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Glossary · Energy industry & energy transition

Energy Justice

Energy Justice Energy Poverty Affordability energy transition distribution policy

Energy justice refers to the fair distribution of costs, benefits, risks and opportunities for participation in the energy system. The concept raises several questions: Who pays for energy? Who benefits from energy infrastructure, and who bears its burdens? Who is involved in decisions? And whose circumstances are actually taken into account in rules, prices and support programmes? Energy justice is not a legal term with a fixed definition of its own. It is an analytical and political guiding principle. However, individual aspects such as energy poverty or the distribution of grid costs are now expressly regulated.

In the electricity system, energy justice concerns, among other things, electricity prices, grid charges, levies, support costs, connection conditions and security of supply. It also covers siting decisions for wind power, solar parks, storage and power lines, as well as access to support programmes for photovoltaics, heat pumps or energy-efficiency renovation. It is therefore not an additional social issue alongside the energy transition. It is about how rules, investments and responsibilities are designed.

Distribution, procedure and recognition

In the specialist debate, energy justice is often described in three dimensions. The first is distributive justice: How are costs and benefits distributed? This includes electricity prices, heating costs, grid charges, subsidies, relief for industry or households, and regional burdens from energy infrastructure. An example: a region hosts many wind turbines but has only a limited share in trade tax revenue, lease income or cheaper electricity. This creates a distribution problem. The same applies when low-income households spend a high share of their income on electricity and heat.

The second dimension is procedural justice. It concerns the rules by which decisions are made. This includes planning and permitting procedures, participation in grid expansion and generation projects, transparency in tariff design, and access to complaint and advisory bodies. Participation here does not mean that every infrastructure project can be prevented. But it requires comprehensible procedures, early information and verifiable reasoning. There must also be a recognisable way to contribute local knowledge.

The third dimension is recognition justice. It focuses on different living situations. A low-income household with a poorly insulated flat and no car of its own has different options from a household with its own home, capital for a solar system and tax planning opportunities. Tenants cannot simply install a heat pump or fit a roof with photovoltaics. People living in rural areas depend more heavily on mobility. Urban households, by contrast, more often face high rents and limited access to charging infrastructure. Energy justice requires that such differences not be treated as individual failings when they arise from ownership structures, infrastructure, income or regulation.

Distinction from energy poverty, affordability and climate justice

Energy justice is broader than energy poverty. For the EU, the Energy Efficiency Directive (EU) 2023/1791 defines energy poverty in Article 2, point 52, as a household's lack of access to essential energy services that provide a basic and decent standard of living and health. Heating, hot water, cooling, lighting and energy for household appliances are named, in each case in the national context. As causes, the directive names a combination of factors, including at least unaffordability, insufficient disposable income, high energy expenditure and poor energy efficiency of homes. Member States can develop their own national delimitations on this basis. Energy justice includes such cases. But it additionally looks at the distribution of opportunities for support, the burdens of grid expansion, regional siting questions, exemptions for industry, participation procedures and long-term risks.

Affordability is also only one part of the concept. An electricity tariff can appear affordable in the short term and still be designed unjustly. This is the case, for example, if costs are shifted to later years, if certain groups are systematically relieved while others take on the financing, or if households without investment options permanently bear higher running costs. Conversely, a higher energy price is not automatically unjust. What matters is the cause of the price, what alternatives are available and what compensation is provided. It also matters whether the price reflects a scarce good or a politically determined distribution of costs.

Energy justice is also not the same as climate justice. Climate justice asks how climate damage, emission rights and obligations to transform are distributed between countries, generations and social groups. Energy justice is closer to the concrete infrastructure and rules of energy supply. The two concepts overlap, for instance on the question of whether the phase-out of fossil energy is organised in a socially sustainable way.

Why the concept is practically relevant in the electricity system

The electricity system affects everyday life through prices, connections, meters, tariffs, security of supply and technical availability. Many costs do not show up directly in the wholesale electricity price. They are embedded in grid charges, levies, taxes, standing charges or investment costs, that is, in the various electricity price components. As a result, burdens can shift without this being clearly recognisable in public debate.

One example is grid charges. They finance the operation, maintenance and expansion of the electricity grids. In Germany, grid costs are paid through grid charges by the electricity customers of the respective grid area. Regions with a great deal of wind and solar power and high expansion needs, especially in the north and northeast, therefore had significantly higher charges for a long time. The Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) cited ranges of up to about 15 ct/kWh in some grid areas and below 5 ct/kWh in others. The electricity generated there serves the whole country. The question is therefore not only how high grid charges are, but by what rule they are distributed regionally.

Here the Bundesnetzagentur, as regulatory authority, has changed the rule. Under determination BK8-24-001-A of 28 August 2024, distribution system operators with particularly high additional costs from integrating renewable energy have been relieved since 1 January 2025. Whether a grid operator is particularly burdened is measured by an indicator: it relates the connected renewable generation capacity to the consumption load in the grid area. The relieved costs are distributed nationwide via the surcharge for special grid use. According to the 2024 Monitoring Report, 178 distribution system operators were able to pass on a total of around 2.4 billion euros in this way. The surcharge rose in 2025 to 1.56 ct/kWh (2024: 0.643 ct/kWh), of which about 60 percent is attributable to this grid cost distribution. An average household with annual consumption of 3,500 kWh in a relief region was in some cases able to save more than 200 euros a year compared with 2024. Nationally uniform grid charges have thus not been introduced. The Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt) describes the determination as a partial equalisation and considers a more comprehensive reform of grid charges necessary.

