Translating promise into practice in Just Energy Transition Partnerships

Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) have emerged as flagship instruments of Global North–South climate cooperation, promising to accelerate coal phase-out while delivering socially just energy transitions in emerging economies. However, three years into their implementation, growing evidence suggests a widening disconnect between their transformative commitment and on-the-ground realities. This article synthesizes findings from a scoping review of all available studies and grey literature published between 2022 and 2025 to examine this disconnect through the lens of what is termed the translation gap . Translation gap conceptualizes JETPs both as financing mechanisms and as contested policy assemblages in which abstract principles such as justice, partnership, and transition are continually renegotiated as they travel from international declarations to national planning and implementation. The analysis reveals several gaps between financial pledges and disbursements, donor claims of country ownership and retained external control, ambitious coal phase-out commitments and domestic energy security imperatives, and expansive just transition commitments and narrowly defined social provisions. These gaps are shown to be produced through power asymmetries, institutional constraints, and divergent temporal and developmental priorities.