Social Science for a Just Transition

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

As many climate scholars will recognize, there is a tremendous emphasis on academics making impact with their work and engage with a wide range of stakeholders. As social scientists, this is not unfamiliar ground. Indeed, some scholars have even written about a common refrain that now comes from government and private sector actors: “we need social scientists” (Scoville, 2017, p. 472). But what is it that social scientists have to offer? In particular, what can social scientists contribute to a just energy transition?

In recent years, we have found ourselves in, for lack of a better word, discussion spaces that resemble some simultaneous amalgamation of faculty meeting, graduate seminar, and planning session in which, at least rhetorically, this call for social science is outwardly projected. As scholars concerned with the just transition, we have been especially keen to participate in any discourse about renewable energies that we can by sharing our research and our imaginations. Energy transitions are not just technical. They are also social. Thus, it has been a welcome change that the involvement of social scientists in public forums and community-based research projects seems to be now a rather common feature of academic practice across those working on sustainability and just transition questions (Cha, 2024; Cha et al., 2021; Golding, 2021).

And so, in November 2023, we attended a meeting in Washington State focused on coastal and offshore wind in the American Northwest. We met with energy sector advocates from regional nonprofits, researchers from public universities, and graduate students from a range of disciplines. As a part of these meetings, one collaborator organized a session that resembled a visioning exercise, although no one called it that at the time. The premise was simple. We were asked a two-part question: (1) Are we supportive of expanded offshore wind capabilities, and (2) if offshore wind is going to exist in the United States, and in the American Northwest specifically, what do we think that should look like? As we went around the table, the mix of scholars and practitioners that were present described wind projects that were small in scale. They advocated for projects that would bring stable power to remote communities and for local projects that would provide power to the immediately surrounding communities. Without using the language directly, over the course of several hours, the participants in this visioning activity articulated a desire for more democratic energy systems that would prioritize local input, production, and impact (social, economic, even health benefits). Across these themes and with this emphasis, the discussion reminded us of some of the recent work of scholars whose work was in other parts of the world and the country (Franquesa, 2018; Golding, 2021).

What is notable, though, is that a democratic and socioecologically conscious transition is not usually what is being offered by energy companies, who on the west coast propose miles of underwater energy cables and floating turbines that are likely to exceed 300 feet (Baumhardt, 2024; Stang, 2024). However, when it was pointed out that the democratic vision described above departed from the likely coming reality, one member of the group became outraged, and despite the fact that the group had previously expressed support—in the abstract—for small-scale, community-driven projects, they began to indicate that they felt generally satisfied with the ongoing level of public–private cooperation occurring, for example, in the Pacific Northwest’s offshore renewable energy expansion plans. The outraged member of the group, at this point, accused academics of being “unrealistic” and “out of touch.” Another participant, in a kinder tone, added that energy needs are only going to grow and that the energy transition will require immense levels of capital investment. Mega-projects, then, were the best available option. This exchange highlighted a striking disconnect between how people envision the ideal future and the future they are willing to accept given the current reality/context.

We understand the basis for the pro-big wind positions expressed above, and indeed, our experience at these sessions has highlighted important tensions in energy transitions. Renewable energy is now widely lauded as having tremendous potential for decoupling societies from fossil fuel dependence (Vadén et al., 2020), and what is more, there is strong public support for expanded wind and solar capabilities in the United States (Tyson and Kennedy, 2024). However, the more time we spend navigating academic fields interested in impact, the more we become aware of the contradiction and tension that exist in the pursuit of just energy transitions. Indeed, there is a strange narrowing of the field of visions that are laid before us time and again. The problem, at least in our reading, is that investment in renewable energies does not necessarily promise a transition away from fossil fuels, nor does it promise that the adoption of renewable energies will be just or equitable (Bell et al., 2020; McGowan and Antadze, 2023). In the U.S. context, even as record amounts of renewable energy are being produced (Storrow, 2024), it can also be observed that the off-lining of coal and natural gas facilities is slow (EIA, 2024), and in recent years, under both Presidents Donald Trump (2017–2021) and Joe Biden (2021–2025), the U.S. production of oil and natural gas hit record highs (Thomas, 2024). And well, as we write this just months into Trump’s chaotic second term, we realize we have yet to talk with anyone who systematically considers these policies in consideration of political regime changes and priorities.

