Energy systems worldwide are undergoing a profound transformation. Transitions to low-carbon pathways rely on digital technologies to decarbonise and decentralise energy infrastructure. However, this digitalisation raises critical questions around data and its fair use—referred to as ‘data justice’— which remained unexplored in energy research. While justice considerations have become central to energy transitions, the specific justice challenges introduced by digitalisation demand careful attention to ensure it does not exacerbate existing injustices or create new forms of exclusion and inequality. To date, little emphasis has been placed on how digitalisation influences justice outcomes through the data generated and required by smart energy systems, and how these data-related issues might prompt a rethinking of social justice in energy contexts. This paper argues that integrating energy and data justice perspectives offers a critical starting point for addressing these emerging challenges. The study identifies justice challenges related to the production, ownership, use, and governance of data within digital energy systems. The findings demonstrate how data justice perspectives can enrich energy justice scholarship and help navigate the nuanced social and ethical complexities introduced by digitalisation. The study offers recommendations for policymakers and energy stakeholders to embed justice principles into the design and implementation of digitalised energy systems, ensuring that future energy transitions are both inclusive and equitable.

Energy and mobility transitions are often coupled with digital innovations to meet decarbonisation goals. Enthusiasm for digitalisation arises from the belief that such technologies can democratize energy and mobility supply and use, empower homeowners and communities, maximise efficiencies, and generally improve quality of life. However, realising these benefits depends upon effective inclusion, strong governance, and clear conceptions of shared responsibilities and accountability. These features can be limited in practice. This study examines social inclusion in digital energy and mobility systems through a power lens, and based on extensive, original, mixed-methods data across three comparative case studies: smart and local energy systems in Brighton (UK); smart meter-enabled energy communities in Trento (Italy); and digitalisation of urban mobility systems in Bergen (Norway). Through Gaventa's "Powercube" approach, a combined analytical and co-productive tool, the study interrogates claims of equity, justice, and improved social outcomes. It examines the state of, and potential for, inclusion in digitalised energy systems. Methodologically, the paper presents insights into the Powercube method - currently underexplored in energy and mobility transition scholarship - by analysing its strengths and weaknesses in studying these contexts. Empirically, the paper discusses the potential of digitalisation to increase energy and mobility system inclusion, and what this means for energy and social outcomes. Findings highlight that, pursued in their current forms, digitalisation of energy and mobility systems is exacerbating existing inequalities, entrenching exclusive decision practices, and creating new closed off spaces as public energy data is moved into private ownership.

In recent debates concerning labour governance in global value chains (GVCs), it has been convincingly argued that the combination of public and private governance is necessary to effectively tackle workplace labour standards. This paper contributes to this debate in two ways. First, the paper demonstrates that an effective marriage of public-private governance is conditional on periods of economic and political stability. At times of instability and crises, the effective articulation of public-private governance can very quickly erode, resulting in the de facto degradation of labour standards. The paper argues that this is primarily due to the state relaxing social welfare standards with priority given to the survival of business. Second, the paper provides additional empirical evidence, contributing to existing debates arguing that the success of the articulation of public-private governance is primarily contingent on the strength of state regulatory capacity providing the framework within which businesses are regulated. We demonstrate how the erosion of public governance in periods of crisis allows employers to develop strategies to avoid compliance with, and undermine the effectiveness of, public labour governance mechanisms. The paper makes this case by examining the Sri Lankan apparel industry during the multiple crises that dominated the period between 2019 and 2024, spanning Easter attacks, the Covid19 pandemic, a sovereign debt crisis and geo-political conflicts.

Innovations are conventionally conceptualised as one of the crucial driving factors fuelling the ‘growth machine’ of capitalism, whereas science and technology are the core of the innovations that facilitate the ‘endless’ economic growth. In the dominant economic paradigm, innovations became imperative for the survival of all forms of organisations—the creative force that brings economic dynamism and greater welfare for the broader common good. However, critical innovation and science, technology and society scholarship have challenged this orthodox position. Drawing from the recent debates within degrowth and science, technology and innovation literature, the panel explores how innovations can be theorised in post-growth societies. In other words, how can innovations be conceptualised by keeping people and the planet at the centre rather than economic growth and profit?

Fifty years ago, innovation studies researchers were critical towards the pioneering ‘Limits to Growth’ analysis of world economy–environment relations. Whilst criticism took distinct forms, their arguments shared hope in the ability of technology to decouple economic growth from environmental collapse. This idea has remained prominent in policy ever since. In revisiting that debate, however, this article recalls how critics’ hope was conditional upon a radical restructuring of political and economic relations at the international level. This was a period when Third World solidarity was pushing the United Nations towards an equitable economic order for post-colonial justice—including a global redistribution of technological capabilities and self-reliance. These hopes crumbled in the face of the neoliberal counter-revolution, and today, green growth frames technology as a device for evading, not enabling, radical political and economic change. Given the alarming fact that Limits to Growth scenarios appear more prescient than ever, what lessons can post-growth approaches to technology draw from this history?

Analysing interactions between niches and regimes is critically important for understanding sustainability transitions. What complicates interaction is the fact that sustainability is often understood and pursued differently in regimes compared to niches. That means the aims and criteria for innovation can be different on either side of the interaction. A paradox arises in which interaction will be easiest when there is already good alignment between niche and regime sustainability criteria; but such alignment will by definition not demand very great changes in the regime nor empower more radical niche experiments. In practice, four different interactions co-exist: differentiation; co-option; hybridisation; and criticism. These interactions work in both directions, can be interdependent upon one another, and influence wider change processes over time. It becomes problematic to conceive reconfiguration as a single transition process originating in niches and linking to regimes. This is illustrated with an example that contrasts sustainability in the automation regime of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) with a niche space that we call post-automation. In becoming attentive to niche-regime interactions, so the politics of sustainable transitions becomes clearer.

Después de décadas de hegemonía, el marco de la innovación orientado a la competitividad y la comercialización del conocimiento ha comenzado a ser puesto en cuestión, señalando sus dificultades para enfrentar los desafíos globales, como la crisis climática y la creciente desigualdad social. La revisión de estas ideas coincide con una nueva gran ola de cambio tecnológico encabezada por las tecnologías de automatización e inteligencia artificial. Partiendo de una revisión de la literatura sobre ciencia e innovación abierta y colaborativa, en este trabajo se reflexiona acerca del papel que deberían tener los actores emergentes en un nuevo marco de innovación y de cómo co-crear con ellos una pluralidad de modelos en torno a formas de desarrollo más democrático, justo y sustentable.

This article examines the challenges surrounding the adoption of robotic automation and 'AgTech' in glasshouse agrifood production and considers ways in which growers and technology capital are seeking to transform the organisation of work at the point of production because of digital technological interventions. The article does so by examining the deployment by growers of 'AgTech' in the glasshouse agrifood sector in the context of the labour regime centred around seasonal migrant labour supply in the UK. The article makes three main contributions. Conceptually it centres technological transformation of the workplace within the context of wider labour regimes. Second, it argues that transformations of the labour process at the point of production through the introduction of 'AgTech' are one response by growers to labour supply shortages. Third, it examines the attempts by grower capital to intensify and fragment the nature of work as a result of the introduction of 'AgTech'.