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Scenarios are a fundamental tool in planning sustainability and energy transitions. They help policymakers  explore future possibilities and define roadmaps for reducing emissions and achieving long-term goals.
However, most current energy transitions scenarios are developed through integrated assessment models that focus primarily on technical, economic, and environmental variables. While these models are important, they often fail to reflect the real-world challenges that determine whether policies can actually be implemented.

To bridge this “feasibility gap,” the SPES project undertook a series of structured stakeholder consultations  between 2024 and 2025 across seven countries – France, Hungary, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan – and at the EU level. The aim was to better understand which barriers policymakers and practitioners consider most critical to implementation, and how these barriers play out across highly diverse socio-economic and institutional contexts.

A rapid, inclusive, and deep transformation of energy systems is essential not only to meet climate targets, but to safeguard planetary health and to foster sustainable human development.

Policy Recommendations

1. Mainstream sociopolitical feasibility in scenario modelling.

Transition scenarios must incorporate governance capacity, institutional barriers, and political economy constraints. This includes modelling social acceptance thresholds and mapping stakeholder influence.

2. Adopt inclusive, multistakeholder transition planning.

Early and sustained engagement with supranational, national, regional and local stakeholders improves legitimacy, alignment, responsiveness and impact of policy and funding measures. Structured, regular and meaningful participatory processes, including social and civil dialogue at all levels, should consistently shape policy design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

3. Invest in governance capacity and cross-sector coordination.

Strengthen the administrative, technical, and financial capacity of public institutions to manage fair energy transitions. Establish mechanisms to ensure horizontal and vertical coordination among governmental institutions.

4. Design and adequately finance socially equitable policies, and ensure they are well communicated.

Ensure that cost and benefit distribution is fair, balanced and well-communicated. Address affordability barriers through targeted redistributional support, with a specific focus on vulnerable households, and anticipate as well as adequately respond to public concerns to avoid backlash.

5. Enhance labor market preparedness and quality jobs for green transitions.

Strongly invest in education, training and skills development, reskilling and upskilling to meet the demands of new sectors that facilitate energy transitions. Support workforce mobility and anticipate mismatches through labour market forecasting.

6. Strengthen supply chain resilience and domestic capacity.

Develop industrial policies that reduce reliance on external suppliers for critical technologies. Prioritise strategic sectors for local production and innovation.

Policy Recommendations for the EU

1. Strengthen multilevel governance and stakeholder engagement.

Achieving a fair and effective energy transition requires strong, inclusive governance at all levels. Member States
should develop dedicated action plans for underperforming sectors and scale proven models – such as Finland’s energy
aid, Spain’s Just Transition framework, or Estonia’s territorial transition plans. Cross sector coherence must be ensured through alignment across policy and legislative instruments like the Clean Industrial Deal and Just Transition Directive. At the same time, local governments should be actively engaged in transition planning to enhance ownership and implementation capacity. Structured and permanent dialogue with unions, workers, and civil society is also essential to build trust, legitimacy, and long-term accountability.

2. Strengthen the implementation of existing EU energy transition frameworks without delay.

There are concerns about a slowing down of implementation efforts and even rolling back of key energy transition and climate policies. For instance, Member States have been sluggish in implementing rules on energy efficiency of buildings. The EU and Member States should implement recently adopted policies and regulations without delays or reduced ambition.

3. Fill policy gaps to ensure a fair energy transition.

EU and Member States should fill several policy gaps, such as further supporting energy mix diversification to avoid overreliance on imports, building on RePowerEU, and reforming the electricity market design to ensure stable, affordable pricing and reflect energy’s role as an essential service. Simple high-impact national actions, such as speed limits or corporate fleet rules mandating electric vehicles, could help curb emissions

4. Significantly strengthen public and private investment to achieve fair energy transitions.

There are significant investment gaps to be filled to achieve fair energy transitions. Frontloading of investments should be accelerated to speed up the transition and increase funding and incentives for domestic renewable deployment. Coordination between funding instruments, such as ESF+, Cohesion Funds and the Social Climate Fund,
should also be improved to ensure they work synergistically and avoid policy patchworks. Focusing investments on improving the energy efficiency and quality of buildings could result in substantial health and economic advantages.