As proponents of a just transition, we worry that uncritical acquiescence to corporate energy giants, such as Duke Energy and Avangrid in the United States, will serve to exacerbate long-standing inequities (Sovacool et al., 2023). The long-standing connection between capitalism and inequity implies that the two cannot be disentangled; the production of nature in capitalism is inherently and necessarily uneven and inequitable (Cohen, 2019; Go, 2021; Smith, 2008). Many other scholars have since argued that capitalist and colonial legacies have implications for the future. McGregor et al. (2020) argue that if we ignore historical and ongoing processes of colonialism, solutions will not be just for Indigenous people and thus not just solutions at all. Rice et al. (2022) go further to argue that in an age of climate crisis, we run the risk of creating a “climate apartheid” if we fail to confront colonialism, racial capitalism, and hetero-patriarchy in our response to climate change (p. 626) (Sultana, 2022). Thus, in this essay, we consider the implications of an American renewable energy transition and ask how we might begin to work toward a just transition. Following Ingold’s (2024) recent interventions in climate policy, this article is an attempt at critical imagination. While it remains important to us to work collaboratively in the real world, social scientists, especially those granted a large degree of autonomy by the nature of their university positions, are not bound by the realistic, and in turn are uniquely positioned to agitate for transformative and just visions of the future. Put differently, we argue that with grounding in Critical Theory, social scientists can valuably contribute to the movement for a just transition by emphasizing the need for systemic change through immediate, incremental, and context-specific implementation. More than anything, if there is something society needs, it is to begin thinking in ways that seem unrealistic (Ingold, 2024; Stuart et al., 2023), because what is sure is that the recent history of being realistic continues to deliver punishing, inequitable, and unjust world-ecology and societies (Moore, 2015).

What Is the Just Transition?

The just transition is not a new idea, but it is now seemingly omnipresent in environmental policy discussions. The phrase dates back to at least the 1970s, when Tony Mazzocchi, a trade union leader with the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, proposed financial support and education opportunities for workers who would be displaced by the elimination or automation of jobs associated with environmental hazards (Foster, 2019; Stevis et al., 2020). Since then, and especially in recent years, the idea of a just transition has been adopted by a range of actors and has moved beyond labor efforts to reflect “a growing awareness of and concern about deepening inequalities between the world’s rich and poor, and how the climate and environmental crises, and efforts to address them, are accentuating them” (Stevis et al., 2020, p. 4). In a review of the just transition literature, Wang and Lo (2021) show that just transition has taken on a variety of meanings, now associated not only with organized labor, but also conceptions of social justice, theories of sociotechnical transition, governance strategies, and as a tool for understanding public attitudes toward energy transitions and land use practices (O’Neill, 2024; Vachon, 2023).

One of the more common uses of the just transition framework is by those advocating for a transition away from regional dependence on coal extraction. As environmental legislation and the fossil fuel economy change and threaten the jobs of workers in the coal industry, scholars have begun to examine how unions and governments can (or should) manage the displacement of this workforce. For example, through a comparative case study of Germany’s IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie (IG BCE) mining guild and the United Mine Workers of America in the U.S., Judson Abraham (2017) argues that democratic, militant, and environmentally minded organizations, such as IB BCE, are well positioned to achieve support for the transition from workers. In contrast, unions without a recent history of militancy and strong democratic governance lack the ability to effectively advocate for transition support. In other words, they are now basically apolitical as a result of historical and social structural tendencies (Reddy, 2022). What is more, as sociologists have shown, unions, especially in the United States, have been decimated by years of neoliberal antilabor policies such as the right to work measures (Devinatz, 2015; Wilmers, 2017) (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.

