Energy transition: A matter of justice

Science has shown enough evidence on the urgency of an energy transition to migrate to clean energy sources. But along the way, historically vulnerable populations may be affected. Can a transition be made fairly?

“The energy transition is the greatest transformation that human beings have ever had in their history and we have little time to do it.” This is how Ana Lía Rojas, executive director of the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies, summarizes the importance, and especially the urgency, of the energy transition.

According to the calculations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the energy transition is a process that does not wait.

“If we do not achieve strong emissions reductions immediately across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) will be out of reach,” it said in April 2022.

In its reports, the IPCC has managed to compile enough evidence to conclude that the current climate crisis that the planet is experiencing was caused by the high emissions of gases that produce the greenhouse effect, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), which is largely released by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil or fossil gas. among others.

There is little time to make this definitive reduction. The Paris Agreement, which has been signed by 194 countries, set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels.

To reach that goal, nations have set out to cut their greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and to zero by 2050. This period is short if one thinks that, as Ana Lía says, this is the greatest transformation that humanity undertakes.

A change as dizzying as the one that involves transforming the main energy sources that humanity uses to transport, eat or produce goods, in less than thirty years, poses serious challenges for many populations in Latin America that, although they are the least responsible for the climate crisis, could be the most affected by the transition.

The just energy transition, a dispute

Felipe Andrés Fontecilla is one of the authors of the Just Energy Transition Latin America report. From decarbonization to transformation, a study of several social organizations that raises some of the challenges that the region has to ensure that its transition leaves no one behind. For him, we are facing the challenge of saving the planet by migrating to clean energy, but also the possibility of doing so by including those who for decades have been marginalized from these discussions.

According to this report, which was coordinated by Felipe together with Javier Lecourt and Felipe Pino, in 2021 the energy sector contributed 73.2% of total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and, although emissions in Latin America represent 8.3% of global emissions, this is one of the regions most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis on ecosystems and biodiversity.

To this is added that, according to a report on energy poverty, published in 2020 by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in this region of the world there are high rates of populations that do not have access to any electricity service.

The study says that “in certain Central American countries the proportion of households that do not have access to this energy service is higher than the rest of the region, for example, the cases of Guatemala (16.5%), Panama (14.8%), Nicaragua (14.3%), El Salvador (11.8%) and Honduras (9.6%), which see their integration limited to various socioeconomic benefits related to electricity. ”

In this there are at least three obvious injustices. On the one hand, Latin America is the region that emits the least greenhouse gases, but it is one of the most affected by the climate crisis. On the other hand, although it has the resources to extract or generate energy sources, in some countries there are entire populations without access to an energy source as indispensable as electricity.

And, in parallel, in Latin America there are populations seriously affected by the extraction of minerals that are indispensable to develop the technological devices used to generate clean energy. This is the case, for example, in northern Argentina, in the town of Antofagasta de la Sierra, where the extraction of lithium, a reusable metal used in the construction of batteries and fundamental for the energy transition; It has brought harmful consequences for the health, culture and biodiversity of the population.

On the inequality in access to energy services, Ana Lía says: “When we make the transition to energy without pollutants and without greenhouse gases, which is what is causing the climate crisis, it is also important that the same population that has been violated or that does not have access to energy supplies at reasonable and convenient prices, nor is it affected by that change. That is why we cannot end up affecting that population that is very important, especially in the Latin American region, that with less access to energy solutions must pay a price or a cost that makes their access to energy solutions more expensive.”

Philip’s explanation of the origin of these injustices requires a look at the past. “I think it’s important to look at the historical context that shows us that there are power relations manifesting at the global level between the global north and the global south. The north as those who extract and the south as those extracted. This relationship has left us at the expense of waste, the pollutants of the extractive industry and without the resources we need to survive. So we have whole communities, entire nations impoverished by this global dynamic,” he says.

Therefore, he says, these transition processes are an opportunity to change these power relations and to pay more attention to communities that have historically been excluded from the benefits of energy resources. “Just transition is an avenue, a way, for the transition process to take this group of people into consideration. That is the big reason: we cannot do it more without communities, we have to establish processes that have principles of equity, participation and respect for human rights,” adds Felipe.

Another of the challenges that are added to the energy transition and that make us think about the need to talk about justice in this process has to do with the populations and countries that historically have been sustained by the rents generated by the extraction of fossil fuels and that tend to disappear.

In fact, the reflection for justice in environmental policies was born in the 1970s by the hand of labor movements in the United States that began to express their concerns about the health effects caused by their work due to the environmental damage generated by the industries in which they worked. In the 1990s and 2000s the concept of just transition spread around the world driven by climate negotiations and social groups advocating for climate justice.

Luisa Palacios is a researcher at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy. She has studied the challenges that Latin America has to finance the Energy Transition and there she also sees some problems for this process to be done fairly.

“In any energy transition scenario I’ve seen, coal disappears. So how about the countries that produce it and how about the communities that depend on that production or that their work depends on coal production? If a government decides it doesn’t want more coal because it emits a lot, what is it going to do with the communities that depend on it in the future? Governments need to invest in thinking about how these communities are going to transition to a new renewable energy economy,” he says.

This is the situation of the Guajira region in northern Colombia. There for decades coal has been exploited without the economic benefits impacting the quality of life of the people who inhabit the territories where it is extracted, but in recent years it has sought to generate wind energy through the same model that leaves aside the population. This boost to the energy transition has left doubts about the justice with which it is being implemented.

So the panorama that Ana, Luisa and Felipe point out is full of challenges and uncomfortable questions that must be asked by governments, as well as the great world powers.

On the part of civil society, there are social movements that seek to ensure that the energy transition is made with justice for women, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities and all people who have historically been excluded from decisions about energy sources.

As the Just Energy Transition Latin America report says, this will only be possible if the transition is carried out with principles of equity, transparency, participation and with absolute respect for human rights.

Source: El Desconcierto