Leveraging tensions of the triple transition for future-fit energy pathways: Interdisciplinary analysis and response strategies

1 Introduction

To harness the complexity of societal transitions (Wilgosh et al., 2022), policymakers tend to bundle different transition priorities under integrated agendas, such as the twin transition (Joint Research Centre, 2022) and triple transition (OECD, 2023). Combining these priorities enables connections between issues such as digitalization, justice and decarbonization, but also entails tensions (Sarkki et al., 2022), which are seldom acknowledged in policy agendas (Pyka and Vermeulen, 2024).

This paper focuses on energy transitions as a meeting point of multiple contested transition priorities (Harry et al., 2024; Madsen et al., 2022; Ramasar et al., 2022; Sovacool and Brown, 2015). Many reasons can cause such contestation. Energy transitions are experienced differently across space and time, and among various groups

(Sovacool et al., 2021b). For some, they mean more energy at better prices or buying an electric car. For others, they mean being able to cook one more meal per day or witnessing a nature park being turned into a lithium mine. Such uneven experiences require seeing energy transitions as multiple processes unfolding across different timelines and locations (Coenen et al., 2021; Späth et al., 2022). These processes create winners and losers, and may bring about collective benefits (Ramboll, 2024), but also displacement, loss of culture, and new inequalities (Velasco-Herrejón and Bauwens, 2024). Recognizing tensions as implicit to energy transitions, the paper focuses on building bridges and highlighting differences among disciplines in how they approach those tensions, with particular focus on three broad energy transition areas—green transition, just transition, and digitalization.

Tensions in this paper are understood as boundary objects (Franco-Torres et al., 2020; Turnheim et al., 2015). This means that there is a certain shared outlook on what tensions entail, but also diversity in terms of how they are interpreted. We approach tensions as

“dichotomies, dualities, conflicts, inconsistencies, and contradictory pulls or demands experienced by those in a particular setting that appear to represent different and contradictory poles and, as such, seem to require a choice of one or the other” (Bartunek and Rynes, 2014)

While we refer to tensions throughout the paper in rather broad terms, the concept serves foremost as an entry point into a landscape that is more complex and diverse than a single term would capture.

Failure to consider tensions may cause immediate suffering and contribute to controversies (Cuppen et al., 2020) and higher risks (Seshadri et al., 2025; Hoffart et al., 2024), but what it means to successfully navigate tensions is harder to define, as suffering and loss are frequent companions of innovation and achievement. In this study, we focus on how individuals and groups try to recognize, negotiate, and deal with tensions, without defining any criteria for success. We consider navigating tensions having to do with the achievement of specific goals or priorities, and meeting the needs of specific actors, while possibly mitigating, displacing, overcoming, or ignoring undesirable outcomes.

While tensions exist between different transition goals, how we choose to study them also entails taking specific standpoints, which influence which tensions are surfaced and acted upon, and which ones are overlooked or ignored (Turner et al., 2015). Such dynamics reflect disciplinary traditions but also rivalry over legitimacy, truth, viability, and desirability of specific methods and approaches. Previous studies on tensions in energy transitions commonly rely on a single specific theory or method, thus lending insights from a single perspective (Bouzarovski, 2022; Harry et al., 2024; Newell et al., 2022; Hildingsson and Johansson, 2016). Interdisciplinary studies, on the other hand, often focus on other aspects of energy transitions (Ahmad et al., 2023; Coenen et al., 2021; Sovacool et al., 2022, 2020). We address the outlined gap by exploring multiple perspectives on the energy transition tensions by asking three questions:

• How do different research traditions address tensions at the nexus of green, digital, and just energy transitions?
• What options are proposed or used to navigate tensions?
• How do studies legitimize or justify the proposed options?

We hope that addressing those questions can support more context-responsive and flexible policies, strategies, and interventions for energy transitions. Our primary audiences are interdisciplinary and transformation-oriented researchers and boundary spanners who seek to expand their methodological toolkit and learn from different disciplines and contexts. The literature we cover is rooted in social science, yet we believe that it is sufficiently broad, with notable differences among perspectives, providing orientation for future research that could grasp a different set of perspectives on the topic.

The rest of this paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 outlines the research design, rationale, and analytical approach. Further, in the Five Perspectives, each perspective is presented on its own terms, with a theoretical introduction and an overview of cases. This is followed by a Cross-Perspective comparative outlook on defining and navigating energy transition tensions, and the legitimation mechanisms employed to advance specific interpretations. Finally, Section 5 connects our analysis to the broader landscape of interdisciplinary research on energy transitions and outlines the prospects for further research and its relevance to policy and practice.

2 Methods

2.1 Theoretical foundation

This study rests within the traditions of sustainability science, interdisciplinary and transformation-oriented research, embracing their normative commitments (Harris et al., 2024; Bärnthaler, 2020). We apply a multi-perspective approach (Saltelli et al., 2020; Jopling et al., 2025), an integrative pluralist standpoint (Caniglia et al., 2023) and reflexivity (Minna et al., 2024; Hakkarainen and Lazurko, 2025) as cross-cutting approaches that inform our research process. In this paper, we aim to connect, contrast, and learn from different standpoints, without embracing them as equally credible and valid (Jerneck and Olsson, 2020) but striving to provide heuristics that help researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to navigate complexity (Cash et al., 2003).

Multi-perspective approaches have been widely acknowledged for their applicability to analyzing complex and contentious topics (Kühne et al., 2022; Radtke, 2025; Radtke and Scherhaufer, 2022; Sovacool et al., 2025b). For instance, Saltelli et al. (2020) applied six different lenses to the topics of circular economy and the food-water-energy nexus, showcasing how methodological choices condition narratives around evidence. Another example comes from Sovacool et al. (2025b), who analyzed acceleration of low-carbon transitions across five social science disciplines and highlighted differences between concepts and mechanisms these disciplines tend to employ. In the context of studying tensions, Kühne et al. (2022) combined conflict theory and the framing approach to analyse public resistance to renewable energy developments, while outlining how to combine methods to foster dialogue in socio-environmental conflicts. Following those footsteps, this study seeks to juxtapose ideas and learn across different perspectives (Minna et al., 2024; Jopling et al., 2025; Sovacool et al., 2025b) specifically with regard to tensions as a concept that cuts across energy transitions research.

Our conceptualization of different perspectives is informed by the concepts of epistemic communities (Saltelli et al., 2020; Sovacool et al., 2021a) and thought collectives (Soininen et al., 2022), which highlight how individuals bond through common beliefs, practices, and truth claims. We group research fields by their underlying claims and assumptions, while recognizing their internal heterogeneity and cross-linkages, and the interdisciplinarity of energy transitions research as such. Our categorization does not aim to be universal, but rather to provide a pragmatic approach for exploring and navigating tensions. The differentiation of perspectives has been informed by the selected literature and influenced by the backgrounds of the co-authors, which include innovation studies, environmental science, sociology, geography, economics, ecological economics, sustainability science, engineering, foresight, political science, and cognitive science.

2.2 Literature selection and analysis

To collect literature that would inform the analysis, we combined expert-led selection and database queries, which allowed us to attain a broad and diverse range of sources (Grant and Booth, 2009). The process included four stages, as outlined in Figure 1.

2.2.1 Scoping and concept development

In the first stage, co-authors suggested initial papers on transition tensions broadly (N = 4) and energy transition tensions (N = 4). Based on those initial papers, we did the first mapping of different viewpoints on tensions. The lead author developed the first draft of the paper concept, and it was further revised together with the other co-authors.

2.2.2 Literature identification and selection

The second phase started with a Web of Science search for peer-reviewed papers. We used Boolean terms combining energy transition and tension concepts, as well as green, digital, and transition-specific keyword groups (N = 577, see Supplementary Appendix 1 for further details). In parallel, co-authors contributed theoretical and empirical studies on tensions in energy transitions (N = 43).

The combined records (N = 620) included primarily peer-reviewed papers.¹ Their titles were screened for inclusion and exclusion criteria, using the HubMeta literature review tool. To be included, studies had to address tensions and the interplay of different energy transition domains. The studies that the reviewers accepted were automatically included. Only studies that at least one reviewer accepted were discussed; the others were automatically rejected. Following the discussion, the lead author made the final decision, leading to the identification of entries for abstract screening (N = 319).