March 6, 2020—Wilmington, CA. Critical social science for a just renewable energy transition. On the scene at the second Fire Drill Friday, organized by, among others, actress and activist Jane Fonda, actors, academics, activists, labor unions, and community members gathered to bring awareness to the need for a just transition. But, amid the collective effervescence, the scene was replete with numerous notions and platforms, from promoting veganism and wind turbines, to concrete concerns about good-paying jobs and local health threats from oil and gas production along the California coast, all the way to eco-fascist birth policy rhetoric. The just transition has a transformative potential, but it still means many things to many people. (Author's personal collection).

Against this backdrop, examining the case of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the largest coal mining region in the United States, Cha (2020) argues it is imperative that governments manage the decline of the coal industry to prevent the economic distress that comes with sudden closures of coal mines. Dunlap and Marin (2022) have taken an especially critical look at the coal-renewables nexus, stating the issue bluntly, that policymakers and climate adaptation scholarship are too often “overlooking complexity, flattening reality, and ignoring capitalism” (p. 1). This complexity, at least in part, emerges from the specificity of context. Local history and power structures and relations shape how groups of people experience transitions. There is also the spatial complexity of capitalism, including how local places and their dynamics and relations of capitalism tie them to other places (Healy et al., 2019; Smith, 2008). Furthermore, within communities in transition, it is important to ask who is benefiting (and who is not) and how existing inequities might be reinforced or undermined (Fusco et al., 2024; Kuersteiner and Ordal, 2023). A critique of the flat ontology of adaptation and so-called sustainability science is indeed welcome (Kirchherr, 2023), and such an approach points to the need for rigorous analyses and studies that take the unevenness and dispossessions embedded within contemporary transition logic and plans seriously (Fig. 2).

Figure 2.

June 19, 2015—Inside the offices of the Center for Coalfield Justice, located in Washington, Pennsylvania. Western Pennsylvania was on the frontlines of early energy transition debates as the seemingly stable, if at times oppressive and life-threatening, occupations in coal were threatened by the itinerant and often unorganized labor of the natural gas boom. The Center’s motto is “organizing, educating, and empowering,” and has been a voice in the region for a just transition, where it advocates that new work roles need to be defined and the communities who have suffered historically from industry-led dispossession must be heard. (Author's personal collection).

In the context of a move toward low-carbon energy production, what does this entail? Following Cha (2020, 2024), it would mean accounting for the negative economic and social impacts created by this yet to be realized transition. Accounting for the displacement of workers currently in the fossil fuel industry is a central concern for a just transition for good reason. However, “transition,” especially when considered a part of a larger social project, not just a technological one (Stuart et al., 2023), also raises questions about social, racial, and environmental justice (Cha, 2020; O’Neill et al., 2025; Santos Ayllón and Jenkins, 2023; Sovacool et al., 2017). As Wilson (2022) notes, decarbonization efforts are “failed solutions” because they “do not address the root cause of climate change: an extractivist worldview that informs all our relationships from the most intimate, quotidian interactions, to the faceless networks of global finance and power.” (p. 30). Thus, taking the unevenness and dispossessions embedded within contemporary transition logic and plans seriously requires examining particular social and power relations in locations of development, all along the supply chain, and even sometimes beyond (for instance, when it comes to climate change impacts). It also requires community planners and policy makers draw on intersectional analysis to understand how these power relations shape the experiences of diverse populations of people, including workers and community members at the local and global scales (Dunlap, 2021; Fusco et al., 2022; Healy et al., 2019; McGowan and Antadze, 2023; Smith, 2008; Wilson, 2022).

Thus, as renewable energy industries expand in the United States, one can easily find it reassuring to see governments, companies, and communities engaging with ideas that would, at least in principle, create union-protected employment opportunities for displaced workers and historically marginalized people and communities. Framed in this way, renewable energy industries and policy packages such as the Green New Deal are tools that can help right the social and racial injustices of New Deal and post-War Era programs (Cebul, 2018; Katznelson, 2006; Taylor, 2016), 20th century land use practices (Bullard, 2000; Cole and Foster, 2001), and other public and private projects that excluded or harmed minoritized and low-income communities (Mascarenhas, 2024; Taylor, 2014).

