate a range of social, environmental and economic inequalities.

On today’s podcast, we’re going to explore the definition of the term just transition, and how our understanding of it might limit or enhance efforts to address broader inequalities that are inherent in the energy system. It’s worth noting that this lack of a common definition extends to the highest levels of the global climate effort, with the United Nations acknowledging that the perception of what a just transition entails varies from country to country, potentially impacting the focus of just transition efforts at the local level.

Here to discuss the need for an updated understanding of just transition is Kirsten Jenkins. Kirsten is a visiting scholar at the Kleinman Center, and a senior lecturer in Energy, Environment and Society at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She’s written extensively on the topic of a just energy transition and how it might ideally be understood and acted upon today. Kirsten, welcome to the podcast.

Kirsten Jenkins: Thank you very much for having me.

Stone: So I wonder if you could start us out by discussing the origins of the concept of a just transition in the labor movement. What did the concept emerge in response to, and what are the dimensions of injustice that it seeks to address?

Jenkins: You did a very good job of introducing it. Stole some of my thunder here. But basically, you’re right. It started in 1970s and 1980s America. It was primarily around the polluting industries— oil, nuclear power, other sources of chemical pollution coming from other production areas, and what was happening in response to some of the interventions that were made to prevent that pollution. So the National Pollution and Environmental Act— and you’ll know the name of that better than I will— and the impact that that had on the workers, right?

Stone: You’re talking about that here in the United States.

Jenkins: In the United States, yeah. So, workers, beginning to be moved out of those high-polluting industries, effectively, and therefore losing their jobs. And the impact that that also had on the communities that they were part of. So their families, the economic opportunity, the education opportunity afforded to those that were living with them as well. So the questions of justice there really became around what retraining was offered, what re-skilling was offered, what opportunities were there for other types of work in those areas, and what environmentally friendly options would there be? And this is where the just transition goes on a bit of a journey as well, because it came from that high-polluting concern to really amalgamate with environmental concern a couple of decades later. So it’s also thinking about not just jobs, but this language of green jobs as we hear it.

Stone: Well, so this definition of just transition as focused on labor, and broadly around labor concerns, has more recently been the focus of scrutiny, debate. Described as too narrow, and as you have described in past writing, technocratically-focused. Could you explain that?

Jenkins: Yeah. So I think the technocratic focus is really the dominance of a lot of thinking in the energy social sciences at the moment. So it really begins to question the idea that the solution to the climate crisis and the solution to our dependence on fossil fuels is simply a move to renewables, and that the move to renewables is inherently going to be a just one, a better one, and unproblematic.

So what we’re saying, effectively, is that you have to account for justice issues in human systems at all stages of that transition across the energy system and across the energy life cycle. And I can put that into practice with very tangible terms. So if we start with thinking about jobs and workers and communities related to particular facilities, totally fine. That is a concern. Yeah, not a question about that.

But what about people that also can’t afford their electricity bills? What about people who are living in poor houses with low standards of energy efficiency? Or— apparently, that’s called “weatherization” in the United States. I learned that yesterday. Or what about people who are elsewhere in the world that are responsible for mining cobalt that goes into electric vehicle batteries?

So we’re beginning to push for this wider conceptualization that it is humans involved in making this happen, and we have to consider who is being affected, who’s benefiting, all the way along those chains.

Stone: I’d like to take that just a step further. What has actually changed in the macro environment, whatever you might want to call it, that has actually resulted in the call for this more expansive definition?

Jenkins: I think the origins of this are various. So, you know, it comes partly from that labor union stance, and not just looking at the individual worker, but thinking about the communities, right? So that, again, that ripple that looks across local areas, regional areas, and thinking more systemically about what it actually means to have a good, clean, stable job with parity of conditions. But also, an awakening that other parts of our energy systems really do not function the way that they should. That people are systematically disadvantaged at all stages, and that it doesn’t make sense just to intervene to protect one set of individuals when there are so many benefits and ills that are maldistributed in other ways.

So I guess that drive also comes from academia, to think in that broader sense. But we’re seeing it reflected in policy, too, as people wake up to the challenge in how to basically create equity throughout energy systems more broadly.

Stone: So on one side, we have this argument that the traditional definition and understanding has been too narrow, just to simplify things. And on the other side— and you note this in a 2022 paper that you co authored. You note, quote, that “Grand narratives of ecological modernization, sustainable development and green growth,” end quote, overlook patterns of inequality in the energy system. I wonder if you could talk about that. On one side, we’re saying it’s too narrow. On the other side, we’re saying that these grand interpretations of just transition aren’t necessarily helpful as well.