We further screened the abstracts first screened abstracts and then the full texts according to more detailed criteria (see Supplementary Appendix 2). We aimed to capture cases that span across different scales and geographies (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Chambers et al., 2022) but did not employ any strict criteria in that regard. If the study was considered relevant based on the abstract screening, it also underwent full-text screening following the same criteria, which resulted in 50 records that were further differentiated into case references (N = 12) based on additional criteria (see Supplementary Appendix 2), background literature for different perspectives (N = 37) and methodological literature (N = 1).

2.2.3 Complementary literature and iterative thematic inquiry

The identified sources helped to revise the manuscript's concept and perspectives and reveal gaps in case coverage, which informed targeted searches leading to a list of complementary empirical cases (N = 18). Since it was already possible to delineate the scope of different perspectives, co-authors also suggested additional background literature for perspectives with a focus on tensions (N = 57). This was followed by the analysis of individual perspectives using iterative thematic inquiry (Morgan and Nica, 2020; Biggs et al., 2021). We coded the cases along the following axes: transition standpoints, tension concepts, contestation domains, legitimation mechanisms, and navigation strategies (Supplementary Appendix 3). The process was iterative, with the codes being gradually refined. Following the lead author's initial coding and drafting of the overview of perspectives, the co-authors contributed to developing narratives for specific perspectives.

2.2.4 Cross-analysis and discussion points

At this stage, we compared insights across the perspectives on the main tension concepts, strategies, and legitimation mechanisms. The co-authors also suggested new case studies considering previously identified gaps to increase coverage of digitalization and regional diversity (N = 5), while eight previously identified studies have been excluded from the analysis as cases or moved into background literature due to overlapping insights. We also further advanced the analysis through additional background literature (N = 12) and complementary literature for perspectives (N = 20).

2.3 Scope and corpus

Our corpus has been deliberately broad rather than systematic, and relies on empirical papers (n = 28) and background literature across perspectives (N = 118). The remaining literature comprises broader literature on tensions and energy transitions (N = 16) and methodological literature (N = 10).

2.3.1 Cases distribution

Among the final selection of 28 empirical cases, 13 feature Europe, six include Latin America and the Caribbean, six include Asia-Pacific, five include North America, and three include Africa, with several papers covering more than one region. The covered cases include primarily national (32%) and sub-national (39%) examples, with the remainder being transnational, international, and translocal. All empirical studies cover certain green or energy transition aspects. While twelve studies directly address digitalization, several other studies also address it indirectly, including issues such as material extraction, technological change or the use of digital technologies.

2.3.2 Limitations

This study primarily focuses on qualitative social science energy research and does not represent the full scope of energy transitions research. We also provide a limited outlook on historical tensions, as well as technical, legal, and environmental dimensions of transitions. Due to the pursuit of broad coverage, we acknowledge limitations in grasping the nuances and manifold tensions that are also pertinent to specific perspectives, as well as the presence of multiple perspectives on energy transition tensions not covered in this study.

3 Five perspectives on triple transition tensions

In presenting the perspectives, we recognize that while they are distinct, there are also notable overlaps and interactions among the fields. While the perspectives feature some common terminology, they also diverge in multiple respects, and not all of them will be experienced by the readers as equally familiar depending on their disciplinary backgrounds, including the use of different terminology and different interpretations of similar terms across the perspectives. Table 1 briefly presents the scope of each perspective, and Table 2 outlines the empirical cases covered by the analysis.

Table 1. Perspectives on energy transition tensions. Source: Own elaboration.

Table 2. Real-world empirical cases across the perspectives. Source: Own elaboration.

The perspectives on constructing realities, negotiating meanings, and reimagining transitions focus on what is commonly considered as subjective aspects of transitions. Compared to the negotiation of meanings, constructing realities focuses on lived realities rather than their interpretation or manipulation. Meanwhile, reimagining transitions focuses on imaginative and emotional dimensions rather than ontological or normative ones. Governing transitions and reasoning by numbers represent a more pragmatic outlook on transitions, while reasoning by numbers treats numerical data as its primary vantage point. Given the increase in interdisciplinary scholarship on transitions, one can see socio-technical scholarship engaging with the discourse-analytical approaches, and modelers taking reflexive stances on their assumptions about reality. Our standpoint on this comes in recognizing partial overlaps and focusing on distinct aspects of each perspective that illuminate its significance.

3.1 Constructing realities

The analysis featured under this perspective covers standpoints of ontological politics, political ecology, and critical human geography. These research fields feature a shared focus on processes through which realities are recognized or ignored and emphasize how worldviews, values and power influence transition tensions. From an ontological politics standpoint, realities are enacted through world-making practices of various actors (Mol, 1999). Tensions thus emerge at a very basic level of what counts as reality and whose realities matter (see Law and Mol, 2001).

The realities of energy transitions are linked to the livelihoods, interests, and needs of actors, and are experienced differently depending on how they are enacted in specific contexts. In the case of resistance to wind farms in Northern Norway, Saami reindeer herders experienced new energy developments as a threat to their contract with nature, reindeer, wind, and land, where state concepts of land as split between “inmark” (cultivated land) and “utmark” (outlying land) did not match the Saami concept of “meahcci,” which represents productive encounters that unfold “in terms of place, time, and tasks, involving humans, animals, and natural landscapes” (Karam and Shokrgozar, 2023). These views have, however, been systematically sidelined in official procedures, with tensions resolved via the imposition of state realities and the marginalization of alternatives.

Similarly, in California, the Colorado River Indian Tribes faced new development of 250 MW of concentrated solar power on territories that they traditionally inhabited as a break from their way of treating the world, including the removal of cultural artifacts and burial remains, paired with increased pollution and risks of wildfire (Sovacool et al., 2025a). The paper traces the gradual deterioration of trust toward the project by local tribes, where the initial promise of decarbonization, jobs and infrastructure has, in practice, manifested as rushed procedures, deliberate fueling of intertribal conflict and performative consultations with fast-tracked development that failed to address local needs (Sovacool et al., 2025a). These two examples highlight how energy transitions become meeting points for different ways of relating to reality, while actors in power can assign individuals, groups, or other entities different ontological positions.

Political ecology and critical geography complement ontological considerations by analyzing how power and inequality shape society-nature relations in energy transitions. As Lefebvre (1991) argues, space is a social product shaped by power relations, ideologies, and practices. Tensions can thus be seen as struggles over how space is socially constructed, controlled, and valued across different scales and ways of relating to the world, emerging through the active production and contestation of space. Soja (1996) extends this into the idea of the social production of space, highlighting how spatial arrangements are both outcomes of and arenas for social struggle, involving conflicts over whose visions prevail, while Jessop (2005) highlights the presence of multiple, interconnected scales. Decisions made at one scale may displace problems to another scale, where scaling up “green” solutions may undermine local “just” priorities. These patterns are, however, rarely neatly distributed across scales and timelines, and rather manifest as unfolding processes with outcomes and their understanding emerging gradually and over time. Making sense of such changes is particularly challenging when seeming stability is faced with rapid shifts, such as those driven by increased demand for materials required for the buildup of renewable energy and storage infrastructure.

In Portugal, lithium extraction has been growing rapidly, fueled by demand for energy storage, with the potential to impact a significant share of the national territory, as reported in the study by Canelas and Carvalho (2023). Based on semi-structured interviews with residents in affected communities, the authors identified a range of strategies used by companies and authorities, such as social engineering, deception, manipulation, bribery and counterinsurgency, used by companies and authorities, to advance the lithium projects (Canelas and Carvalho, 2023). The study considers this a clash between two different ontologies: “one, based on commoning ecologies supporting multispecies coexistences; and another, based on extractivist violence, driving depletion, segregation and exclusion” (Canelas and Carvalho, 2023, 11).

