The planetary boundary framework defines a ‘safe operating space for humanity’ that requires staying within certain biophysical boundaries of the Earth system (Rockström et al., 2009). Recently, Earth system scientists and social scientists have proposed to complement these biophysical boundaries with ‘just Earth system boundaries’, which encompass three dimensions of justice – intragenerational justice, intergenerational justice, and interspecies justice (the ‘3I approach’) – that are brought together under the concept of ‘planetary justice’ (Gupta et al., 2023). This paper discusses how the emerging framework of planetary justice can contribute to the more established field of energy justice and explains the added value of introducing this framework in the context of the energy transition. 

The main method pursued to reach this objective is a combination of two literature reviews: a conceptual review of planetary justice literature and a review of reviews of energy justice literature. The paper investigates how and to what extent the conceptual approaches characteristic of energy justice and planetary justice literature can be integrated in a meaningful way, especially the triumvirate approach to energy justice – incorporating recognitional, procedural and distributive justice – and the ‘3I approach’ to planetary justice. Furthermore, it identifies lessons that can be learnt from energy justice scholarship (such as the value of a multi-scalar, intersectional approach) as well as pitfalls to avoid when articulating energy justice with planetary justice (such as a tendency to neglect intercultural ethical perspectives). 

The paper addresses two knowledge gaps. First, the notion of planetary justice is not clearly grounded on a specific account of justice (Hickey & Robeyns, 2020). By giving an overview of different conceptualizations of planetary justice in the literature, the paper provides a starting point for building a more robust normative foundation of planetary justice. Second, gender justice currently represents a blind spot in the planetary justice framework (San Martín & Wood, 2022). By linking planetary justice with energy justice, the paper investigates gender justice perspectives in the context of energy transition technologies.