A new chair for a fair energy transition

Energy Justice & the Social Contract : a new chair for a fair energy transitionOfficial launch on the Pau Campus

19 Jun 2023

Launched in February 2023 for five years, the Energy Justice and the Social Contract (EJ&SC) Chair, with a budget of €3.1M including €1.7M funded by the Nouvelle Aquitaine Region as part of its "Chaires pour l'Emergence, la Science et la Société (CHESS)" scheme, and €530.9k by the CNRS. It is supported by the Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour for UMR TREE and co-directed by Raphael Heffron and Louis de Fontenelle.

Official launch of the EJ&SC Chair on June 19, 2023 in Pau

The EJ&SC Chair will be officially launched on June 19, 2023 at UPPA's premises in Pau, during the first day of the World Energy Justice Congress 2023. This event, which is intended to become an annual event, will continue from June 20 to 23 in Anglet, and will welcome policy-makers, practitioners and academics who will present the work they are carrying out around the world, on the theme chosen for 2023: "Justice as a driver for a common energy future".

Téléchargez le programme du "World Energy Justice Congress (WEJC)"
Les inscriptions se font sur le site du colloque.

A new chair for a fair energy transition

The research work of Raphael Heffron, Professor of Energy Law at UPPA since April 2022, focuses on the implementation of a just transition to a low-carbon economy. He is the author of over 200 publications of various kinds, and the world's most cited academic in his field (3000+ Scopus). His work has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Persian, Turkish, Spanish and Italian. He has also given over 190 lectures in 54 countries.

Louis de Fontenelle, a senior lecturer in public law at UMR TREE, devotes his research to questions of law, regulation and justice relating to energy and environmental transitions, natural resources and sustainable mobility. In this context, he leads a number of national and international interdisciplinary research projects. He is the holder of the E2S UPPA MOVE partnership chair, co-director of the HUB 2ES UPPA ENSUITE and a member of the executive committee of the European Federation of Energy Law Associations. In 2022, he was appointed an academic member of the prestigious Section Environnement, Energie, Infrastructures (SEERIL) of the International Bar Association.

Research on an international scale

As a systemic and committed research project, the EJ&SC Chair develops innovative interdisciplinary approaches and aims to grasp integrated, multi-scalar and moving issues, in order to bring about the transformations called for by the energy transition. The aim of the research carried out is to develop, with all stakeholders, a new social contract in the energy sector, based on better integration of justice issues in the principles and guiding mechanisms of energy policies and regulations, at local, national and international levels.

The EJ&SC Chair is based on the establishment of an international center of excellence in energy justice research, and is supported by an international scientific committee. Comprising six members with expertise in sustainability, energy and climate law, the scientific committee brings to the project insights from four of the five continents on which its members are conducting their own research in relation to energy justice.

Finally, an international visiting scholars program, designed to offer researchers from all over the world the opportunity to collaborate with the EJ&SC Chair team, aims to foster the creation of partnerships, raise the EJ&SC Chair's profile within the international community, and enrich the research experience of its doctoral and post-doctoral students by giving them the opportunity to rub shoulders with leading professors and experts. In the spring of 2023, the EJ&SC Chair welcomed three researchers of international stature.

Committed research with promising initial results

Since the launch of the EJ&SC Chair in February 2023, two theses have been initiated, one dedicated to the study of the impact of energy justice on commercial law (Halima Hussein), the other to that of the interconnected relationship between energy justice and human rights (Chioma Basil). Two years of post-doctoral research were also launched, devoted respectively to the integration of energy justice and social contract in the life-cycle analysis of an energy transition project based on Aquitaine projects (Elizabeth Stephani), and to the analysis of legal and contractual practices between energy project operators and stakeholders aimed at fostering social acceptability (Mohammad Hazrati).

The EJ&SC Chair has also contributed to a number of international symposia and conferences, in Germany, Qatar, France, Portugal and Senegal, and has co-organized two international symposia in Scotland and Poland, with a third being prepared in the USA for September 2023. The Chair's work has given rise to several publications, including two in Energy and Natural Resources Law, one of the world's top-ranked journals on the subject.

The EJ&SC Chair is supported by two related projects that are currently being rolled out: the European and International Energy Law Platform, founded by UPPA, which coordinates it, the Maison Française d'Oxford and Université Paris Dauphine - PSL, in partnership with the European Federation of Energy Law (EFELA), and the Observatoire de la Justice Energétique.

The Research Platform will be a genuine tool for disseminating the results of the work carried out by its members, including those of the EJ&SC Chair, to European institutions, through technical notes, policy briefs and the organization of training sessions for decision-makers. Three priority areas have been identified: energy, the subsoil and the decarbonization of the economy, which will be the focus of research projects involving the founding members and associate members joining the Platform.

The Energy Justice Observatory (Observatoire de la Justice Energétique), a UMR TREE tool, will collect and produce data on energy injustices, first at French level, then at European level, which will feed into the scientific reflections of the EJ&SC Chair by mapping and making visible areas where there are proven and serious infringements of rights and freedoms relating to the energy sphere.

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Heffron, R. J. and De Fontenelle, L. 2023. Implementing Energy Justice through a New Social Contract . Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law, 41 (2), 141-155).

Heffron R. J., Fontenelle (de) L., Basil C., Del Guayo Castiella I., Droubi S., Hazrati M., Hussein I H., Kraal D., McCauley D., Phillips A., Santoire E., and Arnauld de Sartre X, 2023. Pathways of scholarship for energy justice and the social contract . Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law, 41 (2), 211-232).