5. Improve the acceptability of the energy transition through expanded targeted support, especially
to vulnerable households.

A fair energy transition requires long-term structural support. The Social Climate Fund should be expanded beyond 2032, with increased co-financing rates and front-loaded EU ETS 2 revenues to provide early relief. A share of carbon revenues should be earmarked for targeted measures for low-income households, such as climate dividends, low interest loans, and energy upgrade subsidies. Social conditionalities should be embedded in funding to prioritise the most affected groups. Renovation programs must also include safeguards to prevent displacement of vulnerable tenants, and minimum consumption thresholds at a lower rate could be used to curb energy poverty without discouraging efficiency.

6. Ensure strong polluters are taxed proportionately.

Wealthier households are often stronger contributors to pollution because of their energy usage and travel frequency; however, the existing systems tend to disadvantage low-income communities that face challenges
in adopting sustainable energy options. The taxation system should be redesigned to tax activities with pollution levels effectively,proportionately and fairly.

Policy Recommendations for the Global South

1. Align national energy transition plans with local development priorities.

Governments should integrate clean energy and climate goals into broader development and poverty-reduction strategies, recognizing co-benefits for health, employment, and productivity. In Kenya, stakeholders emphasized aligning transition plans with Vision 2030, medium-term national development plans, and county-level integrated development plans. In Pakistan,participants stressed the importance of anchoring just transition initiatives within
national economic planning to ensure longterm buy-in.

2. Establish multistakeholder platforms for inclusive planning and accountability.

Governments should institutionalize consultative mechanisms that bring together civil society, subnational governments, legislature, youth, academia, and the private sector to inform policy development, implementation, reporting and monitoring. In Nigeria, participants highlighted the absence of structured forums for stakeholder engagement, leading to limited public ownership of reforms such as fuel subsidy removal. Kenya’s county-level engagement structures could offer a model for more decentralized consultation and follow-up.

3. Strengthen the capacity of public institutions to deliver transition programs.

Energy ministries and regulatory authorities must be equipped with the skills, data systems, and financial autonomy needed to manage transition efforts effectively. In Pakistan, weak coordination between energy and finance ministries was cited as a major bottleneck. In Kenya and Nigeria, participants flagged the need for capacity-building at both national and subnational levels to manage decentralized renewable energy deployment and climate finance access.

4. Modernize and decentralize grid infrastructure to enable renewable integration and crossborder energy trade.

Governments should prioritize investment in national grid upgrades and establish regulatory frameworks to support distributed energy generation. Stakeholders in Pakistan highlighted the need to expand access through micro-grids in underserved areas and improve grid resilience to accommodate variable renewables. In both African and Asian contexts, harmonizing technical standards across countries would facilitate regional electricity trade and unlock the potential for cross-border collaboration in clean energy development.

5. Expand targeted support for vulnerable households.

Ensure affordability and protect low-income groups from the short-term impacts of transition policies. This includes scaling up social protection programs and tariff reform compensation schemes. For example, several Nigerian and Pakistani participants recommended using digital cash transfer platforms (already piloted in other sectors) to mitigate the effects of subsidy reforms or rising electricity costs. Stakeholders in Kenya also called for lifeline electricity tariffs for low-consumption users.

6. Strengthen green skills and support local enterprise development.

workforce development with enterprise support. This includes expanding vocational training and apprenticeships in renewable energy, clean cooking, building retrofits, and other emerging sectors. In Nigeria, stakeholders emphasized the importance of including informal sector workers – such as mechanics, masons, and welders – in upskilling initiatives. In both Kenya and Nigeria, support for green Technical and Vocational Education and Training programs was seen as vital to unlocking youth employment potential. At the same time, governments should facilitate the
participation of local entrepreneurs and SMEs in clean energy markets by easing licensing and procurement barriers, as in Kenya, and by introducing targeted credit lines and public procurement quotas, as recommended by stakeholders in Nigeria and Pakistan.

These Policy Recommendations are part of the seventh Policy Brief delivered by the SPES Consortium