Energy justice and the legacy of conflict: Assessing the Kosovo C thermal power plant project

The concept of energy justice has emerged as an important theoretical and methodological tool aiding to understand challenges in the extraction, production and consumption of energy, and its societal, economic, environmental and security implications. We apply energy justice as an analytical framework to analyse the political, societal and environmental impacts of energy policies in the context of post-conflict instability. Using the Kosovo C project as a case study, a planned lignite power plant and its associated infrastructure, we utilise the three tenets of energy justice (distributional, procedural, and justice as recognition) and Sovacool and Dworkin's (2015) eight aspects of just energy decision-making to depict the opportunities and challenges of the empirical application of energy justice in a post-conflict environment. The application of energy justice to the Kosovo case identifies the legal/regulatory and the temporal dimensions as crucial challenges to just energy policies in a context in which: (i) the lack of due process, good governance, and ongoing post-conflict tensions aggravate the societal, economic and environmental impacts of energy policies; (ii) accessibility and affordability of energy is prioritised over the promotion of sustainability; and (iii) intra- and intergenerational equity concerns take a backseat in the face of immediate state-building priorities. •Expands analytical application of energy justice to post-conflict settings.•Contested concept of ‘justice’ challenges empirical application of energy justice.•In a post-conflict context, access to energy gains priority over sustainability.•State-building priorities compromise concerns for intergenerational justice.•Lack of due process and good governance aggravate the impacts of energy policies.