Governance and Social Impact of Coal Regions under Transition

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The European Union is faced with enormous energy challenges regarding, climate change, energy security as well as, public acceptance, competitiveness, and energy poverty. Transitions towards low-carbon energy systems and net-zero economies, have started to be comprehensive and demanding, requiring substantial public support, new business models and new governance practices. Coal regions are the ones, where the Energy Transition is strongly linked to risks and potentially negative economic impacts for municipalities and regions, for companies and individual workers. To make the energy transition work in the light of a Just Transition Process – following the guiding principle of “leaving no one behind”. SITRANS project is addressing a) the need for assessing the economic and social impact of the energy transition at the regional and intra-regional level and b) the need for the development of an effective model of governance of just transition which incorporates a place-based approach. Given that just transition plans include a number of important transformational policies and transformational plans, the crucial question that arises is whether regional and central policy makers have the tools to evaluate these transformational policies and transformative projects. In this regard, SITRANS is setting up a fully functioning Energy Observatory the Just Energy Transition Observatory because it is necessary to design, host and monitoring evaluation models based on predefined indicators and criteria that will be jointly defined in the context of public consultation. This will ensure on the one hand the objectivity on the basis of commonly agreed indicators and objectives and on the other hand the legitimacy and acceptance of both strategic policies and specific investment plans.