Energy justice and construction of community with a shared future for mankind

Abstract

The Western approaches on energy justice mostly link energy access to basic need and rights of individuals. These approaches are mainly based on the rights-justice theory of traditional political philosophy. Though Sovacool et al. (Applied Energy 142: 437, 2015) introduce the dimension of moral philosophy and ethical responsibility into the study of energy justice, their standpoint remains individual freedom, equality, and responsibility. However, energy issues are not only a matter of individual rights and responsibilities, nor are they only problems of the distribution and commitment of the accessibility and environmental consequences of energy consumption. From the very beginning, energy issues involve the issue of inter-subject relationships, involving both the responsibility of individuals and of collective subjects. Therefore, it is necessary to jump out of the traditional mode of thinking of individual rights theory and individual responsibility. Based on the traditional Chinese philosophical ethical resources, mainly the Confucian thoughts on hexie (harmony) and yi (just), the "Tianxia" (world) view, and the reflections from the tradition of community both from the West and East, this article links energy justice to the construction of community with a shared future for mankind and puts forward that the foundation of energy justice lies in how to construct the relationship between the subjects (both individual and collective) of justice in the community with a shared future for mankind. Through cases of Yulin and global carbon emissions about energy justice, we propose a holistic perspective on energy justice inspired by the idea of the community with a shared future for mankind, and then point out that we should deal with the four major relations involved in the complete process of energy acquisition, distribution, utilization, and post-processing, in order to build a just energy system. Finally, we propose three possible strategies to deal with issues of energy justice, that is, specific strategy, real-time strategy, and holistic strategy, which may shed some light on the global issues of energy justice.