Analysing energy conflicts is crucial to realise a successful and just energy transition. In doing so, it is insufficient to understand energy conflicts as epistemic disagreements about risk analyses and safety, as people often voice moral concerns beyond epistemic debates. To analyse grievances of social movements and citizens in energy conflicts, scholars often adopt a tenet-based energy justice framework that distinguishes between distributive, procedural, recognition and restorative justice. However, categorising claims into tenets does not shed light on disagreements within the tenets. As such, the existing conceptual toolkit is insufficient to understand the core of energy justice conflicts. This article proposes to shift focus towards capturing different conceptions of justice. This approach is illustrated by a qualitative analysis of the controversy around underground gas storage Grijpskerk and Norg in the Netherlands. The results show that the conflict is constituted by competing conceptions of restorative justice. The institutionalisation of one conception delegitimises and hides certain justice concerns and reduces the conflict to an epistemic dispute, which leads to misrecognition and possibly to the escalation of the conflict.

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Governing a just energy transition requires detecting and anticipating energy injustices. Although much scholarly attention has been given to frameworks to analyse energy injustices, a consistent framework for policymakers and researchers to detect them is lacking. Current methods for detecting what the publics perceive as (un)just rely on explicit articulations of grievances by citizens in official participatory settings or during energy conflicts. However, it is implausible that all injustices manifest within these contexts. This study introduces a framework to understand why injustices might remain unseen and unaddressed, inspired by the concept of hidden morality as introduced by the philosopher Axel Honneth. The framework of hidden morality conceptualises several steps between an injustice and social change: (1) experience of injustices; (2) expression of injustices; (3) collective action; (4) uptake in public discourse; (5) reformulation; and (6) social change. Between each of these steps, different obstacles can arise. The paper explores the mechanisms that prevent energy injustices from surfacing and being resolved through philosophical literature and two case studies. Its contribution is twofold: it raises awareness of the fact that injustices can remain undetected, and it proposes a framework that is the first systematic tool for policymakers to detect injustices when making energy policies.

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Interdisciplinary collaboration is often seen as the approach to deal with wicked problems, which are problems that involve both scientific uncertainties and normative uncertainties, meaning that there is no consensus on the problem definition and the best course of action. One of the reasons for the difficulty in establishing effective interdisciplinary collaboration is that the normative assumptions of academic disciplines are usually left unarticulated. This paper presents four ideal-typical characterisations of the normative paradigms that are maintained by different disciplines. These paradigms can be sketched out as follows: the moral positions that are considered legitimate are ignored (‘moral denialism’); located at the level of the individual (‘aggregated subjectivism’); located at the level of the community (‘moral collectivism’); or found at a transcendental level (‘transcendental realism’). Each of these paradigms brings about its difficulties for dealing with wicked problems. The paper will also present a heuristic framework that guides interdisciplinary research in dealing with normative plurality by aligning the different scales of contextualisation that appear to underlie the four normative paradigms.

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The tenet-based approach to energy justice has seen substantial uptake over the past decade. Despite referring to philosophical terminology, energy justice scholars rarely engage rigorously with philosophical methods or ongoing debates. We argue this absence is challenging for two implicit goals that often arise in applications of the approach: to describe and capture ethical-issues surrounding energy systems and to normatively evaluate choices, actions, and events surrounding these issues in reference to justice. In this paper, we discuss these descriptive and normative challenges within the energy justice scholarship. We outline a series of measures, methodologies, and debates in philosophy that can aid in meeting these challenges. We argue that the energy justice scholarship can be strengthened by 1) explicitly justifying normative assumptions; 2) acknowledging the breadth and interpretability of tenets by distinguishing concepts and conceptions of justice; and 3) including insights from ongoing debates in moral and political philosophy, which offer conceptual tools and theories to better capture ethical energy related issues. Combined, these suggestions form a research agenda to help energy justice scholarship better articulate, rationalise, and meet its goals.@en

Wicked problems, such as climate change, poverty, and antibiotic resistance, are ethical problems, as moral plurality about the social good is one of their constituting factors. Although wicked problems cannot be fully solved, they are urgent and demand intervention. While design thinking was suggested in the 1990s to deal with wicked problems, it is still an open question how it can address moral plurality. In this article, we consider how design thinking can address moral plurality in wicked problems. We propose that designers using design thinking can adopt four normative paradigms toward moral plurality, namely moral agnosticism (design for solutions), moral pragmatism (design for aggregated preferences), moral unificationism (design for community-created values), and transcendental moralism (design for The Good). Then, we argue that designers can address moral pluralism and deal with wicked problems within the first three approaches to normativity, provided that designers acknowledge that their responses to wicked problems may fail over time and require new design responses. Ignoring that possibility fits within the paradigm of transcendental moralism, which does not give designers the means to deal with wicked problems.