So, for example, as states on the east coast of the United States make plans for offshore wind farms and more solar fields, renewable energy projects are increasingly framed as an opportunity for social and racial justice by politicians, industry officials, and news outlets (Evans-Brown, 2021; McGowan, 2022; Talton, 2022). Former President Joe Biden has often espoused just such a platform:

We must keep—we must lead global response because neither challenge can be met, as Secretary Kerry has pointed out many times, by the United States alone. We know what to do, we’ve just got to do it.

When we think of climate change, we think of it—this is a case where conscious and convenience cross paths, where dealing with this existential threat to the planet and increasing our economic growth and prosperity are one in the same. When I think of climate change, I think of—and the answers to it—I think of jobs.

A key plank of our Build Back Better Recovery Plan is building a modern, resilient climate infrastructure and clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying union jobs—not 7, 8, 10, 12 dollars an hour, but prevailing wage and benefits.

You know, we can put millions of Americans to work modernizing our water systems, transportation, our energy infrastructure to withstand the impacts of extreme climate. We’ve already reached a point where we’re going to have to live with what it is now. That’s going to require a lot of work all by itself, without it getting any worse.

When we think of renewable energy, we see American manufacturing, American workers racing to lead the global market. We see farmers making American agriculture first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions and gaining new sources of income in the process” (White House, 2021).

This argument, one often used by supporters of wind, suggests that by locating facilities and high-paying union jobs in economically depressed regions and segregated towns and cities, the emerging wind industry represents not only an opportunity to secure a low-carbon future, nor is it only an opportunity to restore America’s manufacturing economy. It is a chance to secure and distribute the economic benefits of industrial investment more equitably. While this may be true in some respects, more equitable distribution among the population is not a given. As Sovacool et al. (2021) state, “The path towards decarbonizations can bring social net benefits, but it can also enhance vulnerabilities” (p. 2). Thus, just transitions will take work and planning to ensure that benefits and burdens of renewable energy industries are equitably distributed (Kuersteiner and Ordal, 2023).

Contradictions of the Just Transition

It is important to critically evaluate the promises of the supposedly just renewable energy transition. Perhaps most obviously, it is worth questioning whether the transition to renewable energies actually represents a move away from fossil fuels (York and Bell, 2019; York and McGee, 2017). One could even argue that the current energy transition’s green and socially just reputation is the result of a successful green washing campaign (O’Neill and Schneider, 2022; Schroeder, 2015; Williams, 2024). Despite this green branding, evidence of an energy boomerang effect is compelling. The energy boomerang suggests that in a market-based energy system, increased investment in renewable energy development works against sustainable outcomes. As renewable energy technologies expand, downward pressure is exerted on energy prices, which in turn drives increased demand. Increased demand thus spurs additional investment in greater energy production, effectively preventing the transition away from the original fossil fuel energy production methods in market contexts (Zehner, 2012). As Zehner (2012) argues,

In the existing American context, increasing alternative energy production will not displace fossil-fuel side effects but will instead simply add more side effects to the mix … instead of a world with just the dreadful side effects of fossil fuels, we will enter into a future world with the dreadful side effects of fossil fuel plus the dreadful side effects of alternative-energy technologies—hardly a durable formula for community or environmental prosperity (p. 172).