A similar pattern is observed in a study covering hydropower development in Wallmapu, Chile, where the classification of small hydropower projects allows developers to bypass stakeholder consultation or disregard its results, treating local realities as inferior and insignificant (Hernando-Arrese and Rasch, 2022). Adopting a micropolitical ecology approach and based on ethnographic fieldwork data, the study traces two hydropower projects in Mapuche territory, highlighting how streamlined processes paired with interventions in the everyday lives of local people have led to social fragmentation, loss of trust and growth in violence. The study highlights how the supposedly benign process of hydropower development becomes intertwined with a series of tragic events. Through the interviews with residents, the study unveils the colonial and paternalistic logic of developers, such as the offering of ping-pong tables and televisions as a replacement for sacred sites (Hernando-Arrese and Rasch, 2022). Similarly, in the case of Oaxaca, Mexico, local communities and authorities perceived energy transitions in divergent terms, with the former being primarily concerned about land rights, autonomy, and expressing preferences for community-owned and micro-scale energy solutions, rather than the planned large-scale developments (Mejía-Montero, 2025).

Some critical scholars argue that such tensions manifest from a systemic temporal logic of capital accumulation (Jessop, 2010), where gradual and incremental harm quietly erodes local livelihoods, histories, and connections. From this standpoint, twin or triple transition priorities allow for the subordination of ecological and social realities to the imperative of economic growth (Hickel and Kallis, 2020; Schmelzer, 2016). Political regimes and power structures allow the state to decide whose reality is worth considering, such as the economic goals of electricity grid operators vs. the needs and visions of local people. The established power structures also serve as an important reference point for understanding how realities come into being, including cases where the transition to new energy sources potentially follows the same coercive patterns as the previous expansion of coal energy, representing a recursive pattern of “violent transitions,” as exemplified in Kumar's (2024). The study employs a political ecology framework to identify patterns of state-sanctioned violence in India, manifesting across the development of coal mines, coal-fired power plants and hydropower projects. The paper underlines how the national just transition framework fails to acknowledge various forms of violence, such as dispossession, displacement, arrests, harassment, intimidation, threats and police force as part of the everyday processes of developing energy infrastructure. Criminalization of dissent, regulatory capture and symbolic concessions can therefore be combined into an apparatus that gradually dismantles possibilities for approaching reality on alternative terms (Kumar, 2024; Forget and Bos, 2022), while remaking territories for resource extraction (Dunlap and Riquito, 2023). Before any debates or planning on the transition begin, different ethical and ontological positions serve as fundamental to the construction of realities, relationships and positions that are further highlighted by the perspectives that follow.

3.2 Governing transitions

The perspective builds on several closely linked disciplinary and interdisciplinary traditions, including sustainability science, governance studies and sustainability transitions. These are united by a common focus on how directional and normative change can be made sense of and steered in integrative, accountable and pragmatic ways, reconciling diverse interests, knowledge, vested dynamics and underlying assumptions through commitment to critical thinking.

Sustainability transitions literature is centered around transitions as driven by interactions of different actors, artifacts, and institutional logics and commonly relies on frameworks such as the multi-level perspective and transitions management (Laur and Kanda, 2025; Kanger and Schot, 2019) to analyse niche-regime-landscape dynamics, discontinuities, path-dependencies, divergent system configurations (Sovacool et al., 2023) and conflicts among actors (Laur and Kanda, 2025). It highlights how transitions are contested (Schot and Kanger, 2018) and how intermediaries navigate different energy transition priorities (Nordt et al., 2023). Governance and policy scholars have also emphasized the multi-level nature of energy transitions and the need for transformative and polycentric approaches that challenge incumbent arrangements (Radtke and Wurster, 2023; Baker and Phillips, 2019). Sustainability science complements this thinking with the focus on reflexivity and non-neutrality as elements of engaged transitions research (Ampe et al., 2024).

An example of research at the interface of those disciplines is the exploration of reflexive monitoring of energy justice governance in Antwerp, Belgium (de Geus et al., 2025). The case builds on one and a half years of researchers being directly involved in participatory monitoring of a living lab that covered local energy experiments on shared use of solar and distributed ownership of solar photovoltaics. The study highlighted paradoxical objectives of one of the projects, where the pursuit of inclusivity was paired with the purposeful exclusion of target groups to avoid overwhelming them with commitments to participation. The initiatives in focus were also considered isolated from broader governance arrangements, which enabled the setting up of their own governance arrangements, but also required continuous consideration of the linkages to broader governance arrangements (de Geus et al., 2025).

In the context of analyzing how transitions unfold, sustainability transitions scholarship has been particularly attentive to the interplay of actors, institutions, and technologies. In their study on smart grid developments in Germany, Rohde and Hielscher (2021) highlight how the introduction of new technologies creates tensions among established and emerging institutional arrangements, requiring actors to collectively renegotiate practices, rules, roles and beliefs. Crucially, such processes in themselves take time and require resources, institutional work and dealing with inertia. Furthermore, actors might have different views on how to deal with various issues that emerge throughout transition processes. Based on the analysis of interviews with energy firms and intermediaries in Sweden and Norway, Laur and Kanda (2025) showcase diverging logics of intermediaries linked to the existing regime, vs. those that represent alternative and emerging configurations and can be seen as niche intermediaries, with the latter having fewer resources, being more agile, transparent and open to dialogue, and better able to accommodate a variety of needs.

On the other hand, incumbent actors, such as utilities, grid operators, and platform providers, can influence participation by other actors via constructing data flows, user interfaces, and legitimate forms of engagement. Digital platforms may expand opportunities for formal participation, but limit redistribution of decision-making power and reinforce existing advantages, benefiting actors already well-positioned within energy markets (Pel et al., 2023; Wittmayer et al., 2021) and drawing citizens into new governance arrangements (Judson et al., 2022). In the study on smart city initiatives in four cities, Águeda Veloso and her co-authors highlight how smartness has been commonly presented as inclusive and considerate of various needs. Their analysis across the cases revealed various ways in which citizen engagement has been limited, and needs have been framed in a top-down manner, with projects such as public wifi or installations of smart sensors being accompanied by limited consideration of structural issues, such as affordable housing, or the needs of specific groups, such as elderly people (Veloso et al., 2024). These cases highlight how dominant actors controlling new digital platforms may centralize data flows and subvert efforts to reorganize governance and engagement. It should therefore be considered how values and participation play out in the processes of digitalizing energy system governance (Niet et al., 2022; Arora and Stirling, 2023). The research on participation highlights its often contested and ambivalent roles depending on where it is embedded into broader governance arrangements, ranging from slowing down action (Newell et al., 2022) or providing manipulated legitimation (Van Bommel and Höffken, 2023) to supporting actual scaling and acceleration (Ciplet and Harrison, 2020; Skjølsvold and Coenen, 2021).²

Much of the recent transitions research has focused on how alternative perspectives can become neglected by or subjugated to dominant logics, with one vivid example coming from Lieu et al. (2020). Combining feminist political ecology and the analysis of niche-regime interactions, Jenny Lieu and her co-authors analyse cases of energy transitions planning and decision-making in Alberta, Canada, Kenya and Spain. The authors highlight how dominant on-stream pathways and marginally different off-stream pathways constrain opportunities for more diverse and transformative pathways, highlighting the deeply embedded gendered dimensions of governance and decision-making. Furthermore, incumbent actors can present specific solutions or technologies, such as blockchain-based virtual energy communities, as emancipatory, while using those platforms to concentrate power (Kloppenburg and Boekelo, 2019; Nieborg et al., 2024).

In view of seeking new attractive configurations that can find resonance within the broader public, an important alternative energy transition logic comes from the studies into energy democracy (Osička et al., 2023; Burke and Stephens, 2018) and commons (Kostakis et al., 2024; Giotitsas et al., 2022). Shared governance of commons is considered an alternative to state-market dualism, focusing analysis around collective social practices (Bauwens et al., 2024). It reframes tensions between centralization and decentralization by focusing on community-based arrangements and non-market provisioning, where governance is handled by those closest to the resource. The examples reviewed in this perspective present diverse approaches for engaging with tensions. They highlight uncomfortable aspects of aspiring to align multiple objectives (Newell et al., 2022) and illuminate how to prevent the “watering down” of participation (Wittmayer et al., 2021) while constructing formats that enable recognition and purposeful navigation of tensions.

