About the Publication
03/09/2025
The will to decarbonize: Problematizing European just transition governance
Summary
Responding to a mounting sense of climate urgency, the European Commission proposed a comprehensive reform program to make the EU’s economy climate neutral by 2050. This article by Eva Lövbrand, Cecilia Enberg, Veronica Brodén Gyberg at Linköping University, trace the practical work undertaken to ensure that Europe’s green transition is just and leaves no one behind. To that end, we turn to the Just Transition Platform, an online portal coordinated by the European Commission.
The article is published by the scientific journals Environmental Policy and Governance and
Climate neutrality in Europe
Is Europe ready for the deep decarbonization required to reach climate neutrality by 2050? Just transitions is a term advanced by scholars and policymakers to bolster the socio-economic effects of decarbonization policies and hereby counter the risks of a green backlash. By analysing the many guidelines, checklists, and event reports produced by the Just Transition Platform, we trace the problem objects towards which the EU’s just transition efforts are directed, what practical techniques are deployed to act upon them in order to transform them, and ultimately, how they define what it means to be a modern and green European.
Key messages
- In these unsettling times, it may be comforting to think of European transition governance as a practical activity linked to questions and sites so trivial and routine that they often fall beyond the scope of political analysis. Under a settled and well-established regime of government, suggests Walters (2002), many of the document tools studied in this paper (e.g., guidelines, reporting templates, charts, tables) are taken for granted.
- However, in the European green transition these mundane features of rule are still under construction.
Conclusion
Attending to the problem formulations inscribed in the many documents produced and circulated by the JTP does not help us to predict how the European race to climate neutrality will end. Neither does it feed into the scholarly search for a just transition vocabulary that can balance the multiple justice implications of the transition to a post-carbon society (McCauley and Heffron 2018). However, it allows us to think differently about where and how power is exercised in Europe’s green transition, and to see the multitude of interconnected sites and practices that make just transitions possible in the first place.
Citation and funder
Lövbrand, E., C. Enberg, and V. B. Gyberg. (2025). The Will to Decarbonize: Problematizing European Just Transition Governance. Environmental Policy and Governance 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.70019.
This publication is a deliverable of the Mistra Geopolitics programme Phase II, decarbonization theme. The programme is funded by Mistra, the Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research.
Authors of this publication
