The energy transition's double democratic gap: Household needs and regulatory realities in energy policy in the United States' South

Energy governance has long relied on an interest-group-representation model of procedural justice, which centers active participation in technocratic decision-making processes as its primary mode of democratic engagement. This study investigates the limits of that model in addressing racialized energy insecurity in the United States' South. We theorize and demonstrate what we term a double democratic governance gap between the needs of energy vulnerable households, the policy positions of advocates, and regulatory outcomes in southern energy policy. Drawing on 51 semi-structured interviews with self-identified energy vulnerable households in South Carolina and Tennessee, we compare household perspectives with the issues raised and decided in core energy regulatory proceedings. We show that energy vulnerable households' priorities of affordability and solar access rarely surface in energy proceedings, as regulators' and participants' deference to technocratic frameworks for resource planning and ratemaking sidelines households' pressing needs. This democratic exclusion of energy vulnerable households results in a systematic denial of distributional, procedural, recognition and epistemic justice. Building on growing scholarship on energy democracy, we argue that addressing energy unaffordability and ensuring a just energy transition requires more place-based, granular attention to the material needs of, and participatory possibilities for, energy vulnerable households in their regional institutional contexts.