3.3 Negotiating meanings

Words become associated with meanings through negotiation, cultural imagination, and power struggles (Brown and Spiegel, 2019) that can lead to the inclusion and exclusion of certain meanings from a discourse (Howarth, 2000). This perspective focuses on how meanings are constructed, mediated, negotiated, contested, or subverted, providing an outlook on how multiple meanings and narrative become intertwined and develop over time.

Concepts of green, digital, just, twin, or triple transition can function as floating signifiers whose meanings shift with context (Weber, 2024) or as empty signifiers, actively resisting any single interpretation (Brown, 2016; Barassi, 2016). This means that references to “transition” broadly or specific transition priorities can be negotiated, manipulated, captured, misused, or reclaimed by actors. Such changes in meaning can be both abrupt and slow, shared or confined to a specific group or location. Discursive exclusion and inclusion happen through the struggle between different discourses to fix a sign's meaning (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002) or to keep it purposefully open and undefined. The meaning of “transitions” is therefore shaped by manifold competing discourses, narratives, and frames (Feola and Jaworska, 2019), with words like “green,” “digital,” and “just,” or related concepts, serving as axes of contestation (Kovacic et al., 2024), while simultaneously competing for attention with other policy concepts.

Interpretative analyses have been widely applied to the study of tensions in energy transitions (Isoaho and Karhunmaa, 2019). In the context of Germany's transition away from coal, one study highlights how competing justice claims can slow down transition under limited efforts to move beyond binaries (Kalt, 2021). Using a Gramscian approach to analyse the rivalry of climate and labor movements, it analyses how temporal claims are used by actors in different ways, where the urgency of climate action is contrasted to the slow and “responsible” just transition, used to reinforce and maintain the status quo. Tobias Kalt concludes that while unions raise legitimate claims, they also operate as “part of a hegemonic coal alliance led by fossil capital and significant forces in the state” (Kalt, 2021, p. 1149). Kalt suggests that altering this dynamic requires attention to multiple forms of justice and rethinking the distribution of transition benefits and costs (Kalt, 2024).

Thinking about energy transitions through an interpretative lens also allows us to unveil how actor groups tend to foreground or neglect certain aspects of transitions, as illustrated in the study on hydrogen imaginaries in Aotearoa New Zealand. Abbi Virens demonstrates how, in the view of a power system engineer, the rapid benefits of technological change are contrasted against inherently slow processes of societal change, and therefore, the right technology enables “the most efficient way” (Virens, 2024, p. 5) to act on the climate goals. Such “green hydrogen imaginary” represented by institutionalized actors was contrasted to the imaginary of citizens, independent contractors and some scientists, seeing the future of the New Zealand energy system as shaped by institutions, justice concerns and reduced energy use (Virens, 2024). The case highlights how different imaginaries can be linked to different views on challenges, domains of action, and even the nature of the transition as such, i.e., seeing it as a process of technological substitution vs. a social and political process.

While actors may focus on divergent aspects of transitions, they may also specifically contest the meanings of a certain concept, while altering their language around it over time to navigate changing conditions. Spain's coal phase-out media discourse analysis by Alexia Sanz-Hernandez reveals gradual changes in meanings of justice—“justice is coal,” “justice is time,” and “justice is money” (Sanz-Hernández, 2024). Sanz-Hernández traces how the meanings of justice in the discourse shifted from opposition to delay, and then to compensation. Looking at the impact of the just transition mechanism (JTM), the article highlights the changing power balance, with regional trade unions' diminishing capacity to influence the terms of the transition. The acceleration phase that followed pushed the unions to accept the terms of the transition built around large-scale renewables expansion, and, according to Sanz-Hernandez, failed both to address the painful memories of state intervention from the past and to activate regional potential for meaningful engagement with the transition.

Still, resistance and opposition to transition narratives do not exhaust the array of possible negative connotations. Just transition efforts may also fail from mismatches between rhetoric and action, including an overemphasis on “just transition” standing in contrast to the scale of activities that followed. Banerjee and Schuitema (2022) document such dynamics, looking at the experiences of peat workers following the closure of two major power plants in the region that also meant an end to local peat harvesting at scale. While the Irish government and the company responsible for peat harvesting implemented measures framed as a just transition, workers' experience consisted of a series of trainings that rarely met their needs paired with new jobs around renewable energy build-up and maintenance emerging in the region, to which, however, they had no access, leading to a perception of just transition as foremost a form of political rhetoric (Banerjee and Schuitema, 2022). While the case study demonstrates how just transition can feel like a betrayal when theory does not meet practice, another case demonstrates how discourse can, in fact, be effectively navigated, in this case by companies striving to create favorable conditions for data center expansion while downplaying public scrutiny, riding the wave of the twin transition agenda. In another case from Ireland, the analysis of the discourse around hyperscalers highlighted how companies have been able to combine infrastructure expansion with careful navigation of the discourse through gradual shifts of rhetoric and anticipatory framing, such as highlighting “increased efficiency” under scrutiny over energy consumption and shifting discourse from political contestation to technical fixes (Brodie, 2025). The case illuminates the importance of reflecting on how specific technologies, artifacts, or processes are being integrated into the broader transition discourses, providing a cautionary tale about the evolution of discourse from the early 2010s, when Ireland was described as “cool for data centers” (Brodie, 2025, p. 1061) and companies pledged to procure renewable energy, to the later positioning of artificial intelligence as a key enabler of twin transition and climate solutions amid growing regulatory and public scrutiny around the environmental and social impacts of expanding infrastructure.

Another lucid example of how meanings are intertwined with underlying societal structures and forms of governance comes from a study of smart meters in low-income areas of Kingston (Jamaica) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) (Pilo', 2021), where the top-down introduction of smart meters that integrated security, governance, and revenue-protection functions in the eyes of state authorities and corporate players did not align with local perceptions of smart meters as increasing surveillance and risking increased payments and disconnections. Digitalization of the energy system can therefore become a domain of contestation with highly divergent positions toward a seemingly neutral cyber-physical infrastructure positioned in ways that aim to minimize regulatory scrutiny and steer public opinion toward acceptance (Pilo', 2021).

Along similar lines, one of the key concepts of energy transitions, energy as such, can be attributed different meanings. Based on in-depth interviews with experts and citizens, and a literature analysis in the context of smart meter rollout in Italy, Sonja Gantioler and co-authors reconstruct two grand narratives and value systems around energy transitions—“energy as commodity” vs. “energy as common good” (Gantioler et al., 2023). The paper provides a comparative outlook on the language and meanings around each of those narratives, serving as a basis for different views on desired system configurations. In the case of seeing energy as a commodity, it is linked to individual actions, new business models and market-based instruments. Meanwhile, looking at energy as a common good entails thinking about citizens' rights, fundamental needs, access to electricity and sufficiency. The authors suggest that navigating divergent narratives requires shared efforts to shape collective agency, values, structures and practices that govern energy transitions.

Together, the studies analyzed under this perspective showcase how concepts such as “digitalization,” “energy,” “justice,” and others, can at times stand for multiple non-aligned priorities. The logic of such multiple interpretations is articulated by Pel (2024), who notes how the term “digital transition” includes elements of purposive change, messy proliferation of digital technologies, and multiple contested visions of what digital futures could or should entail. When a transition this broad is compressed into a single term like “digital transition,” meanings can be manipulated to emphasize promises of innovation, competitiveness, technology, and scaling, while downplaying political questions about what kinds of digitalization are pursued, where, and to what extent (Pel, 2024).

Struggles over meanings, whether broadly or regarding specific terms, are an important element of sense-making and the search for ways forward (Lennon and Scott, 2017), and can serve diverse ends, from enabling collectively desirable outcomes and keeping relevant possibilities open to sophisticated forms of manipulation and narrow focus on depoliticized choices that reinforce existing power structures and narratives.

