Speaker
Description
Urban strategies for energy transitions have been largely driven by the decarbonisation imperative in response to global concerns for climate change. Mainstream research, with its emphasis on the development potential of renewables, energy balances, energy efficiency and financial models, as well as international policies supporting the replication potential of specific transition components (see e.g. the EU Renovation Wave for energy efficiency at building level), both emphasise a technocratic and market-driven approach. However, this framing tends to oversimplify the intricacies of urban dynamics and the significance of social, institutional and cultural factors interwoven with technological and market dimensions of energy transition.
A growing body of research has begun to shed light on the dark sides of the diffusion of low-carbon innovations (Ertelt and Carlborg, 2024). Several contributions have emerged, highlighting energy injustices associated with the prevailing energy transition paradigm while advocating for a human-centred approach (Jenkins et al., 2018). The concept of energy justice, with its multidimensional and intersectional features, has emerged as a theoretical, methodological, and empirical tool to both highlight these concerns and suggest new conceptual frameworks to support energy transition (Walker and Day, 2012; Amorim-Maia et al., 2022).
These issues are beginning to resonate in the planning debate, with questions being raised about how planning can contribute to the energy transition while fostering transformative changes and equity (Scott, 2022). Whilst the relationship between spatial and energy planning at the city scale has been criticised for the adoption of a top-down and normative approach, the neighbourhood context is increasingly recognised as a promising scale for transition, although this is still largely interpreted from a functionalist perspective (De Pascali and Bagaini, 2019).
The present paper focuses on integrated urban regeneration initiatives in disadvantaged neighbourhoods with the aim to highlight their contribution for a just energy transition. The transformative potential of these initiatives for achieving just transitions can be attributed to several factors: their place-based focus and the search for context-specific and integrated solutions; the attention paid to collective practices and place-making dynamics, which can reveal new solution spaces; the promotion of situated learning of energy practices, which serves to overcome a simplistic analysis of energy demands and needs; and the understanding of multiple drivers of energy vulnerabilities, which supports the possibility of operationalising the multifaceted features of energy justice.
The analysis is carried out through a combination of theoretical investigation and multiple case studies, and contemplates the prospect of suggesting a transformative agenda to strengthen the urban regeneration-energy transition nexus from the perspective of energy justice.
References
Amorim-Maia, A.T., Anguelovski, I., Chu, E., Connolly, J. (2022), Intersectional climate justice: A conceptual pathway for bridging adaptation planning, transformative action, and social equity, Urban Climate, 41, 101053.
De Pascali, P., Bagaini, A. (2019), Energy transition and urban planning for local development. A critical review of the evolution of integrated spatial and energy planning, Energies, 12(1), 35.
Ertelt, S.-M., Carlborg, P. (2024), The dark sides of low-carbon innovations for netzero transitions: a literature review and priorities for future research, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 20 (1), 2335731.
Jenkins, K, Sovacool, B.K., McCauley, D. (2018), Humanizing sociotechnical transitions through energy justice: An ethical framework for global transformative change, Energy Policy, 117, pp. 66–74.
Scott, M. (2022), Planning for a just energy transition: If not now, when?, Planning Theory and Practice, 23(3), pp. 321–326.
Walker, G., Day, R. (2012), Fuel poverty as injustice: integrating distribution, recognition and procedure in the struggle for affordable warmth, Energy Policy, 49, pp. 69–75.
| Keywords | Urban Regeneration; Energy Transition; Energy Justice; Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
