Beyond energy justice: Ethics of care as a new approach in the energy system

Social science research has raised questions of energy justice, including issues pertaining to affordable energy, the right to be involved in decisions and the negative impacts of energy production. However, the justice perspective involves problems in balancing human needs and planetary boundaries, including understanding human needs as sociotechnical constructions. From a feminist perspective, the ethics of care was proposed decades ago and has since then been reformulated and expanded from primarily including the care for humans to also include care for nature, other species, and even technologies. Unlike the concept of justice, ethics of care are context-based and relational. This paper will compare and discuss the ethics of care versus justice in relation to a future energy system that is expected to be renewable and built on smart technologies to control and align energy production and consumption.