Unjust energy transition: Vignettes from the COPs, climate finance and a coal hotspot

Abstract

As we move from dependence on fossil fuels towards zero carbon renewables, ‘just transition’ promises to leave no one behind. This paper has two objectives. First, it traces the trajectory of justice claims in the lead-up to the just transition agenda. Second, it explores unfolding just transition measures in the climate-vulnerable Global South. To pursue the first objective, I adopt a historical and political approach. I demonstrate the contested nature of environmental and climate justice claims that preceded just transition. Typically led by communities dependent on land, water, and the environmental commons for livelihoods and life, place-based struggles pushed against dispossession by developmental, modernist states and business. From the 1990 s, with the growing imprint of the climate crisis, states and businesses have increasingly entered the climate solutions arena. At multilateral climate fora such as the UN COPs, states, along with businesses, and finance and technology firms, hold the mantle of just transition today. In this upscaled context, justice concerns play out around the distribution of climate finance, especially from the traditionally polluting Global North to the South. Pursuant of the second objective of the research, and drawing on interview-based data, the paper traces the largest climate finance partnership between North and South: coal-dependent Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition Partnership. In the shaping of Indonesia’s JETP, justice is a tagline. The focus is on energy as investment opportunity—for the scheme’s international funders, and the recipient country. The trajectory of justice from ground–up environmental and climate justice struggles to multilateral climate fora and high-profile North-South just transition programmes shows elitization and depoliticization. It is no surprise that a South-based Just Energy Transition Partnership is far from bringing everybody along. Contributing to critical climate and energy studies, the paper spans scale, space, and time in its interrogation of the unjust energy transition.