Balancing the energy trilemma through the Energy Justice Metric
Abstract
Energy justice is a fast emerging research and policy tool which captures the injustices across the energy life-cycle, i.e., from ‘cradle-to-grave’. The Energy Justice Metric (EJM) quantifies energy justice through analyzing the energy justice performance of different countries utilising data from international institutions and national governments. This paper identifies why there is a need for a modeling tool such as the EJM which focuses on the full energy life-cycle and also has a distributive (inequality-correcting) oriented approach. The EJM demonstrates how a country can achieve an improved balance between the three competing aims of the energy trilemma, i.e. economics, politics and the environment. A key feature of the EJM is modeling energy justice using a ternary plot where the energy justice performance of a country can be transferred directly onto the energy trilemma. In this paper, five countries are analysed, the US, UK, Germany, Denmark and Ireland. The EJM presents a research and policy decision-making tool that can contribute to the growing literature that tackles the issue of inequality in society, and informs on society’s decision on which energy source would be more just for a society to build.
Citation
Heffron , R , McCauley , D & Zarazua de Rubens , G 2018 , ' Balancing the energy trilemma through the Energy Justice Metric ' , Applied Energy , vol. 229 , pp. 1191-1201 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.08.073
Publication
Applied Energy
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0306-2619Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.08.073
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