Towards Social Justice in Energy Transitions: An Information Systems Perspective

Abstract

The transition to net-zero energy is typically framed as an environmental sustainability challenge. However, this transition can only be successful if it also considers social sustainability. To provide a basis for this perspective in IS research, we conduct a scoping review on the current state of knowledge surrounding energy social justice. Our review combines traditional qualitative text analysis of 47 papers with natural language processing (NLP) on an expanded set of 267 papers. We find that social justice discussions have picked-up pace since 2016 with a noticeable jump in 2020. However, they focus only on specific topics and are limited to the energy and social sciences. To transfer concepts and knowledge from these disciplines into IS and guide the filling-in of blank spots, we present a conceptual framework for IS research on energy social justice.