Oil and gas just transitions: an introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT

The latest climate science provides stark warnings around the need for a transition away from further oil and gas exploration. Denmark, as a leader in the oil and gas transition, has already cancelled new oil and gas permits and is pursuing the phase-out of existing oil production in the Danish North Sea by 2050. Progress in other areas of the world, however, is more circumscribed, giving rise to a landscape of both ‘leaders’ and ‘laggards’ across value chains. This Special Issue unites the need for market-led oil and gas just transitions with net zero emission ambitions, critically analyzing the potential for a just transition (or transitions) by 2040. This editorial provides introductory context to nine articles and summarizes their key policy insights. The nine contributions present interdisciplinary and mixed method perspectives from globally diverse country contexts. Papers explore oil and gas transitions across the value chain and with attention to a range of stakeholders and processes, including public norm development, tribunals, and industry investments. Whilst there is growing consensus across various actors and institutions in society around the need to phase-out oil and gas, the papers also showcase that care must be taken to avoid perverse incentives, engage the public, steer investment, engage with controversies, account for emerging producers, consider country phase-out sequencing, account for indirect and direct job losses, and consider investor compensation caps. Across all contributions, and alongside reflections of the various barriers and enablers for obtaining just outcomes, considerations of just transitions thinking appear in several different ways. They appear conceptually, empirically (in terms of research findings), as guidance for decision-making, and as an aspirational outcome or target to be obtained; that is, just transition is treated in the same way as the phase-out of oil and gas – as a process and a goal.

Key Policy Highlights

• This editorial provides a commentary and overview of nine articles within this Special Issue of Climate Policy on ‘Oil and Gas Just Transitions’, where the papers explore oil and gas transitions across the value chain and with attention to a range of stakeholders and processes, including public norm development, tribunals, and industry investments.

• Just transitions can be variously defined and deliberated to consider barriers and enablers for obtaining just outcomes.

• The examples explored here suggest a role of just transitions in facilitating change in the way oil and gas companies operate by, for instance, reframing narratives and skills capacity building.

• Feeding into evidence, action, and pathways ahead, the key policy insights from the papers reflect six themes: (1) responsibilities and policy priorities, (2) finance, investment, and compensation, (3) processes, outcomes, and recommendations for action, (4) narratives, deliberation, and controversies, (5) temporality and speed, and more broadly, (6) progress towards a just phase-out.

KEYWORDS:

• Oil and gas
• phase-out‌
• just transitions
• energy transition
• energy policy

Acknowledgements

This Special Issue is inspired by the Oil and Gas Transitions project², coordinated by Climate Strategies and the Stockholm Environment Institute and funded by the KR Foundation and Laudes Foundation. We are grateful to all the collaborators, funders, and contributors to the original project, and to all the authors of this spin-off Special Issue, along with the reviewers and editorial team at Climate Policy. Special thanks, too, to Dr Gökçe Mete, now at Vattenfall, for her earlier assistance in the development of the Special Issue, and to Adriana Chavarría Flores, Programme and Impact Manager at Climate Strategies, who leads the Oil and Gas Transitions project and supported the creation of this Special Issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Referring to those without interventions that substantially reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted throughout the life cycle.

2 https://oilandgastransitions.org/