Arguments for a just transition are integral to debates about climate change and the drive to create a carbon-neutral economy. There are currently two broad approaches rooted in ethics and justice for framing just energy transitions. The first can be described as internal to the transition and emphasizes the anticipation, assessment, and redressing of harms created by the transition itself and the inclusion in transition governance of groups or communities potentially harmed by its disruptions. In this article, we propose a second approach to ethics and justice in an energy transition, which we describe as systemic or societal in scope. This approach complements attention to the proximate dynamics and impacts of the transition process with a focus on the distant societal and economic outcomes the transition brings into being and how they compare to conditions prior to the transition. It poses the question: do the transformative social, economic, and technological changes wrought by energy systems create more just societies and economies, or do they instead reinforce or recreate long-standing injustices and inequalities? We illustrate this approach with an assessment of one of the most significant existing forms of energy injustice: the energy-poverty nexus. We argue that the energy-poverty nexus reflects configurations of socio-energy systems that create complex, extractive feedbacks between energy insecurity and economic insecurity and, over time, reinforce or exacerbate poverty. We further argue that just energy transitions should work to disentangle these configurations and re-design them so as to create generative rather than extractive feedbacks, thus ending the energy-poverty nexus and creating long-term outcomes that are more just, equitable, and fair.

A central challenge for energy policy is to simultaneously accelerate the transition to carbon neutrality to tackle climate change while also addressing diverse forms of energy inequality and injustice. In this article, we argue that the public imagination is central to efforts to successfully confront this dual challenge. Specifically, we argue that theories of sociotechnical imaginaries have the potential to be leveraged both to strengthen public support for and engagement in carbon-neutral energy transitions and to identify and catalyze integrated sociotechnical designs and solutions that deliver on both accelerated technological change and just, equitable, and inclusive transitions. To explore these ideas, we present an in-depth case study of an emergent sociotechnical imaginary surrounding solar energy technologies in Puerto Rico. The results of our case study suggest that new imaginaries have the potential both to create powerful public support for renewable energy technologies that can accelerate energy systems change and, at the same time, help illuminate strategies for deploying energy technologies in ways that create meaningful impact and value in people's lives in diverse communities and thus contribute to making energy transitions more just and inclusive.