Indeed, with more literature weighing probabilities and measuring the possibility for a transition, one wonders if the climate scientists and transition scholars themselves even believe it is possible, hence the ever-present rhetoric of trade-offs developed by governance scholars (Goforth et al., 2024; Newell et al., 2022). An energy transition in the context of an economic model that prioritizes growth cannot be a just transition, or perhaps not even a transition (Gunderson et al., 2018). This has led scholars, instead, to discuss the adoption of renewable energies as energy additions (York and Bell, 2019). Likewise, in such a system, profit motivations exist in the supply chain, and equipment producers, for example, will likely be incentivized to boost sales by planning obsolescence at the expense of the environment (Hickel, 2020). Absent more radical changes to our economic and energy systems, this points to the fact that renewable energy projects must be situated within a larger plan to transition justly—a larger plan that accounts for energy sources, their use, and the implications of these projects all along the energy supply chains forward and backward in time and on diverse populations within and outside of the industry.

And indeed, renewable energies are not, as they are sometimes called, “a free gift” with little to no environmental consequences (Moore, 2015; Skene, 2021; Thygesen, 2019). For one thing, the production of renewable energy requires the mining of precious minerals, such as cobalt, zinc, and lithium, the smelting of steel, the fabrication of solar panels, the shipping of materials around the world, and disposal of degraded materials (Dunlap, 2021; Zehner, 2012). Lithium, for example, is needed in large quantities to create batteries for energy storage, the largest harvestable source of which lies in South America’s lithium triangle in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. The process of lithium mining is environmentally disruptive and a source of conflict between local Indigenous communities and companies invested in the mineral’s extraction (Babidge and Bolados, 2018; Jerez et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2019; Voskoboynik and Andreucci, 2022). Terming this a process of renewable extraction, Hernandez and Newell (2023) argue that “What this points to instead is the importance of poverty and inequality and in many contexts their close relationship to class, race and gender as determinants of who are the likely beneficiaries of the new wave of extractivism and who is most likely to inhabit the sacrifice zones that resource it” (p. 249) (Voskoboynik and Andreucci, 2022). All of this, and renewable energies, are not even carbon free. As Dunlap (2021) argues, it would, at best, be more honest to term renewables as fossil fuel+ technologies, as the production of steel and the extraction and transportation of minerals around the world are carbon-intensive processes. In fact, it has been observed that by adopting various forms of renewable energy technologies, privileged communities and states in the Global North have exported their emissions to other parts of the world (Fusco et al., 2022; Purifoy, 2020; Sovacool et al., 2017; Stokes et al., 2023) (Fig. 3).

Figure 3.

January 12, 2020—The Salton Sea—The United States’ latest fascination when it comes to lithium production. The Salton Sea has long been the subject of ecological transformation, being a lake created in 1905 after an irrigation canal was breached in the Imperial Valley of California. It has since gone through phases of tourism booms and most recently ecological catastrophe as a result of declining lake levels, leaving debris, salt, and particulate matter to pollute the area (Jones and Fleck, 2020). (Author's personal collection).

Thus, the development of renewable energy technologies could represent the next chapter in capitalist extractivism and reproduce or widen existing classed, gendered, and racialized social inequities (Kojola and Agyeman, 2021). And while it seems strange that this needs to be said, this is opposite the stated goal of just transition proponents. It has been well documented through works such as Jason Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life (2015) and through treadmill of production frameworks (Gould et al., 1996, 2016) that capitalist expansion is dependent upon environmental degradation, and this is happening unevenly the world over (Smith, 2008). In addition, as has been observed by Jaume Franquesa (2018), for example, the implementation of wind energy projects in Southern Catalonia has followed a series of decades long energy investments. In each case, whether dams, oil refineries, nuclear reactors, or wind turbines,

…every new energy project has been justified by presenting the region, its inhabitants, and their practices as waste: recessive agriculture, lagging development, absence of profit-making, etc. Each new round of energy investment has been presented by the state and the energy sector as an opportunity to redeem the area from its ‘underdevelopment,’ perceived in comparison to other regions of Spain and Europe (p. 14).

Taking the long view of development thus raises questions about the supposed justice of the transition, suggesting instead that under the contemporary capitalist status quo, the implementation or renewable energy technologies is likely to be dependent upon the ability to identify the next extractable commodity (Moore, 2015) and the maintenance of long-standing inequalities (Cohen, 2019; Fusco et al., 2022; Kojola and Agyeman, 2021; Rice et al., 2022).

