Energy and climate transitions bear an inherent risk of replicating historically embedded unjust gendered norms in the current energy regimes. Positioning our work within critical feminist scholarship, our study emphasizes the embedded nature of energy technologies within respective socio-economic, institutional and cultural contexts. We argue that interventions prioritizing care and knowledge in decentralized, locally managed energy provisioning have the potential to disrupt established gender relations.

This case study contributes to providing an understanding of the systematic inertias in the sociotechnical energy system that appear to be hindering the development and implementation of gender aware energy policies. The case study focuses on a condition known as ‘energy poverty’ and how it is currently addressed in the context of the Netherlands.