3.4 Reasoning by numbers

Quantification permeates many aspects of energy transitions, from tracking of GHG emissions and reports on energy consumption of data centers, to cost effectiveness and multi-criteria analyses used to compare alternative investment options, along with other types of data informing planning, energy management and everyday decisions of energy system actors. Reasoning by numbers is widely used in science-policy interfaces as a means to inform and legitimize policy options and investments (Low et al., 2025; Sasse and Trutnevyte, 2023) or identify and address disparities (Rodríguez-Pose and Bartalucci, 2024). We do not claim to capture to any degree the richness of approaches on which reasoning by numbers may rely, nor broader quantification debates. Rather, through carefully selected cases, we aim to illustrate multifaceted and complex roles that reasoning by numbers can play in shaping energy transition agendas and tensions.

Mathematical modeling is a specific and well-established instance of reasoning by numbers in the context of energy transitions. Modeling requires making choices about model resolution, parameterization, interdependencies among variables, plausible scenarios and other aspects (Hepburn et al., 2025; Selin et al., 2023), which has further impact on how the model interprets real-world processes and outcomes (Rios-Ocampo et al., 2025). Models rely on the assumptions and preferences of those who design them or are included in the process, and may carry implicit ideas, such as the range of considered options or how sensitivity auditing is performed. Over the recent years, social and ecological variables have been increasingly considered in energy transition modeling (Lonergan et al., 2023), in particular regarding distributional aspects of transition choices (Low et al., 2025).

A seminal example is the study by Andrew Chapman and his colleagues (2018), which focused on the transition to renewables and coal plant retirement in Australia. The framework they suggest builds on six equity factors (four covered by the study include GHG reduction, health, employment and electricity price impact), with various combinations of the performance on each across different scenarios leading to different equity outcomes. The analysis suggested that fossil-fuel plant closures can be paced in such a way that would benefit vulnerable communities, while discarding social and health considerations would produce a different sequence of closures (Chapman et al., 2018). The study also contrasted its findings against analysis based on a standard cost-curve approach, highlighting how introducing equity parameters shifted an outlook on preferred options in specific locations from solar PV to wind. Such analyses are increasingly common in modeling literature, treating equity outcomes as something that can be represented by a proper constellation of factors and weighting.

A modeling framework following a similar line of thought has been demonstrated on the case of the national power system in Uganda, for which researchers have applied a long-term energy planning optimization that would suggest the locations, types, capacities, and timelines for power system and distribution infrastructure development (Trotter et al., 2019). Trotter et al. (2019) used a multi-objective modeling approach which focused on the comparison of equality and cost-efficiency outcomes of various configurations. In their modeling results, when optimizing purely for cost-efficiency, it was cheapest to leave some areas behind, worsening existing disparities, while improving equality outcomes would increase costs by 3% and enhance the mix of technologies.

The authors highlight how taking the cost-optimal path would directly maintain electrification inequality, while a combination of on-grid and off-grid solar energy would be best suited to reduce inequality, contrasting the government's strategy of investing in nuclear energy at scale while proclaiming the goal of equitable access to energy. While in this specific case the outputs seem to generate options that are better than the official government policy of that time, such changes in the real world would usually require significant effort to alter the government's investment priorities. The paper's reference to socio-political context hints toward significant questions about the role of evidence, science-policy interfaces, vested interests, and epistemic authority, factors that often do not make it into models that assume rational choice between alternatives.

Construction of evidence and the logic behind the numbers is thus a critical element of coming up with specific insights, as demonstrated in the study by Maria Sharmina et al. (2025), where engagement of civil servants and the broader public in scenario design and evaluation allowed them to identify policy options that would deliver higher emission reductions at a 20% lower cost. The authors highlight the contrast between the focus on supply-side and technology-driven options common to expert-driven models, and greater attention to demand-side, including repair and maintenance, identified through broader participation (Sharmina et al., 2025). Broader participation also shifted focus from efficiency and technology options to structural and social matters, reframing people as citizens and not just consumers. While reasoning with numbers is often associated with an expert-driven and algorithmic activity, the study shows how it can also be a participatory process, including a variety of views and perspectives.

Quantitative approaches have also been used to explore less obvious interactions between digital and green transitions and challenge widely held assumptions. Research on rebound effects has been a recurring case of this: analyzing the effects of digitalization on energy consumption, Lange et al. (2020) highlight its equivocal effects, with the potential both to decrease energy demand through efficiency gains and sectoral change, and to increase it through economic growth and rebound effects. Another area where data-driven approaches have been widely applied is tracing of material and energy flows. (Sovacool et al. 2019) demonstrate how material flow analysis can be used to document unequal material impacts of digitalization, such as the international flows of electronic waste from smart meters (Sovacool et al., 2019).

Analyzing patent, industry, and emissions data across European regions, another recent study found that digital innovation increases industrial emissions with higher energy use unless paired with green innovation (Bianchini et al., 2023). Modeling has also been used to connect different levels of governance of energy transitions, as illustrated by an integrated national power sector model for the United States, paired with community-level air pollution data. The study highlights higher exposures to air pollution of black communities and how resolving this requires additional variables beyond cost-optimization (Goforth and Nock, 2022). It also underlines how slower action may create disproportionate burdens for marginalized communities, while accelerated transition also allows for speeding up narrowing of disparities (Goforth and Nock, 2022), contrasting the common logic of slowing down to enhance deliberation and equality.

When quantification moves from modeling to real-world applications, it also starts to have a more immediate and direct impact on energy transitions. Analyzing the implementation of the scheme in low-income African households, as highlighted in the study on the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) energy provision schemes, Perros et al. (2024) demonstrate how algorithms are used for credit scoring and classifying consumption patterns, turning quantification into a mechanism that moderates access to energy. The study identifies several risks for market-based digital energy provision, such as mismatches between business models and the needs of the poorest, potentially leaving the most vulnerable households in cycles of intermittent service (Perros et al., 2024). The study comes as one of the many examples of more critical strands of literature that highlight the limitations, biases and challenges that come with assuming that quantitative modeling and optimization alone can provide definitive answers to just transition challenges. The quantification of different energy transition aspects can therefore serve as a blessing or as a curse, depending on the circumstances and purposes of such applications.

3.5 Reimagining transitions

Transitions create tensions that influence people's lived experiences that are often not easy to describe, which could be anything from feeling the promise of economic revival to the feeling of grief for the loss of local habitat due to mining or nostalgia for the greatness of a region once seen as an industrial hub. The grief, pride, and loss felt when familiar places or anticipated futures are altered are seldom given space in policy debates, even though they matter to those affected and have been highlighted as critical aspects of sustainability transformation (Wickson et al., 2025). This perspective, therefore, underlines the mundane and often under-considered emotional, sensory, and affective manifestations of transitions (Martin and Strengers, 2024). Art-based and creative approaches have been highlighted for their potential to counter the “crisis of imagination” (Moore and Milkoreit, 2020; Mulgan and Helsinki, 2020; Olazabal et al., 2024) and unveil culturally sensitive, emotional, and affective dimensions of tensions, expanding exploration and deliberation around differences that matter, where stories reach beyond the scope that pure data would convey (Blaeser et al., 2023; Loroño-Leturiondo and Olazabal, 2025).

An example of artistic activism can be found in Oakland's anti-coal movement, explored in the study by Sanz and Rodriguez-Labajos (2021). Through a series of interviews with local artists, experts and activists, the authors trace the movement's development, from initial outreach efforts through image-based arts and media, to an expansive range of artistic activities, including singing, clothes design, performances and poetry recitals that gave the movement its identity, increased engagement, and enabled greater presence of less represented groups (Sanz and Rodriguez-Labajos, 2021). Residents interviewed by the authors shared how artistic engagement helped to manifest and communicate the discontent with the project, while leading to increased participation in decision-making. The article highlights how the arts can help navigate tensions within a movement, consolidating imagery, language, and emotional resonance across a wide range of groups.