Under the current, greenwashed market framing, these processes of extraction, environmental degradation, and marginalization are invisiblized. Investment in renewable energy, which will bring us clean air and good jobs, is the unquestionably right thing to do (Vachon, 2023). At least for the moment, there is no space for critique because, following this logic, critique is not needed. However, this self-evident and overly rational presentation of renewable energies as a climate mitigation strategy only rings true if there is no alternative to capitalist expansion and accumulation (Stuart et al., 2023). While it is not our opinion that renewable energy technologies have no place in a more sustainable future, blind belief in technological advancement alone is, at best, incredibly risky. At worst, such an approach justifies continued environmental degradation and resource extraction by, and to the benefit of, political and economic elites (Schneider & O’Neill, 2024; Stuart et al., 2023).

What Can We Do? Reimagining the Renewable Energy Transition

When viewed through this critical lens, two obvious questions present themselves. First, given these drawbacks, why is there so much excitement around renewable energy? Undoubtedly, green washing and techno-optimistic modes of thinking are at play (Alexander and Gleeson, 2019; O’Neill and Schneider, 2021; Voskoboynik and Andreucci, 2022; Williams, 2024). But it is also true that the climate crisis is pressing, and the temptation to take what appears to be the least worst available option is strong (Surprise, 2020). And again, it is our opinion that renewable energy technologies, if implemented thoughtfully or as a part of a larger plan that meaningfully centers equity and justice, could play a meaningful role in decarbonization of the planet (Stuart et al., 2023).

The second obvious question arises: how can we ensure that the renewable energy transition is a just transition? To be sure, this is a large question, and all possible answers cannot be explored in the space of this essay. And yet, this is the phrasing that we have most frequently encountered when we share our work with students, practitioners, and community members. In recent years, a common answer to this question has been to strike community benefit agreements (CBAs) between the hosting communities, the local or regional governments, and the private developers. For offshore wind projects, CBAs are, in fact, advocated for by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Bedsworth and Hoff, 2024). These agreements vary, but generally speaking, benefits promised to the host community might include financial incentives, infrastructure investment/improvement, and/or community empowerment measures, such as input in decision-making processes (Glasson, 2017). These agreements are not without risk. For example, as renewable energy projects grow in scale, CBA or no, the potential for ecological disruption grows, as do concerns about distributional justice (Glasson, 2017; Schneider & O’Neill, 2025). In addition, the financial incentives and economic impacts, such as job creation, promised by the industry also pose certain risks. If renewable energy industries do, in fact, represent the next chapter of capitalist extraction, we are likely to see relationships between industry, host communities, and labor that imitate what we have seen with other energy industries in the past. If placed in social historical context, however, these measures still leave us with some hesitation. Entering into CBAs without attending to larger structural concerns could still lead to communities that are dependent on the industry to supply jobs as we have seen in carbon-rich regions such as Arizona, USA, and Labrador, CA (Curley, 2023; House, 1981). Likewise, we might still expect the jobs created to be held by the same populations that have traditionally held such manufacturing jobs, specifically White men (Fusco et al., 2024; Kuersteiner and Ordal, 2023). Alternatively, the jobs created by such projects could quite easily go to transient employees (rather than locals) rotating around the country as is often seen in the natural gas industry (Paredes et al., 2015) (Fig. 4).

Figure 4.

Advertisement for BOEM (dated September 2, 2022). BOEM does not shy away from its promotion of wind energy and the discourse of American jobs that presumably come with offshore energy production. Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 (BOEM-OPA., 2022).

