Backcasting intergenerational energy justice

A just energy transition requires political engagement with diverse voices in the processes of environmental and industrial change, ensuring the fair distribution of risks and benefits between empowered and vulnerable communities. One key challenge is ensuring intergenerational equity within such processes: defining our collective obligations to protect the environmental, economic, and social well-being of future generations and then translating this into present-day policy and commercial decision-making. In this proposed workshop, we will showcase participatory backcasting methods to address intergenerational equity challenges. Backcasting analysis engages stakeholders in envisioning and defining long-term intra- and intergenerational interests, and here we blend qualitative social science and normative analysis to explore backcasting as an “ethical tool” for energy futures planning. Through structured participatory dialogue, we will examine the ethical dimensions of energy futures to identify desirable, feasible, and sustainable pathways – starting with the identification of normatively desirable futures and then working backwards to the present to determine the necessary steps to achieve them and the barriers they experience in doing so. The backcasting analysis offers valuable insights into the intergenerational justice dimensions of contemporary energy policymaking and demonstrates the methodological value of bridging the gap between current and future needs and wellbeing through this form of imaginative and participatory research.