While narratives and frames give shape to ideas, artistic perspectives also emphasize the processes through which those stories come to life, such as via storytelling and creative engagement. In an analysis of five cases in Latin America, a study by Azucena Castro and her co-authors explores the role of artistic storytelling as a means of collectively creating alternative energy futures, advancing energy sovereignty, territorial autonomy and shared ownership of the transitions (Castro et al., 2024). Drawing on a diversity of examples from microbial energy generation to community floating museums, the study highlights how collective creative work and storytelling help articulate attention to “unsuspecting socio-affective entanglements and unforeseen encounters with nonhuman presences” (Castro et al., 2024, p. 15). The example highlights the importance of alternative perspectives on energy transitions, as in the example of artistically inspired “territorial energyscapes” that focus on energy as a relational phenomenon, not merely a commodity (Howard et al., 2013 in Castro et al., 2024, p. 3).

Visual methods and storytelling are also used as means of exploring alternative ways of articulating energy transitions, giving attention to diverse and less recognized perspectives. Research from the Digital Energy Futures project at Monash University shows how futures anthropology and comic-based provocations challenged dominant top-down visions of automated homes, shifting focus from seamless optimization to real-life challenges related to irregular working hours, caregiving responsibilities and different attitudes toward automation and interpretation of reality (Dahlgren et al., 2024). The study highlights how people may not always perform as assumed ideal users, revealing differences between top-down scenarios and lived realities. The appeal to attention and nuance thus comes as a red thread in artistic encounters with transitions, where art is frequently seen as a means to reveal hidden or overlooked aspects of energy transitions. An example of this comes from Campisi (2024), examining South American documentaries that revealed the impacts of resource extraction for energy transition on Indigenous territories, documenting the damage caused by mining in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. Nicolas Campisi highlights how Indigenous artists and filmmakers used mapping of sacred sites and images of environmental harm to show impacts on ecosystems and cultures not covered by official accounts, while also elevating the visibility of local knowledges.

Revealing invisible impacts is the focus of another study by Fish and Zeunert (2025), who present how aerial drone imagery provides a meso-view of the landscape and, when combined with macro computer visualizations, can be used to gain a more visceral perspective on Indigenous lands in Native America and Australia (Fish and Zeunert, 2025, p. 35). The authors suggest that such visual techniques can be used to counter corporate-driven narratives and provide indigenous communities with new tools to resist energy injustice, giving emotional and experiential legitimacy to their perspectives. In broad terms, the analyzed examples showcase how art-based and creative approaches bring to the fore experiential, affective, and emotional transition tensions, while offering ways to approach them in various ways that go beyond steering and optimization (Evers, 2024).

4 Cross-perspective analysis

4.1 Ways of understanding tensions

The various research fields we have covered above approach transition tensions in diverse ways, reflecting distinct analytical foci and stances. Tensions can be seen as stemming from managerial or political problems, as paradoxes, as elements of discursive struggle or even as contradictions between realities. Tensions also differ by their intensity, duration, dynamism, complexity, visibility, and recognition. While tensions are most easily understood as poles, the processes through which they are created, reproduced and navigated showcase a more complex and fluid picture of evolving standpoints, interests and associations that do not always act as stable reference points. Figure 2 outlines key insights for interpreting and analyzing tensions across the five perspectives, including short descriptions, recurring contestation patterns and common contestation axes. In addition to the perspective-specific tensions, we identified several recurring patterns that cross different perspectives. Below, we highlight such common contestation axes.

4.1.1 Reinforcement vs. reconfiguration

Energy transitions involve continuous negotiation and contestation over what should be maintained, phased out and introduced. Some actors strive to preserve the status quo, but it will be different depending on the actor in question, ranging from efforts to protect traditional livelihoods to reinforcing reliance on nuclear power or gas. Different perspectives also underline various levels of such incommensurability, from ontological clashes to varying institutional logics and narratives.

4.1.2 Spatio-temporal contestation

Time and space serve as both a key reference point and constraint in energy transitions, where the lack of time or the risks of delay can be used to articulate priorities around speed or spatial perceptions. Time and space, as such, thus become arenas of contestation. While politicians may think about electoral cycles and investors estimate when they will start to see returns, residents may think about issues that are immediate to their everyday realities and concern how their place and community will feel and look in years to come. Transitions also operate on different timescales and according to different temporal logics: from individual experiences of changes in the job market, to clashes between the timescales of ecosystem recovery and resource extraction for infrastructure development or digitalization. Similar patterns also regard the spatial dimensions, such as tensions between “here” and “there.” Together, time and space come across perspectives as critical reference points, shaping governance, politics and discourses around what transitions are or should be about.

4.1.3 Center, periphery, and networks

All perspectives on tensions research share a certain analytical stance on what is core and periphery. Thinking about governance highlights how transitions are shaped by the centers of decision-making and their impact on the periphery. Centrality is a matter of positioning within networks of capital, knowledge, infrastructure, or political authority. Central actors such as states, metropolitan regions, or transnational firms tend to frame transitions around standardized solutions (e.g., wind farms, reskilling) and apply market logic that is in tension with localized perspectives that focus on contextual fit. The center-periphery and networks tension captures a material reality in which standardized solutions may overlook the distinct transition experiences, knowledges, and vulnerabilities of local communities.

4.1.4 Generic vs. specific

Tensions in the energy transition acquire particular meaning within the contexts in which they unfold, embedded in distinct social relations, institutions, and spatial and temporal horizons. Discussions around just energy transitions have increasingly highlighted the importance of place-based and contextually sensitive approaches (Sovacool et al., 2023; Späth et al., 2022; Wieczorek et al., 2024). A view across those perspectives shows how tensions multiply with greater attention to nuance, but also highlights the multi-dimensional challenges of energy transitions.

This need for context-sensitivity also entails a reflexive critique of the knowledge base itself. While our synthesis is interdisciplinary, the literature on the triple transition predominantly focuses on contexts and issues relevant to the Global North, often prioritizing centralized solutions grounded in instrumental rationality and quantitative modeling. That may reproduce or even reinforce global asymmetries of power and resource allocation. In summary, the multitude of tensions reveals them as complex, layered and situated differently across various contexts. The next part of this paper explores the options for navigating this complex landscape.

4.2 Strategies for navigating tensions

There have been multiple attempts to systematically classify strategic approaches to navigating complex phenomena (Chambers et al., 2022; Ney and Verweij, 2015; Vervoort et al., 2024). The approach we offer here, however, prioritizes diversity of options over systematic organization.

In our analysis, we treat strategies as purposeful patterns of navigating individual, group-specific or collective tensions in the energy transition. Each perspective tends to foreground a certain range of strategies being employed while offering an outlook on strategies that might be feasible from a given standpoint. For instance, negotiating meanings primarily examines discursive strategies, while the governing transitions perspective focuses on institutions, structures, and agency, and thus the strategies it analyses are about navigating broader processes of change. Each perspective already entails assumptions about where to look and how to navigate tensions.

We present strategies across four broad categories representing general orientations for dealing with tensions: defensive, offensive, flexible, and collaborative, capturing common categories within broader interdisciplinary tensions research. Defensive strategies are attempts to directly protect or maintain the status quo, or to avoid alteration. Offensive strategies represent a pre-emptive or directional action. Flexible strategies can be adapted to various types of action and purposes. Collaborative strategies focus on purposeful interactions where actors engage in dialogue, even if this does not entail agreement or readiness to change one's standing.

Actors may relate to strategies in different ways, such as implementing those strategies themselves, being targeted by them, or influencing each other. Actors may also persist with a single strategy or choose to use a broad palette of strategies simultaneously, sequentially or adaptively depending on their grasp of the situation, resources, interests and other factors. The view on strategic options will also depend on the underlying logic of researchers or other actors seeking to organize and systematize existing knowledge (Laur and Kanda, 2025; Ney and Verweij, 2015).

Based on our analysis, perspectives differ in the kinds of strategies they tend to foreground, and effective navigation of energy transition tensions may require diverse combinations of approaches depending on specific transition phases, capacities and contexts. Strategies situated within constructing realities showcase ways to navigate at times irreconcilable divides, which may therefore include resistance to undesirable developments by appealing to identity (Kalt, 2021), heritage and customs (Karam and Shokrgozar, 2023; Fjellheim, 2023), but also purposeful ignorance, violence and creation of sacrifice zones (Kumar, 2024). As reimagining transitions highlights, the visibility of such issues critically depends on the capacity to invoke affective and emotional dimensions (Carmona, 2024) and to expand the perceived scope of possibilities (Fish and Zeunert, 2025).