Undoubtedly, if used intentionally with a focus on equity, CBAs can benefit the local communities in tangible ways, especially compared against communities that have at no such agreements (Bedsworth and Hoff, 2024; Glasson, 2017; Martinez et al., 2023; Trandafir et al., 2023). However, CBAs will do little to combat the inequities built into macro-level processes of capital accumulation, extraction, and energy production, and they do not promise to curb consumer demand (Wang et al., 2022; York and Bell, 2019; York and McGee, 2017; Zehner, 2012). Thus, as a counter measure against corporate extraction and as a way of addressing both procedural and distributional environmental justice concerns, localized and democratic energy systems may prove to be an effective next step (Bell et al., 2020; Golding, 2021; Gunderson et al., 2018). In a system of renewable energy cooperatives (RE co-ops), for example, local communities would jointly own and produce their own power. In so doing, energy co-ops subvert the power relations that typically define the energy sector, a crucial step for achieving a just transition (Bedi, 2022; Cha and Pastor, 2022). The democratic principles that undergird co-ops can help correct the procedural injustices for members of the co-op, a reorientation that may disproportionately benefit minoritized groups and communities that have been historically left out of decision-making processes (Baxter et al., 2020; Schapper and Urban, 2021; Shelton and Eakin, 2022; Walker and Baxter, 2017). Successful RE co-ops are associated with a range of positive economic, social, and psychological outcomes, including public acceptance of sustainability and conservation measures (Tarhan, 2015; Viardot, 2013; Walker and Baxter, 2017). They also counteract distributional injustices, as the burden created by energy production is incurred by the community using the power (Golding, 2021; Gunderson et al., 2018).

Last, but perhaps most importantly, it is imperative that radical conversations about ecosocialist approaches to production and consumption, such as degrowth, be taken more seriously. As has already been noted above, the implementation of renewable energy into our energy grids is unlikely to result in a move away from fossil fuel energy production under our current economic system. Transition to a new economic system that does not center growth may feel impossible, and indeed, it does not come without challenges (Albert, 2023). At the same time, it is also abundantly clear that business-as-usual approaches to renewable energy development are neither sustainable nor equitable. As the planet rapidly warms, radical paths forward are, in fact, the most realistic if the renewable energy transition is to be a just transition that actually combats the climate crisis. Thus, the current moment might represent an opportunity for reinterpretation of the realistic, an opportunity to re-shape out current petro-capitalist economies and all their injustices into more equitable societies that incorporate thoughtfully and democratically planned renewable energy projects (Wilson, 2018). In other words, “A just transition could turn the environmental and climate crisis into an opportunity to address socio-economic problems by restructuring the economy and society to be more equitable and democratic” (Kojola and Agyeman, 2021, p. 115).

However, readers of this Commentary might be left with one last question: in all of this, what is the role of the social scientist who seeks to make impact (Scoville, 2017)? One way to think about the role of social scientists is to think about their research as “an imaginative opening to truth” (Ingold, 2024, p. 13), and indeed, social scientific research has helped formulate and evaluate some of the proposed solution discussions above. As a part of their training, social scientists are often exposed to the tradition of Critical Theory, developed by Marcuse (1991) and other members of the Frankfurt School. In this tradition, the goal of social science is not solely to provide social critique but to leverage such critique toward social change. Because social scientists, and scholars more generally, are not bound by industry ties, they have the benefit and privilege of being unrealistic, which is perhaps why ecosocialist ideas, for example, receive more consideration in the social scientific literature than they do in mainstream media outlets. This could be deeply important work, because stimulating our imaginations creates opportunities for new ways of collectively identifying, acting, and planning (Fuist, 2021). Now is the time to exercise this privilege and exercise our imaginations in the tradition of the Frankfurt School. We maintain that there is great value in creating partnerships with stakeholders, but if social science is to make meaningful impact, it is necessary that social scientists bring something of value to the conversation and not simply echo the least-worst option language touted by industry. It is of pressing importance that scholars help to push beyond the artificially imposed frameworks of understanding imposed upon us in service to the interests of capital (Althusser, 1971; Ingold, 2024; Stuart et al., 2023).

