Energy justice, modernity and transitions: more-than-modern energy for all in the Global South

摘要: In 2015, with its Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7), the United Nations promoted its ambition for a global energy transition, declaring the adjective objectives of “affordable,”“reliable,”“sustainable” and “modern” energy for all, by the year 2030. While the first three adjective objectives are not without disputation, they speak relatively directly to socio-economic, quality and environmental concerns that surround energy transitions, and thus entail a distributional justice ethic. The fourth objective of modern energy for all, however, is more contentious. For one, given that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have a particular emphasis on the Global South, it implies a modernisation approach to energy development. This is arguably an antiquated framing, given that a modernisation-as-development approach has been widely questioned in development studies and geography scholarship as being Western …