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Short abstract

This contribution shows the role of infrastructural agency in producing (in)justice of energy initiatives in the municipality of Arnhem. Based on analyses of three material arrangements, we argue that embedding ethics requires attending to how infrastructure participates in shaping (in)justice.

Long abstract

This paper argues that justice considerations cannot be separated from the sociotechnical systems within which they emerge. Drawing on actor-network theory (ANT), we conceptualise justice not as an external framework applied to technological development but as something that is produced by infrastructures, institutional arrangements, and the interactions between these. We develop this argument through the empirical study of energy infrastructure initiatives in the Dutch municipality of Arnhem related to electricity grid congestion, energy infrastructure investment, and roll-out of district heating grids. Our analysis of these initiative illustrates how different actors are able – or unable – to “speak out” about the desirability of these initiatives within the sociotechnical arrangements that shape local energy transitions.

This study illustrates that in the current discourse on energy justice the agency of technical systems is disregarded. The technological qualities of the system are seen as passive non-negotiables, while we observe that these qualities impose roles, responsibilities, restrictions, and inequalities upon those enrolled in the actor network. By foregrounding the agency of infrastructural systems, we highlight how ethical and justice-related outcomes are configured through sociotechnical arrangements. Approaches seeking to embed ethics in energy transitions must therefore move beyond treating ethical considerations as external evaluative criteria and instead attend to how infrastructures participate in shaping possibilities for just transitions.