Jenkins: To clarify, I think we need a balance of all of them, and we’ll perhaps come to this in the conclusion of the podcast. It’s not one or the other. I don’t want to get rid of the labor union focus altogether. But I also, as I mentioned earlier, don’t want to get to a position where we start to uncritically assume that a renewable transition will be inherently just, or that this logic of ecological modernization, as we’ve called it in that paper— and probably written in a very unaccessible way for people that don’t use that terminology normally.

So this focus on ecological modernization might just be this romantic idealist vision, that we don’t question really the injustices that could be inherent within that. It reinforces, in a lot of ways, the status quo. So it might be that we’re still using renewable sources as part of capitalist systems. And actually, the just transition might be asking us to be a lot more revolutionary in thinking about what those systems could be, instead of a capitalist model that’s all around profit and all around extractivism, and perhaps retains power in a very, very few set of companies or government actors. It’s got a pro-growth narrative really heavily embedded within it. And because of that unquestioned logic, therefore we might still be in a position where we reinforce unequal power relations.

Again, I can make that more tangible. But think about the big, energy companies that are making expansive profits. And yet in Britain— and I know this isn’t the case in the United States so much, but in Britain, a lot of people are unable to afford their energy bills at the moment because prices have been rocketing over the last couple of years due to the crisis in Russia and Ukraine. What about if we got rid of energy markets and those big companies all together and, you know, renationalized and thought fundamentally about that type of structural change? That won’t happen unless we question the type of renewable system that we’re building at the moment.

Stone: Well, it’s an interesting point you make. You’ve also noted in the past that this focus on a reductionist approach narrows the understanding or definition of a just transition to an easily measurable set of goals that makes it possible to frame things simply in terms of winners and losers in the energy transition, and may conveniently overlook some complex questions on justice. I wonder if you could comment on that a little bit.

Jenkins: Yeah. It’s a really, really interesting question to be asking. Because there is a balance between complexity and simplicity, right? We can problematize the world to the most granular level. We could look individually at your conception of justice versus my conception of justice, determine that we should each have our own right to veto particular energy sources, et cetera, determine that we should each be part of procedures where we can make decisions on what we do and do not want. In very, very few situations will that actually be realistically possible, right? So we still do need to have an aggregate way of coming to a understanding of what is just and unjust at higher levels. At local decision making, at regional decision making, at national decision making. And of accounting for tensions and trade offs internationally.

So maybe it’s not reductionism. Maybe it’s clarity. Maybe it’s thinking about the procedural structures that enable that, and that still give people equal voice. But there is a balance between a world in which we just don’t question what justice means, and we give people every opportunity they have to weigh in to what it does.

Stone: You said the word “procedural structures” just a moment ago.

Jenkins: Yeah.

Stone: And that brings me to the next question I want to ask you about. So this focus on the traditional narrow, or the grand structure, whatever it may be, bypass reality that decarbonization without structural change or procedural change quite possibly could only serve to perpetuate the inequalities that are inherent in the energy system today. You’re arguing for a broader whole systems approach. Could you talk about this need for structural change? What factors traditionally outside of the just transition narrative need to be brought in? What are structural changes that we need to looking at?

Jenkins: I’ll give an answer to this in two parts. And the first is just to think about the types of change that are possible. So some people would put it in a camp and say that there’s technologically radical change, right? So we might go from— it’s a bad example, but— a normal gas, in your case, vehicle—or petrol and diesel, if you’re from a British or European audience— to an electric vehicle. That would be a type of technological change. You might have social change, where people are using less. That we’ve got to a position where people are literally making sacrifices to normalize or redistribute electricity and gas consumption, for example.

And then you would have a combination of things, where you would say, “What happens when you put technological change and socially radical change together?” Then you get systematically radical change. And that’s a total shift in the ways in which our structures work. That might be, for example, that we no longer have personal mobility, but we entirely get rid of personal mobility and we work entirely on public transport options. That requires technological shift and a social shift in order to let that happen.

And I think it’s that type of systematic rethinking that we’re really pushing towards in this concept. It might not always happen, but it’s a way of thinking about what a just system could look like. Other examples, thinking structurally, you can do that in a technological sense in other ways. The grid. The grid is a massive constraint around what is possible in terms of our system, and it’s— one literal interpretation of structural change is to think about where our grid goes, what our grid can carry, what pipelines do we have? Is it for gas? Is it for hydrogen? Are they coming from centralized sources and going out to homes? Are they coming from distributed renewables and coming into big urban centers? You know. There are some big, big structural questions to ask there.