Governance of transitions brings in many collaborative and interactive strategies that can enable actors to seek dialogue and shared ground. If actively resisted by vested powers, such collaborative work may be used to repair relationships by dealing with traumas and losses related to transitions or unsustainable systems (Banerjee and Schuitema, 2022). This ontological perspective both complements and contrasts sharply with a governance perspective, where (Rohde and Hielscher 2021) outline how dealing with tensions requires not just seeking out specific solutions, but also prolonged institutional work that may include practices such as pooling resources, maintaining competencies, standardization, advocacy, and gap filling (Rohde and Hielscher, 2021). There is also a critical interface between governance and constructing realities, where indigenous legal instruments and transnational coalitions may provide a strongly contrasting view on reality and justice compared to state laws (Castillo Jara and Bruns, 2022).

While negotiating meanings illuminates a broad range of more antagonistic strategies, such as concealing undesirable developments through making certain ideas unthinkable and redirecting attention (Krzywda et al., 2021), reasoning by numbers offers primarily flexible technocratic means of navigating tensions, such as by introducing new model parameters and goals (Trotter et al., 2019; Low et al., 2025). Table 3 provides an outlook on the common strategies identified across the perspectives, focusing specifically on strategies that are relevant to navigation of tensions rather than strategies that can be employed for advancing transitions more broadly.

Table 3. Strategies for navigating tensions across the perspectives and among actors. Source: Own elaboration.

Common patterns of applying the strategies: • implements; ▾ toward; ♦ bi-directional; ° secondary involvement.

T, types of strategies; C, collaborative; F, flexible; O, offensive; D, defensive.

Most perspectives feature some offensive strategies which require access to resources and capacity and the possibility to manifest power, while flexible strategies showcase how the same means can lead to different ends (e.g., transparent modeling vs. purposefully opaque modelling). Many strategies can thus be used flexibly for adaptation to specific needs or conditions, such as ignoring fundamental inconsistencies to prevent disagreements and controversy (Korsnes et al., 2023) or strategically reconciling tensions.

Frameworks designed for reflexivity, learning and collaboration may be used both to mitigate emerging tensions (Sovacool et al., 2023; de Geus et al., 2025), and to manufacture consensus and create an illusion of participation. A frequent example of this is the superfluous action that aims to sidestep fundamental changes by making incremental concessions that showcase progress, but reinforce existing patterns (Mäkitie et al., 2023; Müller et al., 2024). A related example is delaying transitions by creating interim phases and imposing constraints on existing and emerging system configurations, which may be done either to protect land, ecosystems, and culture or to protect capital, investment, and power structures (Harry et al., 2024). This frequent double-edged nature of different transition aspects, therefore, brings to light the strategy of embracing paradoxes and learning to live with them (Sarkki et al., 2022). On the other hand, invoking some strategies also requires actively resisting others, or at least the logic that they rely on. One example is data-driven decision-making: often presented as inevitable, it may either reinforce platforms for collaboration or be used to control participation, exclude actors from specific processes, or constrain both imagined futures and identifiable impacts of various choices. Even purposefully pluriversal (i.e., acknowledging multiple worldviews) and transdisciplinary approaches that draw on insights from different disciplinary perspectives can help identify and co-design diverse and inclusive energy futures (Kostakis et al., 2023; Schismenos et al., 2020), but they can also be subject to incumbent manipulation and discursive capture (Dahlgren et al., 2024; McGookin et al., 2024; Harris et al., 2024; Mesa-Jurado et al., 2025).

Different strategies can also complement each other, given their individual limitations. For instance, the precision offered by modeling and reinforced by digitalization does not necessarily lead to better decisions (Saltelli et al., 2024), while increasing reliance on artificial intelligence for energy system optimization may also undermine trust toward and acceptance of digitally enabled energy transition pathways. Applying a broader set of ways to address tensions also requires capacities and a willingness to work with different approaches to what “green,” “just,” and “digital” entail or might entail. Ensuring that framing of tensions is not limited to a single viewpoint requires shared sensemaking, active intermediation, and iterative deliberation, rather than passive agreement, neglect or mere pursuit of alignment. Transition planning can benefit from context-specific bundles of strategies, such as integrating distributional and spatial equity objectives into techno-economic assessments (Sasse and Trutnevyte, 2019; Trotter et al., 2019) or contrasting quantitative models of transition pathways with narrative or arts-based elicitation of values and experiences (Sanz and Rodriguez-Labajos, 2021).

Artistic and narrative practices can help acknowledge wounds, surface tensions, and foster belonging, while creative methods like emotional mapping help make visible what standard sets of policy options or estimates may miss (Mesa-Jurado et al., 2025; Miller, 2024; Törnroth et al., 2022; Vervoort et al., 2024, 2022). Approaches such as simulation games (Vervoort et al., 2022) and role-play allow diverse actors to test new policies and roles while exposing the dynamics and power struggles. They can be particularly useful in conditions where there is capacity and willingness to engage in critical reflection and rethinking of established assumptions (Campisi, 2024; Fish and Zeunert, 2025). Building on this analysis and argumentation, Figure 3 outlines ways to apply different perspectives to address transition tensions, considering specific contexts and needs.

As highlighted earlier, energy transitions depend on the capacities of diverse actors to collectively navigate different values, priorities, and interpretations of transitions (Coenen et al., 2021). Actors may align on some issues and may also hold different views on others (Brush, 2020). They may choose to seek reconciliation, to engage in a struggle to preserve identity and protect interests, or to impose a certain logic and subvert the agency of others. While tensions may persist over time, they can also evolve rapidly and should be considered in terms of their dynamics over time, and how a specific point in time relates to these broader dynamics.

As demonstrated by the flexible nature of some strategies, context sensitivity helps distinguish between resistance to injustices and resistance by incumbent actors. The same strategy may be employed by actors with fundamentally different purposes, such as indigenous people resisting lithium mining and labor unions resisting coal mine closures. Strategies may also be employed simultaneously by different actors, subverting or reinforcing the efforts of each other, such as different actors striving to set a specific frame for what transitions should entail. While some actors may foster constructive and enabling processes of steering energy transitions, this does not ensure that such efforts are not strategically used by others, striving to legitimize their own goals and means. Scholars, alongside other actors, find themselves embedded in complex processes of negotiating and navigating meanings, values, and priorities (Horcea-Milcu et al., 2024), where their own standpoints and tools help construct realities, negotiate meanings, and devise the directionality of transitions, requiring continuous reflexivity.

When it comes to deciding between evidence provided by different perspectives, each of them already offers certain ways to approach other perspectives. From the perspective of governing transitions, one may strive to integrate evidence or negotiate differences through a structured dialogue and clear argumentation or strive to discuss different types of evidence through surfacing assumptions, outlining alternatives, and finding contextual solutions. This can further be reinforced via reasoning by numbers, which helps to compare claims, identify inconsistencies and ultimately help arrive at seemingly best conditional evidence, integrating criteria offered by other perspectives or sequencing them in some clear, predictable manner. While quantitative evidence can be subject to questioning and critique, its use and positioning are particularly significant in conditions where quantification is used as a means to misguide or misrepresent reality. Here, triangulating insights gained from the methods offered by constructing realities, negotiation of meanings and reasoning by numbers can provide insights that other perspectives might miss.

The power of multiple perspectives is thus in offering alternative accounts of what tensions and strategies as such stand for and providing different entry points for diagnosing and engaging with them. While the perspectives might turn out contradictory, their distinctions are also significant for making sense of the sophisticated and messy realities of energy transitions. When multiple options are are brought to the table, governance mechanisms, power structures, and preferences of those who can act play a crucial role. Even the best evidence will fail if nobody is interested or if the evidence is manipulated, and even scarce evidence and high uncertainty can serve as starting points for dialogue when other conditions allow for this. Understanding how different perspectives and strategies play out in real life is thus inseparable from the mechanisms through which specific claims are made legitimate, credible, acceptable, and thus actionable.

