In order to achieve its ambitious policy goals such as using 40% renewable energy, cutting emissions by 55% or reducing energy consumption by 29% by 2030, the EU must undergo an energy transition which is also just and fair. This will require rapid and drastic changes to the energy system and to society, and holds the risk of potentially negative impacts or unforeseen injustices in society. Despite the persistent rallying call of a just and fair transition in EU policies, there is currently no policy assessment framework for energy justice in the EU. Current policy assessment approaches may fall short since they have been criticised for neglecting social aspects and different types of injustice that may occur as a result of the energy transition. Given that energy systems are socio-technical systems, assessments that take a socio-technical perspective may be more suitable, in particular those that assess policies through the lens of energy justice. Bottom-up and top-down assessment approaches each have particular advantages and disadvantages and can complement each other in order to provide a comprehensive assessment of energy policies. Complementing our recent work in which we developed a bottom-up energy justice framework, in this report, based on the literature, and taking account of current critiques of the EU impact assessment process, we propose a top-down energy justice framework that may be used as guidance for impact assessments on energy-related issues in the EU.
Authors
Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Shortall, Ruth, Mengolini, Anna
Related Organizations
- Catalogue number
- KJ-01-24-058-EN-N
- Citation
- European Commission: Joint Research Centre, Shortall, R. and Mengolini, A., Energy justice in EU impact assessment – Proposal for guidelines , Publications Office of the European Union, 2024, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/0414062
- DOI
- https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/0414062
- ISBN
- 978-92-68-20835-9
- ISSN
- 1831-9424
- Pages
- 25
- Published in
- Belgium
- Themes
- Energy , Social
