Much of the contemporary debate about just transition revolves around a relatively straightforward question: how can we ensure that the costs and benefits of the energy transition are fairly distributed?
This is certainly important. Closing a coal mine, dismantling a power station or introducing new renewable energy infrastructure can have significant economic consequences for workers and communities. Employment programmes, compensation mechanisms, public investment and opportunities for participation have therefore become central components of just transition policies.
But I have increasingly wondered whether these measures, necessary as they are, capture everything that people stand to lose—or gain—through such transformations.
What happens when a community receives economic compensation but still feels that something fundamental has been taken away? What if the loss is not simply employment, income or population, but the disappearance of a way of life that once gave people a sense of identity, dignity and collective purpose?
These questions brought me back to Axel Honneth’s The Struggle for Recognition (1992), a book that I believe has much to offer contemporary discussions about energy justice.
Three forms of recognition
Honneth’s central argument is that human beings develop their identities through relationships of mutual recognition. We do not become autonomous individuals independently of society. Rather, our capacity to develop a positive relationship with ourselves depends on how others recognise us.
He identifies three fundamental forms of recognition.
The first is love, which develops through intimate relationships of care and affection. These relationships provide the emotional security necessary for self-confidence.
The second is rights, through which individuals are recognised as morally autonomous persons entitled to equal legal standing. This form of recognition provides self-respect.
The third is solidarity, understood as the social appreciation of individuals’ particular abilities, characteristics and contributions to society. Through this recognition, individuals develop self-esteem.
These distinctions are important because the denial of recognition does not always take the same form. People can experience neglect, exclusion, humiliation or the devaluation of their contributions. Such experiences may generate grievances that eventually become the basis for collective resistance.
What does this have to do with energy transitions?
Consider the closure of a coal mine.
From an economic perspective, the central problem might appear to be the loss of employment and income. An appropriate policy response would therefore involve retraining, economic diversification, compensation and investment in alternative industries.
But Honneth invites us to look beyond these material consequences.
A miner’s occupation may have provided more than a salary. It may have been a source of pride, social recognition and collective belonging. The occupation could have been valued not only by the worker, but also by family members, neighbours and the wider community.
When an industry disappears, those relationships of recognition may also be transformed.
This does not mean that everyone identifies positively with industrial employment, or that former industrial communities necessarily share the same memories. Industrial work could also involve exploitation, gender inequalities, environmental damage and social exclusion.
The point is that economic transformations also affect the social conditions through which people develop and maintain a sense of worth.
Here, Honneth’s notion of solidarity seems particularly relevant. When society ceases to value certain forms of work or ways of life, individuals may experience more than economic decline. They may also experience a loss of social esteem.
Recognition is not simply participation
Contemporary energy justice research often distinguishes between distributive, procedural and recognition justice (Jenkins et al., 2016; Sovacool et al., 2017).
This framework has been enormously influential. However, recognition is sometimes operationalised primarily through the identification and inclusion of affected groups, particularly vulnerable or marginalised communities.
Honneth reminds us that recognition is a much broader social process.
Being invited to participate in a consultation does not necessarily mean that one’s identity, experience or contribution is socially valued. Nor does economic compensation automatically restore the status associated with an occupation or community.
Consider a former mining town receiving substantial investment in renewable energy. The transition might create employment and satisfy many conventional distributive criteria. Yet the new economic activities may not reproduce the same social relationships, occupational identities or forms of collective esteem.
This raises an important question: can a transition be considered just if it compensates people materially but fails to acknowledge the social value of what has disappeared?
I do not think Honneth provides a straightforward policy answer. But his theory helps us understand why conventional policy instruments may be insufficient.
What about love?
Of Honneth’s three forms of recognition, love may seem the least relevant to energy transitions.
Yet the transformation of industrial communities can also affect intimate relationships and the conditions under which care is provided.
Unemployment, migration, financial insecurity and the fragmentation of communities can place considerable pressure on families, friendships and local support networks.
Similarly, energy poverty affects more than household expenditure. The inability to maintain a warm and secure home may undermine the conditions of everyday care and emotional well-being.
Honneth’s framework encourages us to consider these relationships not simply as secondary social consequences but as fundamental dimensions of human flourishing.
This does not mean that energy policy should directly provide love or affection. Rather, it should recognise that the material organisation of society can enable or undermine the relationships through which people develop self-confidence and security.
Towards a more sociological understanding of just transition
My own research on energy transitions has often focused on their geographical and social inequalities.
In a comparative study of electricity generation landscapes in Spain, Denmark and South Korea, my colleagues and I investigated how the burdens associated with electricity production are unevenly distributed across territories (Pérez-SindÃn et al., 2022).
Such approaches are important for identifying patterns of inequality. However, geographical distributions tell us relatively little about how people experience those arrangements, what they consider valuable or how transformations affect their relationships with one another.
Honneth’s work provides a useful reminder that justice cannot be understood exclusively through the distribution of resources, opportunities or environmental burdens.
A just transition is not only about what people receive or lose materially. It is also about how they are recognised as persons, citizens and valued members of society.
This does not imply that recognition should replace redistribution. Economic insecurity cannot be resolved simply by making people feel valued. Indeed, the relationship between recognition and material inequality became the central subject of Honneth’s subsequent debate with Nancy Fraser.
But revisiting The Struggle for Recognition can help us recover dimensions of social life that risk disappearing when just transition is translated into indicators, compensation schemes and procedural guidelines.
Perhaps the most interesting question is not simply whether the energy transition distributes its costs and benefits fairly, but whether it contributes to a society in which people can continue to develop self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem.
That, I think, is a question worth bringing back into contemporary debates about just transition.
References
- Honneth, A. (1995 [1992]). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Polity Press.
- Jenkins, K., McCauley, D., Heffron, R., Stephan, H., & Rehner, R. (2016). Energy justice: A conceptual review. Energy Research & Social Science, 11, 174–182.
- Pérez-SindÃn, X. S., Lee, J., & Nielsen, T. (2022). Exploring the spatial characteristics of energy injustice: A comparison of the power generation landscapes in Spain, Denmark, and South Korea. Energy Research & Social Science, 91, 102682.
- Sovacool, B. K., Burke, M., Baker, L., Kotikalapudi, C. K., & Wlokas, H. (2017). New frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice. Energy Policy, 105, 677–691.
- Van Uffelen, N. (2022). Revisiting recognition in energy justice. Energy Research & Social Science, 92, 102764.