4.3 Legitimation mechanisms

Legitimacy, in its simplest form, refers to the recognition and acceptance that authority or power is rightfully exercised.³ Individuals, organizations, or systems use legitimation to gain and maintain the perception that they are legitimate, proper, and worthy of support. Legitimation is crucial for how people perceive authority, rules, and institutions in energy transitions. Considering the legitimacy of specific structures, procedures, and techniques (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Suchman, 1995) allows us to see how different perspectives can in themselves become tools of legitimation.

There are many approaches to legitimation, such as appeals to authority, expertise, values, or the use of narratives (Saltelli et al., 2024, 2020). Each of the perspectives outlined earlier tends toward certain forms of legitimation that provide a backdrop for the kinds of tensions that are either brought to the surface or kept in the background. Manifestations of tensions also depend on the power and mandates different actors have in society, the sources of their legitimacy, credibility, and the material and discursive practices they employ to advance those (Cash et al., 2003). How researchers position themselves in science-policy interfaces also influences the forms of legitimacy they seek to employ. Still, even within a single perspective, legitimacy is not equally distributed, e.g., actors in power may favor specific types of models that tell them what they already agree with.

While expert judgement and user preferences often remain the primary logic for model construction, participatory approaches have potential for enhancing the process legitimacy of modeling. The challenge of keeping such models comprehensible and ensuring fair prioritization of model assumptions and parameters often remains an issue that requires continuous commitment and iterative learning, rather than a single solution or a perfected approach. This involves balancing over-representation of regions with high data availability, overcoming limited consideration of the impacts on specific demographic groups (Lonergan et al., 2023), or dealing with cross-scale implications (Hofbauer et al., 2022).

Increasing transparency, fairness, and epistemic justice in participatory planning processes requires reflection on shared and individual assumptions, biases, and process limitations (McGookin et al., 2024; Lieu et al., 2020). Rather than seeking to devise an optimal set of options, strategic processes could be designed to help navigate the legitimacy, salience, and credibility of different types of evidence. As demonstrated by (Lieu et al. 2020), increasing attention to gender and intersectionality can help enhance legitimacy and diversity of transition pathways, connect them better to local realities and enhance public buy-in (Lieu et al., 2020). A governance perspective could help inform wide stakeholder uptake, while modeling can help negotiate two very similar options or refine already devised solutions.

Meanwhile, art-based approaches and recognition of diverse realities can further invoke emotional resonance and affective atonement, rather than assuming sufficiency of rational agreement. Finally, negotiating meanings offers argumentative tools for legitimation and can also safeguard against abuse of rhetoric to advance collectively undesirable outcomes.

5 Discussion

Energy transition priorities are related in complex ways, and the way we make sense of those relationships depends, among other things, on our lived experiences and analytical tools at hand. Nevertheless, the analytical work on energy transition conflicts, trade-offs, or misalignments still often reflects siloed disciplinary perspectives. The green, digital, and just aspects of the triple transition feature tensions not only among policy priorities but also among different interpretations, exposures, values, and interests embedded into transition processes occurring at different scales and speeds and experienced in multiple distinct ways.

There have been many previous attempts to classify tensions in transition contexts and ways to navigate them (Ciplet and Harrison, 2020; Sovacool et al., 2022; Ramasar et al., 2022; Newell et al., 2022; Fuso Nerini et al., 2017; Chambers et al., 2022; Heffron and McCauley, 2017; Sovacool et al., 2021a). This study does not aim to provide another all-encompassing framework. Rather, it aims to provide nuance and diversity of possibilities, without claiming analytical wholeness or perfect complementarity. In particularly, the study also seeks to mitigate the “enclosure, exclusion, encroachment, and entrenchment” that may arise with specific ways of framing transitions (Sovacool, 2021).

This paper argues for the need to treat tensions as multi-dimensional and interdependent issues that produce complex, cascading and paradoxical dynamics (Lawrence et al., 2024), where the same strategies may also be used by different actors and in different contexts to achieve different outcomes. While adopting a meta-perspective on tensions does not guarantee more streamlined resolutions or better outcomes, the ability to shift between different perspectives and recombine or sequence them in various ways can be used proactively to achieve more just and collectively desirable outcomes, as opposed to short-term solutions that benefit a few or are worse for everyone. Tensions and contestation are therefore not failures of policy design or problems to be solved via either/or choices, but constitutive features of transformations (Geels, 2020; Torrens et al., 2019), requiring learning and experimentation (Smith and Lewis, 2011).

Energy transition tensions manifest differently across specific socio-political contexts, shaped by local institutional arrangements, infrastructure inheritance, fiscal constraints, and political economies. These conditions are themselves products of historical relationships, such as between the countries of the Global North and the Global South, requiring recognition of the broader backdrop of those relations, their legacies and continuity. While this paper has relied almost exclusively on the Anglophone literature, we believe that the breadth of its coverage and insights can serve as an invitation for deeper inquiries into specific contexts and for more nuanced regional or comparative analyses.

Based on the gaps and topics of relevance identified throughout the process, we outline the following prospects for furthering research on energy transition tensions: (1) more systematic comparisons of the application of different perspectives across scales and geographies; (2) rigorous application of perspectives to single cases; (3) using diffractive methodologies to gain deeper and more nuanced insights; (4) extension, regrouping, and systematization of perspectives with focus on practical needs of specific contexts (Patterson et al., 2024); (5) development of methodological bundles of options for systematic application of perspectives; (6) more systematic comparative analysis of the concepts used for analysis of transition tensions, recognizing their multi-layered nature.

Such developments would benefit from dialogue with other recent conceptualizations, such as the systematization of transition conflicts across contexts and governance scales (Radtke and Scherhaufer, 2022), navigating various stakeholder needs, strategies, and expectations in the co-design of interventions (Klingler et al., 2025) and developing governance frameworks dealing with the complexity of energy transitions (Radtke, 2025).

6 Conclusion

The complementary framing of green, digital, and just transitions comes with the perception that they are, in a sense, equals. However, as our analysis has shown, these transition domains differ markedly in terms of their scope, priorities, and interpretations. The reviewed case studies and background literature across five perspectives outline differences in interpretations of tensions and differences in strategies that they tend to highlight.

Each perspective reveals certain tensions while obscuring others. It also identifies different sets of strategies that can be employed, providing a complex and multi-layered view of individual, group-specific and shared realities. While reasoning by numbers can offer pragmatic analyses of inequalities or mismatches, constructing realities can highlight underlying divergences in knowledge and value claims. Negotiating meanings and reimagining futures unveil how discourses can be manipulated and how different visions and experiences can be articulated, while governing transitions remains critical for decision-making, legal procedures, or collaboration.

Our paper highlights how learning to engage with tensions in diverse ways expands the range of possibilities to tackle the complexities of energy transitions, taking into account multiple contestation axes and strategies that may contradict, subvert, coexist, or support one another. Such strategies are often context-specific and may be used to accelerate, resist, or redirect change, underscoring the need for a flexible, agile, and modular repertoire, as well as particular attention to aspects of transitions that may seem obvious, until an alternative perspective is taken into consideration.

Transformation researchers and boundary spanners can use insights from different perspectives to build capacity for reflecting on how assumptions, values and commitments shape engagement with contested aspects of energy transitions. The article also highlights different entry points into understanding and navigating tensions, from attempts to quantify trade-offs and make participation more equitable, to making sense of the divergent affects and experiences related to transitions. Recognizing and acting upon the multiple domains of contestation can therefore be used to navigate transitions in reflexive, inclusive, and imaginative ways.

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Supplementary material

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Footnotes

Edited by: Ramazan Sari, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

Reviewed by: Vasilis Kostakis, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia

Louis Delannoy, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sweden

Footnotes

With the exception of several books and book chapters suggested by the co-authors.

Although, speed and justice or inclusion are not necessarily poles, as delays in action may also exacerbate divides and worsen exposure to climate extremes.

See Max Weber's types of authority in (Weber, 2019) Economy and Society: New Translation.