A book chapter that uses evidence from the JUSTEM project to draw recommendations for meaningful stakeholder and community engagement in transition processes.
Phasing out fossil fuels in a just manner is essential for achieving EU climate objectives. Currently, the closing down of fossil fuel industries and the transition towards a renewable energy system in Europe and beyond are taking place unevenly, with very different decarbonisation strategies. This is partly caused by regions having different levels of dependence on fossil fuels, transformative capacities, and the availability of human and natural resources. As a result, the way the energy transition locally unfolds has a diversified agenda, which means there is no silver bullet for all coal- and carbon-intensive regions (CCIRs). The term “just transition” is high on the political agenda (Lee & Baumgartner, 2022), and an increasing number of countries have developed transition plans. However, the policy interpretation of a just transition varies from country to country (Hermwille et al., 2023). The debate is generally moving towards a more holistic understanding of the transition to a more sustainable energy system. This involves taking into account the environmental, social, demographic, and economic impacts of the transition on all members of society (Abram et al., 2022; Wang & Lo, 2021).
This book chapter draws on social sciences and humanities (SSH) research and energy modelling applied in four European projects: TIPPING+, JUSTEM, ENTRANCES, and TANDEM. Researchers from different fields, such as psychology, sociology, economics, geography, political science, energy research, and demography, participated in two internal workshops to identify overarching challenges, approaches, and solutions to enable place-based and citizen-centred transitions. The results from these projects show that science can provide important insights and methods and tools, including scenarios, for policymaking to enable just transitions.
The authors propose the following recommendations to engage communities in the just transition process:
- Equip key actors with the transformative capacities to support the development and implementation of regional visions, plans, and narratives.
- Develop structures and participatory mechanisms that encourage a wide social dialogue and citizen involvement in just transition projects.
- Use insights from science and practice from participatory processes, as well as methods and tools developed in different contexts, to enable just transitions.
- Involve local stakeholders in the intersectional analysis of compensatory measures for holistically mitigating negative impacts of policies or interventions.
- Make use of the full spectrum of SSH and STEM tools to support local transition processes.
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