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Citizen participation is key to learn of actors' lived experiences for the design of just energy policies. Many members of society, however, experience barriers to participation. As a result, the injustices they experience are likely to remain hidden from public decision-making processes. This paper applies the 'hidden morality' framework to a case study of migrants with a low socio-economic status (SES) in the Dutch city of The Hague. Through the analysis of 15 policy documents and 26 semi-structured interviews with migrants in a low-SES neighbourhood, this paper uncovers hidden injustices and the societal mechanisms forming barriers to participation. Simultaneously, the case study is used to test the conceptual framework. The study reveals that the interviewed low-SES migrants were not only considerably prevented from expressing their perceived injustices in decision-making, but were also unaware that they were subject to several procedural injustices. We identify three main barriers withholding low-SES migrants from participating in decision-making: unfamiliarity with (Dutch) democratic institutions and of their rights as citizens; language barriers; and weak social ties in their neighbourhoods. We conclude that the hidden morality framework proves useful for revealing injustices and barriers to participation that would otherwise run the risk of remaining hidden from scholars and policymakers.@en

Energy storage, and energy systems in general, can give rise to local and global injustices, and thus it is important to develop, deploy and regulate energy systems in a just manner. Energy justice scholarship has two aims, namely to (a) understand and explain claims of injustice (descriptive aim) and (b) evaluate energy systems in terms of justice and propose policy and design recommendations (normative aim). However, existing energy justice frameworks have limited capacities to achieve both aims because they insufficiently acknowledge normative uncertainties. Different stakeholders have different ideas about when something is (un)just, and as such, there is normative uncertainty about what ‘energy justice’ implies for energy systems. This dissertation aims to strengthen the conceptual foundations of energy justice in light of normative uncertainties, which helps achieve both aims. To do so, the dissertation leverages social sciences and political philosophy, more specifically Critical Theory. The conceptual contributions in this dissertation help detect, analyse, and evaluate energy conflicts and claims of injustice and include a revisited energy justice framework, a reconceptualization of recognition justice, and the hidden morality heuristic. This dissertation stresses the importance of acknowledging normative uncertainty in energy decision-making, the need for justification of normative claims, and the importance of a critical dialogue on energy justice in academia and society, to help guide decision-making towards more just energy storage systems.@en

This white paper aims to provide an introduction to the topic of Design for Justice for a wide audience. It demonstrates ongoing research on this topic by the TU Delft community and contributes to the exchange of relevant knowledge and expertise, as one of the outcomes of the activities organised for the Delft Design for Values Institute’s annual theme ‘Design for Justice’. This document includes recommendations on how to foster Design for Justice, which are not just relevant for designers, engineers, and academic researchers, but also for educators and policy makers.@en

Energy justice is often approached through the four tenets of procedural, distributive, restorative and recognition justice. Though these tenets are important placeholders for addressing what type of justice issues are involved, they require further normative substantiations. These are achieved by using principles of justice to specify why – normatively speaking – something is just or unjust within each category or tenet of justice. In addressing the principles of justice, it is important to acknowledge normative uncertainties, or the fact that different (incompatible) conceptions of justice might be morally defensible, leading to different normative conclusions or policy recommendations. This paper reviews the definitions of tenets in energy justice scholarship, the occurrence of normative claims, and how these claims are justified. The review shows that the scholarship ignores to a large extent normative uncertainties. In response, we propose a revisited energy justice framework, focusing on four aspects that help us to articulate the normative uncertainties in both the principles and the tenets of energy justice. These aspects are (i) the scale of justice (i.e. whether justice is considered at a local, national, regional, multinational or global scale), (ii) the subject of justice, (iii) the body of knowledge that is assumed and (iv) the time frame in which justice issues are being considered. We hope to provide a conceptual framework that make explicit the different types of normative assumptions underlying claims of justice, which will ultimately improve the quality and legitimacy of normative conclusions such as policy recommendations that follow.@en

