Energy justice and policy change: An historical political analysis of the German nuclear phase-out.

Highlights • Historical institutionalism is applied to energy justice for the first time. • Critical junctures provide opportunity windows for policy actors to influence change. • Chernobyl is identified as a critical juncture in German nuclear policy. • Small businesses are a key driver of energy policy change. Abstract The German government presented the decision to phase out nuclear energy as a nationally accepted rebalancing of inequality in the energy sector. We expose how this radical change was delivered through a myriad of change agents, most notably through the rise of small energy companies. Critical junctures, in this case the Chernobyl disaster rather than Fukushima, offer moments in time when national policy systems are destabilized. They provide opportunities for changing policy in a perceived pro-energy justice direction if a new consensus can be forged. The paper concludes with a discussion on how energy scholars must engage more with policy analysis frameworks if long-term effective solutions are to be found to persistent energy inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]