Climate justice, fossil fuel lock-ins and opportunities

Abstract More than thirty years after the adoption of the UN Convention on Climate Change, fossil fuel still provides 80% of the world’s total energy consumption. The escalation in renewables makes a dent in fossil fuel use, but cannot, in itself, address the climate problem. Hence, this paper asks: What blocks the transition away from fossil fuel and what opportunities are there to phase out fossil fuel? This paper integrates the results of a five-year project discussed and debated during the Climate Change and Fossil Fuels (CLIFF) Conference in Amsterdam in November 2025. It argues that the focus on politically feasible, efficient, short-term win–win solutions has exacerbated the global ability to manage climate change; and that without a just approach the climate problem cannot be addressed. Using the frame of climate system justice and lock-in, the paper identifies ten overlapping systemic lock-ins (profitability, discursive, legal, investment, economic/fiscal, infrastructural, labour, behavioural, political, professional) that operate at multiple levels of governance and across different domains. The paper identifies different strategies to unlock these different lock-ins across the different domains. Unlocking the lock-ins requires scientists, social movements and large-scale social and political mobilization to support these ideas as they clearly go against the business-as-usual and incremental policy processes. These ideas can be supported by the judiciary which holds states responsible for climate action and argues that continuing to use fossil fuel can be an internationally wrongful act.