Mapping justice in low-carbon experimentation: case of the projectified built environment planning in Finland

Low-carbon policies targeting energy efficiency in the built environment have emerged as key strategies to achieve ambitious climate mitigation goals. Often, local low-carbon actions have centred around experimentation, owing to the projectification of climate governance. Although experimentation has value in supporting social learning and breaking path dependencies, there is little reflexivity on what is being experimented on and how societally important issues, such as justice and equity, are considered. This paper identifies 1,386 experiments in Finland between 1995 and 2025 and provides a detailed mapping of 204 low-carbon experiments, including the type of experiment, focus on low-carbon action, and consideration of social justice in projectified governance. The findings highlight the dominance of socio-technical niche experimentation, mainly focused on the operational energy of buildings. Social justice is taken into consideration in the context of experimentation, as publicly implemented low-carbon experiments are often conducted among vulnerable citizens, such as those in social housing, schools, or elderly people’s homes. Increased focus on embodied energy and procedural justice in experimentation is required to align experimental projects with long-term goals of equitable and just transition policies. While justice considerations were present in most experiments, they functioned primarily as contextual characteristics rather than explicit design objectives.