The academic interpretation of the concept of just transitions has evolved considerably over the last two decades. What was generally addressed in academic research in a technocratic way, with a primary focus on job replacement and the costs thereof, has given way to broader societal thinking around the need to address injustice in legacy energy systems. Research produced by advocacy organizations and the lay-press has been especially practical with respect to policy recommendations; yet, the social-economic interactions of fossil energy in specific communities are not well studied or understood. Thus, when legacy fossil communities are disrupted as part of the energy transition, society lacks the understanding necessary for immediate, effective policy decisions about how to best respond. Here, we argue that further tools based in inter-disciplinary science, social science, and humanities approaches need to be adopted to evaluate communities’ experiences with transitions and to better design and implement policy and regulation.

在过去的二十年里，对公正过渡概念的学术解释有了很大的发展。在学术研究中通常以技术官僚的方式解决的问题，主要关注工作替代及其成本，已经让位于更广泛的社会思考，需要解决遗留能源系统中的不公正问题。倡导组织和非专业媒体进行的研究在政策建议方面特别实用；然而，化石能源在特定社区中的社会经济相互作用还没有得到很好的研究或理解。因此，当传统化石社区作为能源转型的一部分被打乱时，社会缺乏必要的理解，无法立即做出有效的政策决策，即如何最好地做出反应。这里，