Just Transition in the Energy Industry

Abstract

Just transition as a corporate climate action is a fairly new phenomenon and academic literature has not given much attention to just transition at a corporate level. The objective of this study is to determine how companies from the energy industry understand their role in a just transition, and to learn how they address it in their communication. The main research question posed in this thesis asks: How do companies from the energy industry understand their role in a just transition? A combination of two research strategies have been employed to gain deeper insights into the problem posed by the research question. A comprehensive literature review has been conducted to map the research area and provide an understanding to the research problem. This allowed to identify key elements of just transition which were deductively applied to the corporate materials to examine how companies understand their role in realisation of just transition. The second research strategy of this thesis is a case study of three selected energy utility companies: Engie, Enel and SSE where their understanding of just transition was analysed. Qualitative content analysis has been determined as the primary data analysis method applied to answer the research question. Finally, CSR and related concepts have been used for further analysis to assess whether just transition commitments and practices overlap with the premises of CSR or whether they constitute a novel approach to the arising social challenges related to decarbonisation and climate change. The results of the analysis showed, that companies understand their role in just transition as ensuring distributional, procedural and restorative justice to the actors mostly exposed to the consequences of decarbonisation, namely: workers and local communities. Additionally, further analysis shows that just transition in the understanding of the energy companies is narrower than CSR and functions more as a specialised agenda of CSR.