A review of recent Progress on social inequality impacts of low-carbon energy transitions

Abstract

The Paris Agreement set, in response to the current climate crisis, a long-term temperature target to stimulate ambitious mitigative action across all countries. The need to ensure equality, or a just transition, throughout such unprecedented transformations towards low-carbon economies has been attracting increasing attention in recent years. However, there remains great uncertainty in the potential inequality impacts of transitioning to low-carbon energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, biofuels). This review examines academic literature on low-carbon energy transitions across five years (2019–2023) - focusing on employment, income, health, and gender inequalities - to identify common avenues through which inequalities arise, and understand how policy can be designed to avoid and/or mitigate negative outcomes. In addition, it explores how relevant literature into the inequality impacts of low-carbon energy transitions has evolved. The synthesis shows that recent literature has expanded in scope and granularity, with research increasingly focused on multiple dimensions of inequality at finer scales, providing a greater understanding of the underlying mechanisms stimulating negative outcomes, as well as on how different types of inequalities interact with one another and reinforce adverse side-effects. Despite inequality outcomes presenting in different ways, all inequalities reviewed stem from, and are dependent upon, a multitude of social, cultural, economic, political, geographical, and technological factors. Inequality outcomes frequently compound with pre-existing social inequalities, and risk undermining the possibility of achieving a just transition. However, enhanced disaggregated data is still required to understand the full range of potential inequality impacts and identify the best remediation strategies to guide a just energy transition.