Spatializing energy justice

TLDR

Energy justice research has focused on social group inequalities, often overlooking spatial differences, yet geographic disparities in domestic energy deprivation are a key component of energy justice. This paper introduces spatial justice and inequality to energy poverty, arguing that achieving energy justice requires broader interventions in the fundamental driving forces of spatial inequality. Four mechanisms—landscapes of material deprivation, geographic underpinnings of energy affordability, vicious cycles of vulnerability, and spaces of misrecognition—operate at multiple scales to drive energy injustices. Our literature review shows spatial and temporal variation in cross‑sectoral injustices that elevate energy poverty risks, and indicates that area‑based policies alone may marginalize structural dynamics that reproduce spatial inequalities.

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of spatial justice and inequality to understandings of energy poverty and vulnerability. By applying an explicitly spatial lens to conceptualize energy poverty as a form of injustice, it contributes to debates in the domain of ‘energy justice’, where previous examinations of energy deprivation through a justice framing have focused on inequalities between social groups and often marginalized questions of spatial difference. We start from the premise that geographic disparities in the risk and incidence of domestic energy deprivation are a key component of energy justice. An extensive literature review has allowed us to highlight the spatial and temporal variation of cross-sectoral and entire-energy-chain injustices that lead to elevated energy poverty risks. These processes contribute to the rise of energy injustices via four mechanisms – which we term landscapes of material deprivation, geographic underpinnings of energy affordability, vicious cycles of vulnerability, and spaces of misrecognition – operating at a multiplicity of scales. While lending some support to area-based approaches towards energy poverty alleviation, our findings also suggest that such policies alone may marginalize the underlying structural dynamics that (re)produce spatial inequalities. Therefore, achieving energy justice necessitates broader interventions in the fundamental driving forces of spatial inequality.