We contribute to the scientific debate by studying the storylines, discourses and related normative judgments in parliamentary motions by private members of the Swedish parliament from the time period 2010–2019. The paper makes use of an ecofeminist theoretical framework to problematize these storylines, discourses and normative judgments. We conclude that the focus in the material is on economic and technical issues, while issues of justice play a marginal role. None of the important dimensions of energy justice are adequately considered and many of the dominant storylines and discourses are based on the implicit assumption that issues of justice are insignificant.

To accomplish a just transition, energy scenarios is a helpful tool. Participatory and deliberative methods are increasingly used when constructing and assessing energy scenarios to improve the democratic legitimacy of the results. This article contributes to the scientific debate by analyzing how such methods can include considerations of justice issues in a more systematic manner. It is based on a study of four workshops conducted in Sweden, in which the participants discussed different energy scenarios from a justice perspective. It discusses what can be achieved by methods for participatory-deliberative ethics assessment of the consequences of energy scenarios and how such methods should be designed.

Denna rapport beskriver den teoretiska bakgrunden till och resultaten från fyra workshopar om energiscenarier och rättvisa som genomfördes i Stockholm och Malmö från och med november 2021 och till och med december 2022. Deltagarna var representanter för myndigheter, miljöorganisationer, organisationer för olika kraftslag, fackföreningar och politiska partier. Under workshoparna diskuterade deltagarna olika energiscenarier ur ett rättviseperspektiv, vilka beskrev den framtida energiproduktionen och energikonsumtionen för Sverige respektive Skåne.

In this article we justify why justice ought to be considered in scenarios of energy transitions, stipulate what dimensions should reasonably be considered, and investigate whether such considerations are taken in Swedish parliamentary debates on energy policies. Through interviews we investigated how Swedish parliamentary politicians think through justice in energy transitions, providing a practical perspective. We conclude that while there is some overlap between minimal conditions for energy justice and the issues brought forward by Swedish politicians,several issues are omitted. Examples include procedural justice and recognizing Sámi interests. On the other hand, principles of energy justice omit economic issues, which are however often brought up by respondents. It can be argued that justice issues, and not only the technical and economic issues that currently dominate the political debate, should be considered in energy transitions. It is therefore unfortunate that questions about justice are not adequately recognized by Swedish members of parliament, as outlined here by interview results. Stronger conclusions would require more empirical work, but the article points out several discrepancies between the topics discussed in the research literature on energy policies, and the topics discussed by elected parliamentarians having a specific focus on energy policies.

In this paper, we apply the capabilities approach-with the addition of capability ceilings-to energy justice. We argue that, to ensure energy justice, energy policies and scenarios should consider enabling not only minimal capability thresholds but also maximum capability ceilings. It is permissible, perhaps even morally required, to limit the capabilities of those above the threshold if it is necessary for enabling those below the threshold to reach the level required by justice. We make a distinction between tragic and non-tragic conflicts of capabilities: tragic conflicts are instances when one cannot raise an agent's capabilities above the threshold that justice requires without pushing someone else below the threshold or restricting someone from reaching the threshold. In contrast, a non-tragic choice is when increasing someone above the threshold required by justice does not entail pushing someone else's capabilities below the threshold. We utilise this framework to discuss energy justice and emissions of greenhouse gases. Drawing on the relation between points on the human development index and levels of energy consumption, we conclude that non-tragic mitigation policies now are highly preferable to tragic policies later.

Citizen science (CS) has been presented as a novel form of research relevant for social concerns and global challenges. CS transforms the roles of participants to being actively involved at various stages of research processes, CS projects are dynamic, and pluralism arises when many non-professional researchers take an active involvement in research. Some argue that these elements all make existing research ethical principles and regulations ill-suited for guiding responsible CS conduct. However, while many have sought to highlight such challenges from CS, few have discussed principles per se providing the foundation for regulations. In this article we will investigate the possibilities of midlevel principlism in guiding responsible CS conduct. Principlism has the potential of accommodating many of the concerns taken to reduce the relevance of existing principles.

This article argues that holistic ecocentrism unnecessarily introduces elements to explain why we ought to halt biodiversity loss. I suggest that atomistic accounts can justify the same conclusion by utilising fewer elements. Hence, why we ought to preserve biodiversity can be made reasonable without adding elements such as intrinsic values of ecosystems or moral obligations to conserve collectives of organisms. Between two equally good explanations of the same phenomenon, the explanation utilising fewer elements, which speaks in favour of atomistic accounts, will be the better one.

Denna populärvetenskapliga rapport redogör för de viktigaste empiriska resultaten från den första delen (work package 1) av projektet ’Energiscenarier och rättvisa – en fallstudie av Sve-rige’, vilken genomfördes år 2020. Resultaten kommer att analyseras ytterligare med avsikt att publicera dem i vetenskapliga tidskrifter. Projektet i sin helhet pågår år 2020-2022. Under projektets andra del (work package 2) som pågår år 2021-2022 kommer vi att genomföra fokusgrupper som syftar till att bedöma energiscenarier ur ett rättviseperspektiv. Deltagare kommer att vara olika intressenter såsom politiker, tjänstemän och representanter för frivillig-organisationer. Ytterligare två populärvetenskapliga rapporter baserade på projektets andra del kommer att författas. Projektet beviljades medel av Energimyndigheten inom ramen för forskningsprogrammet Människa, Energisystem och Samhälle (MESAM). Det övergripande syftet med projektet är att utveckla metoder och riktlinjer för deltagan-de scenarier som på ett systematiskt sätt kan integrera frågor som rör nationell, global och intergenerationell rättvisa. Projektets första del syftar till att ge en översikt av rättviseuppfatt-ningar i den politiska och administrativa kontexten för energiscenarier. Vi har genomfört en analys av riksdagsmotioner för att förstå vilka explicita och implicita rättviseuppfattningar som dominerar i dessa dokument. För att skapa en bredare bild av rättviseuppfattningar relaterade till energiscenarier inom svensk politik och svenska myndigheter har vi dessutom intervjuat politiker och tjänstemän på nationell nivå och inom region Skåne.