Energy Justice at the Community Level: Exploring the creation and apprehension of energy justice concepts at the community level

Abstract

This thesis explores how conceptions of energy justice are constructed and contested at the community level. Energy justice pertains to equity and fairness with regard to the role of energy in our society, which is especially important in light of the ongoing energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Over the past years comprehensive studies have emerged addressing the importance of energy justice, theoretical conceptualizations have resulted in extensive energy justice frameworks. This study adopts such a framework of energy justice, taking elements from several authors addressing the subject, and subsequently attempting to uncover its meaning on a community level. Energy justice is ultimately expressed and articulated by communities and individuals that are actively involved in the energy transition, and therefore it is extremely important to consider how these local actors construct and apprehend notions of energy justice. This research attempts to explore and explain some of these relationships through a case study, investigating the way in which energy justice is constructed and apprehended in the context of a collectively owned wind farm in the Netherlands.