One thing I also really highlight, which is a big passion of mine, is at the moment, innovation is often unquestioned. So again, if we’re designing the next wave of technologies, we tend to assume that those technologies will plug into the same markets and the same grids. That they’ll be given to people through the same types of electricity tariffs, for example.

Stone: And that would perpetuate the inequalities.

Jenkins: And that might perpetuate the inequality. So what would happen if we designed systems so that they could be used in a totally different way? What if we had a de-growth-based model for hydrogen, that was literally just there to provide sufficient energy to a small local area that produced it for itself, that had more security because it had domestic supply, and that was working on a not-for-profit model? Maybe that’s what justice looks like. But we don’t know the answers yet, because we’re not thinking early enough in the innovation stage of what’s possible.

Stone: You’re from Scotland. And in Scotland, there is a government entity, the Just Transition Commission, that exists to support the development of just transition plans in the country. And to maybe get a little bit more precise about what we’ve just been talking about, what are the just transition initiatives that the Scottish government has promoted? Particularly with, I guess, the the assistance or the input from this commission? And are there specific, concrete policy examples or outcomes that you might discuss?

Jenkins: So Scotland, albeit a very small country, is small and mighty. And we’re really doing quite well on the international stage of our just transitions thinking. And we are one of the few countries at the moment to have anything like a Just Transition Commission. So that commission sits, albeit related to the government, externally. They’re there to scrutinize the work of the government and to assist in their thinking of what is possible in this space.

And so they’re looking in on a landscape where Scotland is leading in a number of different exciting ways. We do have a draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan at the moment. It will soon become a not draft version. We are waiting with bated breath to see when that happens. But that is effectively saying, even from the title of that document, it is about energy and about justice at the same time. And the transition that we are going on, we want to fulfill the two outcomes of technological and social change. And that’s really, really exciting.

There are other examples. So, I’ve mentioned this affordability issue. This is really, really strong in Scotland, something I’m very passionate about. But we are in a context where we have really high levels of what we would call fuel poverty. Which means that in Scotland, you’re unable to afford gas, electricity, oil, whatever it is in your house.

Stone: This is a major problem in Scotland?

Jenkins: Major problem. And it’s really, really maldistributed even across Scotland. So— a beautiful place, I’d highly recommend it. But our island communities, albeit stunning, are often the ones that have the highest costs for electricity just because of where they are. Don’t have access to gas grids, which are the cheapest form of energy provision. And therefore, will have oil delivered. And the oil is unregulated, the price for them. So the geographical and spatial issues of justice are really differentiated across the Scottish landscape. And Scotland, and the policy making that we are developing, is really, really conscious of that and is seeking to solve that.

So again, we have fuel poverty strategies that are looking at market reform, for example. To think about, how do we make it the case that those remote areas of Scotland do not have to pay an electricity surcharge for the services that are delivered to them? How do we target some of the government funding to make sure that houses in those areas that are most vulnerable have the highest state of weatherization and energy efficiency?

And there are other really interesting examples, too. So, as I say, Scotland is an international leader in this space. And part of what they’re doing relates to just transition, and it relates to the broader climate question. So we hosted COP26, the COP meeting, in Glasgow a couple of years ago. And during that, Scotland put forward a Loss and Damage Fund, to think about international responsibility for some of the climate emissions that they have produced in the past, and what it might look like to invest in external context to make sure that those who are facing disproportionate burdens are compensated for that. And we were the first country.

So there are lots and lots of different mechanisms. But the last thing I’ll say on this is, it’s not easy. And so over the last couple of weeks and months, even, there have been a lot of discussions within the government and the parliament— who were there to scrutinize the work of the government, too— to consider the tension and trade off against climate action and just transitions. And we are actually in a position where the Acting Minister for Net Zero Energy has said that they do not want to take further aggressive climate action because they want to ensure that communities and local people are protected. I.e., the Scottish Government has come out with a position that we’re going justice first, and climate second. Which is really interesting.

Stone: This brings to mind another question. So it sounds like in Scotland, some sort of compromise has actually been arrived at, that the government minister responsible for this has said that we’re going to do equity first, and renewables and switch to renewables are going to be secondary to that, if I interpreted that correctly. In many countries— and I’m thinking about the United States here— a lot of political compromise is going to be necessary for anything like this to actually be workable in practice. Do you have any commentary, any observations on how this might be implemented in areas of the world where the politics don’t align very neatly around a holistic approach to justice transition?

Jenkins: I actually think that, you know, looking fractionally beyond Scotland to the UK as a whole is a really good test case for decision-making across different contexts, in the same way that you have in the US.