Citizenship education aims to shape students as ‘good citizens’. Citizenship education is a normative endeavour, and therefore it is vital to critically reflect on its goals and methods. The research question1 is as follows: How can we educate people as ‘good citizens’ in a morally right way? To answer this question, I uncover first which assumptions underly the image of a ‘good citizen’. This is done by establishing which minimum requirements the continuation of democracy demands, and by studying the European Commission’s formulation of the ‘good citizen’ and its underlying notion of democracy. Next, I critically reflect on how students are shaped as ‘good citizens’ through citizenship education. This lays bare an underlying tension between liberal democracy and citizenship education that can be described as the danger of indoctrination. Inspired by Jurgen Habermas’ discourse ethics, this article proposes a way out, namely obligatory philosophy education for all students. @en

Energy justice often distinguishes between different tenets, such as distributive, procedural and recognition justice. Recognition justice has a distinct status compared to the other two as its meaning seems the least tangible to grasp. In this article, a systematic literature study was conducted to the definitions and interpretations of recognition justice, showing that the concept currently refers to a large variety of phenomena. This diversity obscures what “recognition justice” actually measures. This paper aims to revisit the concept of recognition justice in energy justice by asking the following question: what does the tenet of recognition justice refer to, taking into account the philosophical roots of the concept? To do so, key texts from Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser were studied in-depth, resulting in four main insights: (1) there are two approaches to recognition justice; (2) actors can be (mis)recognised in multiple ways; (3) two different yet complementary methods for identifying instances of misrecognition can be distinguished; and (4) recognition justice cannot be reduced to other tenets of justice. These findings cumulate in a revisited definition of recognition justice as concerned with the adequate recognition of all actors through love, law, and status order. This definition structures the large variety of understandings in the scholarship, and it has the potential to provide a more fine-grained explanation of energy controversies, which advances the ultimate aim of making energy systems and policies more just.@en

Since the introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in Belgium in 2013, expectant parents have had access to a new efficient and reliable test for genetic abnormalities, including trisomy 13, 18 and 21. In 2017, the Belgian government decided to cover over 95% of the cost for all women who choose to take this test. In this context, a diagnosis of trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) presents an especially challenging decision for parents: it is impossible to tell the severity of impairment prenatally, and although several medical risks are involved in the condition, many individuals with Down syndrome live a long, happy, and relatively independent life (Shakespeare, 1998; Scott et. al., 2014). Expectant parents face a very difficult situation: how to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy? It appears that termination is becoming the routinized outcome of the clinical encounter during which a diagnosis is delivered.

The intricacy of the matter, and the fact that many actors are involved, lead to the necessity of a transdisciplinary methodology when scrutinizing the future of prenatal counseling. However, medical professionals tend to approach Down syndrome from an exclusively medical perspective (Skirton and Barr, 2010), leaving aside the economic, social and psychological dimensions of living with Down syndrome. This may result in unbalanced information; some (perhaps precipitously) refer to this phenomenon as ‘nudging practices’ (Hippman et. al., 2012; Reid et. al., 2009). In order to address this imbalance, we adopt a stakeholder approach in this project: we consulted experts with diverse backgrounds and fields of expertise. Through this transdisciplinary approach, we hope to bring about a more transdisciplinary perspective directly within the offices of gynecologists and GPs. More specifically, we aim to find ways to provide GPs and gynecologists with direct access to information about the aforementioned dimensions of Down syndrome.

The next step is to define a strategy to achieve this goal. Given the fact that medical professionals often lack both time and easy access to concise information about Down syndrome to present a nuanced perspective (Ahmed et. al., 2007), but are still the first in the prenatal screening process, the output of this project is the idea of an online tool in a succinct Q&A format. The goal of such a website would be to provide up-to-date, easily accessible and balanced information for general practitioners and gynecologists on multiple aspects of Down syndrome. This way, in anticipation of and directing explicitly towards further counseling by a multidisciplinary team, physicians can provide expectant parents with a more balanced, transdisciplinary view of Down syndrome, thereby enhancing their capability to make informed, autonomous and hence sustainable decisions about their pregnancies. @en