Support programmes are another example. Grants for heat pumps, photovoltaics or building renovation can advance climate protection and efficiency. But they reach households with property, sufficient liquidity, good creditworthiness and access to advice more easily. People with low incomes often benefit less, even though they are particularly vulnerable because of high running energy costs. A support rate that is the same for everyone can therefore have unequal effects when starting conditions are unequal.

Flexible electricity tariffs also raise questions of justice. Time-variable prices can help align consumption with times of abundant wind and solar power. Households with an electric car, heat pump, storage or controllable appliances can use such tariffs better than households with a rigid consumption profile. The technical possibility of flexibility therefore does not yet lead to a fair distribution of the benefits. Who saves and who merely bears price risks depends on the tariff rule, on the availability of metering systems and on the ability to adjust one's own behaviour.

Regional participation in generation plants

A concrete instrument for greater regional distributive justice in Germany is Section 6 of the Renewable Energy Sources Act 2023 (EEG 2023). Under it, operators should financially involve the municipalities affected by their plant. For onshore wind turbines with more than 1,000 kW of installed capacity, they may offer the affected municipalities up to 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour in total. This applies to the electricity volume actually fed in and to the notional volume. For ground-mounted solar plants, the same amount applies to the volume fed in. These payments are unilateral grants without consideration. Under federal law they are a provision of the 'should' type, not an enforceable obligation. For electricity volumes supported under the EEG, operators can have the payments reimbursed by the grid operator. Several federal states have enacted their own participation laws, some of which are mandatory. Their rules differ from state to state.

Typical oversimplifications

A common oversimplification equates energy justice with low energy prices. Low prices can alleviate poverty. But they can also create wrong incentives, hinder investment in efficiency or shift costs covertly into public budgets. Even with capped prices, the question remains who ultimately pays: taxpayers, future grid users or particular consumer groups. Energy justice requires that this shift be disclosed.

Another oversimplification explains problems of acceptance as a mere communication deficit. Resistance to power lines, wind farms or substations sometimes arises from misinformation, but often from genuine questions of distribution and participation. Those who bear local burdens understandably ask about benefits, compensation and a say in decisions. Technically correct planning can be institutionally weak if it involves those affected late or makes the benefit to the region barely visible.

The assumption that households can always respond rationally to energy prices is also problematic. Many forms of consumption cannot be changed in the short term. They depend on rented housing, commuting routes, the stock of appliances, care needs, childcare, the condition of the building or shift work. A price signal is only an option for action for people if they can respond technically, financially and organisationally. Otherwise it acts as a burden without steering anything.

Finally, energy justice is occasionally used as if every hardship had to be avoided. This too is imprecise. Transforming a fossil energy system causes costs, land-use conflicts and adjustment needs. Energy justice does not demand a conflict-free transformation. It demands reasoned rules for sharing burdens, protection from unreasonable hardship, and procedures that involve those affected early and not only after all essential decisions have been made.

Institutional questions behind the concept

Energy justice depends heavily on which institution bears which costs and which rules apply to this. Electricity suppliers design tariffs, grid operators levy grid charges, and regulatory authorities set revenue caps and requirements. Parliaments decide on taxes, levies and support programmes, municipalities decide on land, and the federal government and the states divide responsibilities in planning law. Injustices therefore arise not only from individual prices but from the interplay of these levels. The example of grid cost distribution also shows this: whether a region is relieved depends on a regulatory determination, not on the individual supplier.

In the liberalised electricity market, the energy price, grid use and state-set price components are shown separately. This separation makes sense on substantive grounds but can obscure political responsibility. If a household receives a high electricity bill, the causes can lie in procurement costs, the grid area, the standing charge, the consumption profile, taxes, metering charges or an inefficient building. A just policy must distinguish these causes, because each cause calls for different instruments.

Security of supply reveals a further limit of simple distribution debates. A reliable electricity supply has a high societal value, even if it is not visible in every kilowatt hour. Reserve capacity, grid stability, system services and crisis preparedness cause costs. Two questions arise here: How are these costs distributed? And are particularly vulnerable groups protected in the event of outages, disconnections or price shocks? Energy justice is closely linked to security of supply here, but is not exhausted by it.

Key takeaway

Energy justice is not a demand for cheap energy. The concept describes the quality of the rules by which energy supply and the energy transition are organised. It makes visible who has to pay, who can act, who is heard and who bears risks. It becomes precise when prices, infrastructure, ownership structures, access to support, participation and protection needs are considered together. A just energy policy is therefore not measured by individual relief measures. What matters is whether its rules recognise different living situations and distribute the costs of the transformation in a way that is comprehensible, sustainable and verifiable.

Sources

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Edited by eCMS on 11.11.2026 19:46

© 2026 Erik Schmidt. All rights reserved. Quotations with a link to the source are welcome.