Beyond Watts and Wheels: A Review of Conceptualizations of Justice and Equity in Energy and Mobility Transition Research

Targeting policies to promote a rapid and significant acceleration of low-carbon transitions entails several barriers and challenges that are inextricably tied to existing inequalities and may reinforce or even create new forms of inequity. In this comprehensive systematic literature review, we analyze conceptual and empirical contributions on justice and equity in the fields of energy and mobility transition research. The main task is to summarize, organize and integrate the vast body of ever-increasing knowledge to critically strengthen future research and policy engagement toward a more socially just and low-carbon society. Our findings confirm the predominance of the triumvirate of tenets — distributive, procedural, and recognition – while newer justice dimensions such as restorative, intergenerational, spatial justice, and intersectional perspectives are gaining increasing attention. A specific analysis of authorship structures highlights the hegemony of knowledge production networks centered on individual key authors, mostly affiliated with institutions of the Global North. The gap between Global North and Global South is further demonstrated by a highly unbalanced overrepresentation of geographical research activities, and a different prioritization of justice subjects and concerns. Conceptualizations of justice based on non-Western ontologies or linked to de- and post-colonial perspectives remain largely disregarded. Consequently, we suggest that future transition research should address the implications of meta-conceptual perspectives and the potential of post-normal science and whole systems perspectives. To further explore root causes, we also call for recognizing the structural conditions of (in)justice, politicizing the ontology of technology, and pluralizing perspectives by emphasizing decolonial thought and epistemic justice. Recognizing that justice is a multi-faceted and essentially contested concept, we provide an integrated framework that enables researchers and practitioners to reflect on the potential impacts of energy and mobility transitions, political strategies and other societal interventions. The Spatio-temporal, Holistic and Inclusive Framework for Transition (SHIFT) is based on a critical social science perspective and features a holistic and inclusive approach for evaluating and guiding transition policies in the energy and mobility sector.