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Compounding injustices can impede a just energy transition

Coal and carbon-intensive regions have lagged behind in socioeconomic development, long before any transition-related structural changes were foreseeable. Acknowledging and tackling the compounding effects of old legacy and new transition injustices is vital for realizing a truly just energy transition.

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Fig. 1: Compounding injustices emerge from intersecting legacy and transformation injustices.
Fig. 2: EU Just Transition Fund funding to EU coal regions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors of this Comment collaborated in the project CINTRAN – Carbon-intensive Regions in Transition funded by the European Union under its Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 884539).

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Correspondence to Lukas Hermwille.

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Nature Energy thanks Sally Weller, Mohammad Hazrati, and Rosie Robison for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Hermwille, L., Brisbois, M.C., Hiteva, R. et al. Compounding injustices can impede a just energy transition. Nat Energy 10, 915–918 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01785-x

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