Facilitating the Clean Energy Transition by Mitigating Public Value Conflicts using Principles of Energy Justice

Description

By 2050 the European Union (EU) aims to achieve a climate neutral economy, and in order to do this it is actively pursuing policies which will see its energy systems transition to clean & renewable systems. The EU’s energy transition policies push several public values in pursuit of this overarching policy objective of a carbon neutral and clean energy system, including the values of affordability, sustainability, security of supply, and fairness. These values will be operationalized by infrastructure operators and other stakeholders by using them as guides for their decision making in operating and investing in energy infrastructure systems.

However, public values will often compete and conflict with each other, and thus operators and other stakeholders will have to balance out the various public values and even made trade offs when operationalizing them. This can be seen especially with the concept of the energy trilemma, where the three public values of affordability, sustainability & security of supply are in constant tension with each other in the energy sector and must be balanced out. For example, if policy makers wish to pursue sustainability, they may invest in more renewable energy sources, but if they completely depend on only renewable energy, this may jeopardize the security of energy supply, as by its nature the production of renewable energy fluctuates. There is no guidance from EU policy makers on how infrastructure operators should balance out these values when pursuing the energy transition, and in the absence of such guidance, operators are likely to adopt simple rudimentary trade-off strategies such as alternating between different values during different time periods, or choosing to focus solely on one public value over others. The literature shows that when conflicts between public values are improperly resolved it results in delays and failures in infrastructure projects. Such delays and failures mean that the public policy and the public interest are unlikely to be achieved and/or fulfilled. This issue will be further compounded in energy infrastructure system projects where several infrastructure operators are involved and are operating, as there may be conflicting approaches and strategies towards public values that are adopted by the various operators.

In order to mitigate failure and ensure that the public policy objectives are achieved, it is important that value trade-offs are done correctly. As the decision to pursue certain public values and trade off between values is inherently a political decision, rather than a technical decision, it may be necessary for infrastructure operators to base their decisions and strategies on the intention of policy makers rather than to do so arbitrarily. To meet the policy objectives and the public interest, infrastructure operators can align their trade-off strategies with the concept of energy justice and good governance principles. By proactively identifying where values of the energy transition conflict and creating frameworks to resolve the conflicts and mitigate tensions, infrastructure operators may be able to facilitate the energy transition in the EU with the deadlines the EU has set for itself.