Realistically, such a change will not happen at the snap of one’s fingers, and even if one could manage such a feat, rapid change could be destabilizing. To be sure, scholars do not have all of the answers, nor can all answers be derived from the Western ways of thinking (Álvarez and Coolsaet, 2020). Indeed, as McGregor (2018) argues, Western policy and regulatory approaches to environmental protection have not been working, so “Why, then, should we as a global society/community rely on these laws and regulatory frameworks exclusively?” (p. 280). And yet, we feel that scholars have a role to play as we rapidly seek to forge new pathways without really knowing what lies ahead. As Wilson (2018) puts it, “To mobilize energy transition, therefore, demands the courage to act in the face of multiple unknowns. A transition away from fossil fuels has no template” (p. 379). Thus, this article concludes by advocating that energy scholars follow a path of radical incrementalism set by urbanists such as Pieterse (2008) and Goodling (2024). As Pieterse (2008) writes,

Radical incrementalism is a disposition and sensibility that believes in deliberate actions of social transformation but through a multiplicity of processes and imaginations, none of which assumes or asserts a primary significance over other struggles … it provides a means to confront the struggle and perpetually work one’s way through it, stumbling across what works and what does not (pp. 6–7).

From this perspective, the answer to what can scholars do? is to look at all the above options but to agitate for approaches that disrupt business-as-usual (Venkatesan, 2023). The answers social scientists provide should be context dependent, bottom-up, and radical in their goals. Furthermore, critical social scientific traditions, such as feminist theory, can be drawn on to provide guiding principles, such as commitments to democratic politics, economic systems that put people above profits, building a culture of care, and communal development of new technologies (Bell et al., 2020).

These insights might be most impactful and best resonate with activists and community organizations. It is often appealing to work directly with policy makers, industry officials, and other influential stakeholders. It may seem like this is the most realistic path to change. This course of action, however, comes with the risk of being coopted into the state and industrial apparatus, perhaps resulting in minor concessions but ultimately protecting the status quo (Harrison, 2017; Pellow, 2016; Selznick, 1949). And while the work of scholars should undoubtedly include meetings with practitioners and government offices, working bottom-up should also mean working more closely with rank-and-file community members and activists who demand that historical and ongoing colonial, White supremacist, and patriarchal harms be addressed (McGregor et al., 2020; O’Neill et al., 2025; Ota et al., 2024; Sey and Rothschild, 2023). Through grassroots partnerships, social scientists might productively contribute to a larger collective effort that goes beyond narrow policy prescriptions and addresses ongoing social and ecological harms.

With the recent re-election of Donald Trump, climate experts worry about the future of U.S. climate policy, expanded oil and gas drilling in Alaska, and investment in renewables (Chu, 2024; McGrath, 2024). Already, through executive action, Trump fulfilled a campaign promise to temporarily block the development of offshore wind projects on Day 1 (McDermott, 2025; Parry, 2024). And while an American president who denies the reality of climate change is likely to have catastrophic impacts, it means that now more than ever there is a need to simultaneously and incrementally make policy demands that protect local communities, take local steps to democratize our energy systems, and forcefully advocate for more transparent and less harmful processes of energy production. If nothing else, Trump’s election reminds us of the urgency of the moment, and perhaps even provides us a chance to move beyond the blind belief that the interests of the state and capital will converge to deliver just climate outcomes (Gould et al., 2016; O’Neill et al., 2025; Venkatesan, 2023). Again, now is perhaps a moment to recognize and attempt to move beyond the ideological constraints that have conditioned us to accept the status quo as the only realistic way forward (Fig. 5).

Figure 5.

December 29, 2022—Tucson Arizona. Tucson Electric Power promotes wind turbine technology on the campus of the University of Arizona with a mechanical diorama where kids can turn a wheel on the outside of a glass enclosure to then make the turbines move. On the outside signage of the exhibit structure, the company notes they aim to promote “clean energy” for “a sustainable future.” (Author's personal collection).

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors extend their deep gratitude to Dr. Yoshitaka Ota and Dr. Christopher S. Elliott for their feedback on this project.

Author Disclosure Statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding Information

This project was supported by the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center.

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