So again, make that tangible. Scotland is great, I think, at what we’re doing at the moment. We are trying our hardest. It will never be perfect, but we’re having all of the right conversations. The Westminster Government— so, based in London, in England, who have partial responsibility for what happens in Scotland through the process of devolution— they do not have the same language of a just transition at all. They don’t have the equivalent of a Just Transition Commission. They don’t have the equivalent of a just transition and energy strategy. Their fuel poverty definition is also fundamentally different to the way that we think about that in Scotland. It focuses only on weatherization and efficiency, and not at all about energy prices, the income of the individual, or how energy is used in the home. So across those settings, it’s really difficult to have a conversation when we don’t have the same agreement that justice has to be part of this. And more granularly, we don’t have the same agreement of how you would then go about measuring and investing in policy change.

Nonetheless, the conversation has to be had. And I think working in this microcosm is a really, really useful and interesting and sometimes scary place for watching how those conversations go about. So sometimes it’s changing our language, right? If, in Westminster, they’re finding the language of justice too threatening, how do we get there without saying the word justice? What do we relabel it as? And it becomes that nitty gritty. I was actually told by a member of staff in Westminster, for example, that the language of energy justice, a very related term, was not sexy enough to be considered relevant to policy. And we’re like, “Okay, how do we make this sexy?” Which seemed like a very strange challenge to have. But nonetheless, was where we are.

So sometimes it’s a translation exercise. And in that case, okay. We don’t say “justice”. But we do talk about distribution. We talk about who has access to energy facilities and who does not. We talk about procedure. How are people engaging? Do people get access to compensation, for example? Do people get access to citizens’ juries? Do people vote in local elections in different ways? And so on and so forth. And we also talk about recognition. So we get the Westminster Government to think about, in more precise detail, who is vulnerable.

And through all of those types of conversations using the right types of language, you can then get to a position where there is agreement. An interesting area of potential agreement—we’ll see how it goes over the next couple of years—is what it would be like to give a social tariff. And by a social tariff, I mean a discounted electricity and gas rate that is applicable only to people that are in the most vulnerable positions in society. So basically, a protection that you would never have to pay too much and you would never be disconnected. That started in Scotland, and we’re making traction with that in Westminster, despite the fact that they wouldn’t think about those issues in the same way. So there’s potential.

Stone: So you said that just transition isn’t sexy enough in Westminster, but it works in Scotland.

Jenkins: Yeah.

Stone: And I want to bring an interesting little point that came up in my research getting ready for this conversation. The Paris Agreement makes note of the need for a just transition just once. And it makes note of it within the context of a just transition of the workforce. So inherent in that guiding global document on addressing climate change and hopefully addressing it in a just means— it’s only there once, right? And it’s in that more narrow, technocratic definition that you talked about at the beginning of this podcast. So basically what we’re looking at is— globally, is this recognition of a broader systems approach and a whole systems approach. Is that acknowledged at the highest levels?

Jenkins: I think we’re getting there. So the Paris Agreement was a document of its time, to some extent, written in 2015.

Stone: That’s not that long ago.

Jenkins: Well.

Stone: I guess maybe nine years ago is—

Jenkins: I felt a lot younger in 2015. That feels really pretty close to me. [Laughter]

Stone: Yeah. Yeah.

Jenkins: But you know, at that point, the discussion was pretty much based on this labor union movement. There are big organizations like the International Labor Organization that were using that language. There was a lot of trade union discussion of what the just transition meant at that point. So it was fit for purpose at that time. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, it still serves an important purpose. We still do need to have that fundamental concern for the labor movement focus, and for those workers who will literally be on the vanguard of a lot of this change.

But if we were to write that document again now, then perhaps the framing would be different. Maybe they should let me do that. Maybe they should let me do an iteration of the Paris Agreement. That might be a good career goal. But you know, if you look at other mechanisms that have existed in the last couple of years at the European Commission level, at other international organizations, than we have got to a broader stance. There are just transition mechanisms that invest in regions that are undergoing transformation. There’s a recognition of women and girls as being disproportionately burdened, and therefore there’s money put towards specifically initiatives for women and girls as being particularly vulnerable. And there are lots and lots of great things happening in other spaces as well. So we’ve gone on a journey. I can see that in my own writing. I can see that in the writing that exists there. But I do think we’re starting to ask the right, bigger systemic change questions.

Stone: Well, another important aspect of this, it seems like, is that if you have a just transition where everyone benefits, then maybe there’s more buy-in to that transition as well.

