The collection stems from a collaboration between the Joint Program Clean Energy Transition for a Sustainable Society (e3s) of the European Energy Research Alliance and Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy. It spans original research, reviews, and policy and practice analyses, drawing on disciplinary traditions as varied as behavioral economics, text mining, Indigenous studies and socio-technical transition theory. What emerges is not a single blueprint but a multidimensional framework: justice in decarbonization is treated not as a technical prerequisite for cutting emissions but as a normative and political objective in its own right—one with real consequences for how policies are experienced and whether they endure.

One cluster of studies focuses on participatory governance and democratic engagement. Kambo and colleagues demonstrate how a structured deliberative process can bridge the gap between citizens, policymakers and industry actors in shaping Australia’s future energy and fuel systems. Using the “diamond of participatory decision-making” framework, their analysis reveals that while considerable alignment exists across cohorts on the broad direction of a low-carbon future, divergences surface around the social and environmental justice dimensions of specific technology choices—including hydrogen and biogas. Navigating those divergences, the authors argue, requires innovative governance mechanisms rather than simple majority rule. In a complementary contribution, Kunlere and Shah challenge the simplistic binaries that dominate public debates on renewable energy. Their PARO framework categorizes public responses to energy injustice across a spectrum of positions that conventional “supporter versus opponent” dichotomies cannot capture, offering a more granular analytical lens for diagnosing and addressing public resistance. Both studies make one thing clear: how decisions are made matters as much as what is decided—a lesson that is easy to articulate and difficult to institutionalize.

A second cluster turns to sustainable energy systems and socio-technical transitions. Singh and Clough critically interrogate the global bioenergy system, challenging the widespread assumption that bioenergy is inherently carbon-neutral or renewable. Through causal loop analysis, they examine how current production regimes can shift negative social and ecological impacts—including threats to food security, land use change and biodiversity loss—from consumer to producer regions. Their work highlights the uneven distribution of burdens that can arise within particular configurations of globalized bioenergy production and trade. Oduro and Taylor, drawing on expert interviews from industry, academia and policy, map the challenges facing energy networks in Great Britain during decarbonization. Their findings reveal broad agreement on electrification and decentralization, yet deep uncertainty about the future role of gaseous fuels, particularly hydrogen. They also identify a regulatory gap: existing structures may be too rigid and slow-moving to enable networks to drive—rather than impede—the net-zero transition. Soloviy and colleagues expand the debate further by conceptualizing what they call the “triple transition,” linking green, digital and just transitions. Drawing on 28 real-world case examples and five distinct analytical perspectives, their interdisciplinary review argues that tensions between these three policy streams are not merely obstacles to be managed but productive sites of institutional learning if properly engaged.

A third cluster centers on Indigenous knowledge, justice and inclusion. Oliveira and colleagues provide a compelling examination of Sámi perspectives on reindeer herding and energy transition policies in Norway. Through semi-structured interviews with Sámi herders, the authors document how wind turbine development encroaches on grazing lands and disrupts the economic, social and cultural fabric of reindeer herding communities. Crucially, the article does not merely catalog grievances; it also explores the hesitance many Indigenous communities feel toward integrating their Traditional Ecological Knowledge into mainstream transition frameworks, given past experiences of co-optation and tokenism. This nuance—that recognition justice requires more than a formal invitation and demands genuine epistemic respect—is an important contribution. It reminds readers that just transitions cannot be reduced to technological substitution; they must also confront colonial legacies and create institutional space for diverse knowledge systems.

A fourth cluster addresses social vulnerability and climate equity through two complementary scales. Moleskis and colleagues tackle one of the most pressing social dimensions of Europe’s green transition: the unequal capacity of households to access decarbonization support. Framed around the EU Social Climate Fund and illustrated through the case of Cyprus, the authors draw on behavioral science to identify cognitive barriers—such as status quo bias, present bias and information overload—as well as structural barriers including digital exclusion and administrative complexity that prevent energy-poor households from claiming available support. Their policy recommendations move beyond standard subsidy design toward a more human-centered, trust-based approach. Working at the global level, Ayompe examines how distributive, procedural and recognition-based justice have been integrated—or neglected—in international climate governance. The article argues that colonial legacies continue to shape governance structures in ways that systematically exclude the communities most affected by climate change, and calls for interdisciplinary collaboration spanning public health, urban planning and environmental protection.

