How Compounding Injustices Retard a Just Energy Transition in Coal Regions

Coal and other carbon-intensive industries have long been the economic cornerstones of many European regions. But the climate crisis and the resulting need for an energy transition pose enormous challenges for local companies and society: Long before any structural changes were foreseeable, those regions have lagged behind in socioeconomic development – for example in terms of unemployment and income. The required transformation does not only exacerbate existing gender-specific injustices but also creates new social tensions such as job losses, economic decline and loss of collective identity in coal regions – often accompanied by (right-wing) populist tendencies. 

These old and new injustices overlap and reinforce each other, complicating just transition efforts. This is shown by Dr. Lukas Hermwille, Co-Head of the Transformative Industrial Policy Research Unit at the Wuppertal Institute, together with international researchers in the current peer-reviewed commentary "Compounding Injustices Can Impede a Just Energy Transition", which has been published in the journal Nature Energy. 

An explicit focus on these overlapping and mutually reinforcing injustices ("compounding injustices") can help to analyse the equity impact of structural change more systematically and improve the political processes for a truly just structural change. The article synthesises the results of the EU-funded research project "Carbon Intensive Regions in Transition – Unravelling the Challenges of Structural Change", or CINTRAN for short, which analysed key challenges for politics, business and people in coal and carbon-intensive regions. Based on their findings, the researchers formulated the following key recommendations for policymakers:

• Acknowledgement of compounding injustices: Policy makers need to recognise the multiple dimensions of injustice. In particular, they should focus on the participation of stakeholders in political processes (procedural justice) and the needs of particularly vulnerable groups and individuals (recognition justice).
• Monitoring system: A robust monitoring system is required to systematically map existing and prospective injustices and inequalities in the energy transition, and to facilitate tracing progress towards alleviating them – similar to what the European Commission has proposed with the Clean Industrial Deal.
• Strengthen participation: Local stakeholders who are particularly affected by injustices should be actively involved in decision-making processes in order to counteract social division and create acceptance for change.

The full commentary can be accessed via the link below.