Understanding energy conflicts: From epistemic disputes to competing conceptions of justice

Abstract

Analysing energy conflicts is crucial to realise a successful and just energy transition. In doing so, it is insufficient to understand energy conflicts as epistemic disagreements about risk analyses and safety, as people often voice moral concerns beyond epistemic debates. To analyse grievances of social movements and citizens in energy conflicts, scholars often adopt a tenet-based energy justice framework that distinguishes between distributive, procedural, recognition and restorative justice. However, categorising claims into tenets does not shed light on disagreements within the tenets. As such, the existing conceptual toolkit is insufficient to understand the core of energy justice conflicts. This article proposes to shift focus towards capturing different conceptions of justice. This approach is illustrated by a qualitative analysis of the controversy around underground gas storage Grijpskerk and Norg in the Netherlands. The results show that the conflict is constituted by competing conceptions of restorative justice. The institutionalisation of one conception delegitimises and hides certain justice concerns and reduces the conflict to an epistemic dispute, which leads to misrecognition and possibly to the escalation of the conflict. • Energy conflicts cannot be reduced to epistemic disputes. • The energy justice tenet framework is insufficient for analysing injustice claims. • Understanding energy conflicts requires distinguishing tenets from conceptions. • The conflict in Grijpskerk and Norg is about rival concepts of restorative justice. • Institutionalising a conception of justice dismisses injustice claims as irrelevant.