1. Introduction

Over 100 countries have set, or are planning to set, net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets [1]. Achieving this pace and scale of decarbonisation demands significant restructuring of national economies and societies [2]. Decarbonisation is often characterised as a uniform good, but increasing attention is being paid to the possible burdens associated with the low carbon transition (LCT) and how this might disproportionately affect already-vulnerable social groups [3,4] and create newly vulnerable groups.

The LCT has potential to generate both benefits and burdens, and there is a strong ‘winners and losers’ narrative in the literature [5–11]. Previously, LCT studies have been largely “aspatial” [12–15], though there is increasingly a so-called “spatial turn” [16] in assessments of LCTs. There is a key research gap in comprehensively exploring the spatial distribution of opportunity and opportunity costs associated with transition, and how these could intersect with existing geographical patterns of socioeconomic inequality. Spatial justice theory therefore provides additional value to the conventional “CEE framework” of climate, energy and environmental justice [17], in applying an explicitly spatial lens to the geographically variable impacts of the LCT.

We adopt a semi-systematic review methodology appropriate to integrating the diverse and interdisciplinary body of literature in this area, following Balzani and Hanlon [18].