A fifth and final cluster highlights the cultural and urban dimensions of sustainability transitions. Costanzo and Alderuccio investigate how culture, heritage and the creative industries are being integrated into urban climate-neutrality strategies across European cities. Focusing on Climate City Contracts produced under the EU’s 100 Mission Cities program, the authors apply a text mining methodology to detect the presence—or absence—of New European Bauhaus principles in these planning documents. Their findings reveal that cultural participation is slowly being acknowledged as a driver of climate action, with potential contributions to social cohesion, behavioral change and community-led urban renewal. Methodologically, the article breaks new ground by developing a human-annotated corpus designed to train future AI models capable of analyzing cultural-climate linkages at scale, broadening the understanding of just transitions beyond infrastructure and economics.

Reading across the nine articles, four cross-cutting themes stand out. First, participation matters, but depth counts: whether through deliberative citizen panels, Indigenous consultation processes or community-based climate planning, the legitimacy of sustainability transitions depends on whose voices are genuinely heard and whose knowledge is meaningfully incorporated. Several studies show that participatory processes can remain superficial if institutional follow-through is absent. Second, transitions are inherently systemic and produce feedback effects that extend across sectors, scales and geographies; technological shifts in energy systems interact with regulatory structures, supply chains, cultural identities and global inequalities in ways that can produce new injustices even as they address old ones. Third, justice must be understood in both procedural and distributive terms, and the two cannot be traded off against each other—policies that achieve technically equitable outcomes through opaque or exclusionary processes will struggle to secure the social license they require. Fourth, different kinds of knowledge—scientific, local, Indigenous and experiential—are not competing claims to be arbitrated but complementary resources that policy needs to learn to use together.

Importantly, the collection also demonstrates that tensions within sustainability transitions should not be viewed solely as obstacles. Divergences between stakeholders, conflicts over land use, disagreements regarding technology pathways and competing policy priorities all reveal the complexity of transforming societies. Yet these tensions can also become productive spaces for democratic negotiation, innovation and institutional learning. The challenge for policymakers, researchers and practitioners is therefore not to eliminate disagreement but to create governance structures that can handle complexity while maintaining fairness and legitimacy. The editors also identify a set of research gaps that future work should prioritize: most contributions focus on Europe, North America and Australia, leaving the just transition experiences of communities in the Global South—where climate vulnerability is highest and adaptive capacity often lowest—underrepresented. The role of gender in shaping both exposure to transition risks and access to transition benefits is raised but remains undertheorized. The political economy of transition, including the influence of fossil fuel incumbents, financial flows and trade regimes on the pace and direction of change, is notably absent. Methodologically, the field would benefit from longitudinal studies able to track whether participatory processes translate into durable policy change over time, and from closer examination of implementation fidelity—whether well-designed interventions are actually delivered equitably on the ground. Naming these gaps, the editors stress, is not a criticism of the contributions collected here but an invitation for the next wave of just transition research to take them on.

At a time when there is serious concern that climate targets and their implementation remain insufficient relative to the pace and scale of emissions reductions required, just transition research faces the challenge of demonstrating how greater attention to fairness can contribute to the social acceptability and political legitimacy of decarbonization pathways. The nine studies collected here range from Norwegian reindeer pastures and Australian deliberative panels to EU urban climate contracts and global bioenergy supply chains. They provide critical and diverse guidance for governments, industries, communities and scholars seeking to align decarbonization with social inclusion and democratic accountability. Viewed through this lens, the Research Topic shows that a just transition cannot be assessed on technical performance alone: the question of who bears the costs and who shares the benefits is political and deserves explicit attention. Just transition scholars therefore face a continuing task—to demonstrate how attention to distribution, participation, recognition and legitimacy can contribute to rapid and effective decarbonization while addressing its social consequences, at a moment when the gap between policy ambition and lived social reality remains substantial.

Subject of Research: Just transition research on equity, participation, governance and legitimacy in decarbonization

Article Title: Editorial: Advancing the just transition: navigating towards a sustainable future

Article References: Paier, M., Sari, R., Pellegrini-Masini, G., Sciullo, A., Menon, M., & Carley, S. (2026). Editorial: Advancing the just transition: navigating towards a sustainable future. Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy, 5, Article 1936488. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsuep.2026.1936488

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fsuep.2026.1936488

Keywords: just transition, energy justice, decarbonization, participatory governance, Indigenous knowledge, energy poverty, socio-technical transitions, climate equity, bioenergy, urban climate policy, Editorial, Advancing