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A just transition away from fossil fuels and to community-centered solar and wind energy is the way to deal with climate change
Le lobbying en faveur du climat à l'échelle européenne, tel est la mission que s'est donnée Chloé Mikolajczak. Elle nous explique ce que cela signifie.
Since the 1970s, a term has gained prominence as workers have forced governments to look at the social side to their environmental policies: just transition. Today the term is everywhere, its meaning at once elusive but also key to facing the multiple crises of environmental breakdown, social injustice, and global inequality. In a forthcoming collection on the concept and practice, Dirk Holemans unpicks just transition as cause for Greens.
The EU policy level recognises the existential threat that climate change and environmental degradation poses to Europe. It also acknowledges the insufficiency of conventional technological, governance approaches and the need for innovation. As such, the European Green Deal and related instruments seek to transform the EU into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, where economic growth is decoupled from resource use and no person and no place is left behind.
A growing energy justice literature underlines that complex energy injustices in energy transition disproportionally affect vulnerable and energy-poor households. Literature and policies discuss renewable energy communities’ (RECs) potential to enable citizen participation in energy transition and shape a just transition. Low-income and energy-poor households could benefit from granting access to affordable energy tariffs and energy efficiency measures when participating in RECs. Recent EU legislation highlights RECs’ social role in energy poverty alleviation and stipulates the participation of all social groups in RECs, especially those groups that are underrepresented under RECs’ members. In this light, the energy justice framework is increasingly applied to analyse RECs’ social contributions in different countries. Still, empirical evidence of RECs’ capacity to include underrepresented and vulnerable groups and mitigate energy poverty as a particular form of energy justice remains scarce. Drawing on data collected among 71 European RECs, our exploratory research investigates how RECs engage in this social role by improving participatory procedures to enable vulnerable groups’ participation and by distributing affordable energy and energy efficiency to vulnerable households. Using the energy justice framework, we explore how RECs resonate with the three energy justice tenets (distributive, recognitional and procedural) by addressing underrepresented groups and energy poverty.
In May 2019, the largest mining towns in Ukraine came together to form the Platform for Sustainable Development of Coal Towns of Donetsk Region. They are currently developing their joint transformation strategy for a just transition. Meanwhile, in May 2020, the national government established the Coordination Center for Transformation of Coal Regions to guide the re-development of mining towns.
WWF's tool helps to assess how effective proposed Territorial Just Transition Plans are to deliver a truly just transition aligned with the Paris Agreement. It is aimed at policy makers, municipalities, civil society and other partners involved in developing the plans to provide information about what makes a good plan and to enable them to evaluate the quality of the plan as it develops.
There will be social, cultural and relational repercussions that must be accounted for to uphold just transition: to leave none behind.
Since 2019, Spain has been ahead of the curve with the launch of a Just Transition Strategy to protect its historic coal mining regions from the impacts of decarbonisation. Rosa Martínez examines the uptake of just transition in public policy and where the affected regions find themselves today. Progress is encouraging, but accelerating processes of digitalisation and automation mean that it is time to bring the notion of just transition up to speed so it can offer future-proof solutions in a world where employment is increasingly precarious.
Just transition describes an intentional shift toward a society in which the economy and the environment can thrive simultaneously,
Research into energy poverty initiatives often ignores society’s most vulnerable groups. In order to fulfill the just transition, all members of society across geography, gender and income need to be included, says Sergio Tirado Herrero of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technologies (ICTA) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the EmpowerMed research project
What I’m proposing is a direct elimination of fossil fuels involving a national cap on the number that can be brought into the economy in a year.
Coal-mining regions could in future convert their old district heating supply into a climate-friendly, low-carbon supply system. A regulatory sandbox for the energy transition is now testing how this can be achieved across four locations in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The much-acclaimed 'TransUrban.NRW' project is investigating new ideas for supplying heat in a typical former coal-mining region that has undergone a process of structural change. The heat supply is to make large-scale use of geothermal energy as well as include other renewable energy from wastewater and low-temperature waste heat. The low-temperature supply networks required to implement this system can be newly constructed or integrated into the existing infrastructure. The project will run for five years and is being supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy which is providing around €16.7 million in funding.
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Le territoire de Loire-Atlantique, qui fait partie de la région des Pays de la Loire, en France, recevra 48 millions d'euros de subventions de l'UE du Fonds pour une transition juste (FTJ) pour soutenir une transition climatique juste.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a strategic tool in the EU’s climate policy toolkit has awoken: energy independence. However, as the EU Commission’s plan for energy independence looks towards other fossil-fuel-rich suppliers to wean member states off Russian energy imports, Rafael Pinto argues the EU is missing an important opportunity to bring its energy security policy in line with its climate goals.
The briefing lays out why energy poverty cannot be solved by ‘letting the market play its game’. Energy poverty is already affecting over 50 million Europeans, a number that is growing frighteningly quickly. To guarantee the right to affordable clean energy, structural inequalities must be addressed. These inequalities span across economic, social, employment, energy, climate, taxation, welfare, housing, gender and health policies.
This project presents a classic example of how the European level approach can mobilise and enable a local community to use regional resources effectively. The implementation of this project highlighted that the initial analysis of the local resources and the potential of a region have to be carried out before the start of any project.
Heads of municipalities in Slovenia’s coal regions – Savinjsko-Šaleška, and Zasavje decided to establish a council of mayors to monitor the phaseout of coal and secure just transition. In the meantime, the government has published action plans for phasing out coal in the two regions. The documents will help Slovenia tap on the Just Transition Fund.
It is a unique initiative on a national scale, as citizens and other city stakeholders are involved in planning the city’s development strategy and then implementing it together.
As the residents are the beating heart of this transformation, the Deep Listening method, brought from the Mondragon Valley in the Basque Country, was used to co-create a long-term vision of Rybnik’s future with them. This method involved a series of in-depth interviews with residents and a complex process of analysis. Deep Listening is a key methodology to foster more effective collective action for social change.
Cap-and-trade has been criticised in California for allowing big emitters to pay their way out of reducing emissions and cause pollution. It’s become a social justice issue as poorer communities tend to be located near where the pollution is being created. James Bushnell at the Energy Institute at Haas warns that such clashes are being …
The European Green Deal sets out Europe’s ambition to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Given the different starting points of various regions to face the coming changes, the Just Transition Fund was created with the aim of alleviating the socio-economic impacts of the transition, so as to ensure that everyone in Europe benefits from it. In order for it to be successful, it is clear that young people have to be involved. In this context, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy published a ‘Toolkit for Youth Participation in the Just Transition Fund’. It aims to encourage more ambitious, meaningful and numerous participation opportunities for youth in the regions targeted by the Just Transition Fund.
Nombreux sont ceux qui s’inquiètent du financement des technologies sobres en carbone afin d’atteindre les objectifs climatiques européens, mais le plus grand défi sera d’assurer la transition énergétique sans creuser les inégalités sociales.
Just transition describes an intentional shift toward a society in which the economy and the environment can thrive simultaneously,
For a just transition to green energy, we must take the whole energy sector out of the market and into democratic public ownership.
The Platform for coal regions in transition has just launched a suite of toolkits to assist practitioners in EU coal regions. The toolkits focus on key aspects of the transition: strategies, governance, employment and welfare support, and environmental rehabilitation. Click the button below to access the toolkits.
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