Читать книгу Derecho de la energía y el clean energy package - Elisenda Malaret García - Страница 38

On the road to energy transition, it seems a must to further examine energy justice and its impact on the energy sector. As already widely explained in the literature19, energy justice aims to pursue a global energy system in which costs and benefits are fairly spread to make energy decisions the result of a wider democratic process. Energy justice aims to meet the challenges of energy transition in order to find solutions that are fair and respectful of the rights and interests involved and to provide a clear and fair regulatory framework. Therefore, policy makers must permit to be guided by this current, which is nothing more than an evolution of the previous movement of environmental justice. Energy justice, with its three corollaries of distributional, recognition and procedural justice must understand the current issues and how they can find their place and resolution towards the energy transition. Distributional justice, which starts from the assumption of an unequivocal distribution of the costs and benefits of energy projects, try to fight energy injustice and all of its consequences. In South America, the main energy projects and mining activities take place in areas of extreme poverty or populated by multi-ethnic groups at high risk of extinction20. And the disposal activities from extraction and production inevitably spills over into their present and future with a huge amount of waste to manage. Having identified the presence of inequalities within energy systems is not enough to provide a deep understanding of the energy justice framework. With recognition justice it is indeed necessary to identify who the victims are and how these inequalities on these disadvantaged groups will affect the social growth and economy of society21. Distributional and recognition justice then lead to the theorization of a third corollary of energy justice: procedural justice. The need to be guaranteed not only clear and fair information but also the stakeholders’ participation in decision making processes. It exists the duty to ensure the participation of the territories concerned in the energy projects and therefore provide for forms of participation in the procedures for all the energy stages from generation to distribution and waste management. The citizens’ right to energy information and participation is today more than ever an important factor of institutional innovation capable of influencing the governance of public policies in the field of energy transition, but it is also the subjective prerequisite for the spread of the culture of energy justice at international level. Hence, the evolutionary interpretation of the energy justice framework must consider the issue of the public understanding and acceptability of the energy activities. The international literature has recently analysed this important issue of public acceptability. For example, in North European Countries (Denmark and Germany) it has been confirmed the relevance of public recognition as a pre-condition for the legitimacy of all energy activities22 as well as in Canada for solar energy projects23, it has been crystalized the importance of building a deliberation dialogue between planners and communities in order to guarantee a due process as a key element in achieving the energy justice24.