ABSTRACT
Human-induced climate change, by its nature, involves the production of injustice. The impacts of climate change impose spatially uneven harms on present and future generations and the production of greenhouse gas emissions is socially and spatially uneven. This chapter highlights key concepts being articulated in energy justice research through a focus on low carbon energy system transitions generally and the deployment of nuclear power specifically. It explores some critical opportunities for future research, crystallizing around first, the ways in which justice issues are constituted spatially and temporally across the whole lifecycle of the energy system (innovation, through resource extraction, power generation, consumption and managing waste residues) and second, how injustices emerge and evolve through the intersections of technology choices, political contexts and societal expectations. Although issues of distributive justice have been central concerns, debates about low carbon energy systems and infrastructure siting are equally permeated by questions of procedural justice, that is, the fairness of, and access to, decision-making procedures.
