Beyond decarbonisation: Two challenges for the twin energy transition

Elisa Morgera’s 2026 Montesquieu Lecture reframes climate action as a human-rights project of defossilisation: a move beyond carbon-centred mitigation towards the protection of interconnected life-supporting systems and economies organised around care. This commentary develops the implications of that account for energy law and policy – a particularly sensitive field for Morgera’s overall ambition. It argues, first, that Morgera’s transformative programme depends on its legal re-formalisation within the field of energy law: translating care, solidarity, and self-determination into the institutions, requirements, and doctrines that shape energy transactions and infrastructures. Second, it extends her critique of ‘carbon tunnel vision’ to the twin green and digital energy transition. Digital technologies are key for advancing towards defossilised energy systems, but they also redistribute surveillance, access, and material burdens. Morgera’s human-rights approach must therefore govern both their operational effects and their full life-cycle footprint, lest defossilisation generate new, digitally mediated sacrifice zones.