Jenkins: Yes, yes. In theory. I will challenge you on one thing. Not everyone will benefit. I always want to say this. We can try our best. We can go in a logic, with the logic of “do no harm”. But there will still be winners and losers, and that’s important to think about too.

So let’s take it to a very practical level. If you are developing a nuclear power station, a nuclear power station has to go in a particular geography. It will always have to go next to a body of water so that it can cool its reactors. That means that that is inherently unjust for a coastal community that has to shoulder the burden of that theoretically quite risky facility.

But there would be other ways of working with that community to instill a sense of justice. It might be that they’re compensated. It might be that you’re making that decision with them in a procedurally fair way. It might be that they’re recognized in other areas. So it’s not just about thinking of this ideal utopia where everything is perfect and there is one just transition for everyone, and everyone is totally equal. It’s about having conversations where things can’t be equal. Nonetheless, how do we make it acceptable? And so the acceptance question comes in different ways, in that sense. Yes, there would be public buy-in, theoretically, if the world was more just. But we also need people to accept where it can’t be.

Stone: I want to take a step back here. First, a question for you. Does the United Kingdom as a whole have a single NDC, a Nationally-Determined Contribution, under the Paris Agreement? Or does Scotland have its own? Just curious.

Jenkins: I believe— and this is a very good question that I’m embarrassed not to concretely know the answer to— but I believe it would be UK-wide.

Stone: Okay. So the reason I bring this question up, regardless of whether it’s separate or not, is you mentioned a few minutes ago the focus on equity first, in Scotland. How does that impact the UK’s NDCs? If we’re actively saying, “We are going to focus on equity first and then worry about the decarbonization.” And that’s why I brought up that question a minute and a half ago, saying, “Well, if everybody buys in, then in the long term, maybe the transition is more effective.” So taking a long term approach. Maybe that’s a hopeful outlook. But I just want your perspective on that.

Jenkins: I think the reality is we don’t yet know. And this is much of the challenge of the just transition at the moment. We in Scotland are, as I’ve mentioned, setting great targets. Using the right language. But I will admit that we are doing a very, very bad job of policy coherence. So using that same shared language and vision across different areas of our own policy, and really instilling in the Westminster Government that they should do the same. There are small examples of where it’s going well, but there’s still a lot more to do to achieve policy coherence across those areas.

The other thing that we’re very bad at is evaluating and monitoring whether we are being successful, or what the risks are. And so in all of the conversations that I’ve had with the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament in thinking about issues of justice, we’re asking questions fundamentally, how to measure it. And never once has that NDC question come up. Which is why I don’t know the answer. And that is a policy coherence question, isn’t it? Because that’s a directive driven from another area that should be relevant to our thinking. It is relevant to our thinking, and yet isn’t on the radar of the politicians, because they’re working at a different scale. So I’ll take that back and I’ll work on it.

Stone: Glad I could be of help. I have a final question for you here, and I want to bring this stateside for just a moment. In the US, the Biden Administration has what’s called the Justice 40 initiative, and that’s where 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate and clean energy policy is directed to disadvantaged communities. In your view, to what extent does this type of policy reflect structural change that is necessary to deliver a just transition?

Jenkins: So this is an initiative that obviously I don’t know as well as I should, but I want to know more about. Because on paper, it sounds absolutely brilliant, right? It sounds like the type of redistribution that we would be thinking should happen, where we’re taking what would otherwise be large-scale commercial or government, or whoever has responsibility there, profit, and redistributing it to those that are not so fortunate. So on the justice-based logic, it sounds great.

What I would begin to question, then is, you know, the questions of procedure and recognition. And I’ve used this language repeatedly throughout. What I mean specifically is procedural justice, and justice as recognition, as terms that we use in the literature often. And the procedural justice question is really there to say, “Okay. The financial aspect sounds brilliant, but how is that delivered to communities? Do they just get a wad of cash? Do they get a decision in how it’s spent? Who makes those decisions, who votes, who doesn’t? You know, who allocates that money on the front line?”

And then the recognition element also comes in to say, “What is a vulnerable community considered as? Who is excluded from that boundary or who is included? Does it go particular households or particular blocks? Does it go to particular individuals?” Right? So again, the justice landscape would get us to think at a really, really practical and detailed level about the deliverability of that ambition.

And so I have a belief— my first impression is that as long as those questions are asked and it’s delivered in a way that it should be, and that we’re conscious of the long term impact and sustainability of those interventions— it’s promising. And I would like to take my hats off to America for giving it a good go.

Stone: Kirsten, thank you very much for talking.

Jenkins: Thank you very much.