Mapping the Nexus of Climate Resilience, Investment, Land Use, and Energy Justice in Energy Transition Regions: A Review

Abstract

Energy transition regions (ETRs) face simultaneous pressures as decarbonisation policies intersect climate hazards, land-use constraints, and economic uncertainty. Although research on renewable energy deployment, climate vulnerability, spatial planning, and investment behaviour has expanded, these topics often remain disconnected, limiting their usefulness for guiding regional energy strategies. This review applies a structured, PRISMA-informed (but not protocol-registered) search and screening process, combining bibliometric mapping with qualitative thematic synthesis. In total, 231 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025 were analysed to identify how climate-related risks, financial conditions, and territorial constraints jointly influence energy system choices in ETRs. Four major themes emerge: climate risk and infrastructure vulnerability, investment dynamics and policy stability, land-use governance and siting conflicts, and renewable energy system integration. Across these areas, common challenges include the impact of extreme events on system reliability, the influence of policy uncertainty on capital flows, and the role of land scarcity in shaping technology mixes. To link these dimensions, this study proposes the Resilience–Investment–Land Nexus (RILN), a framework that describes how climate exposure, investment risk, spatial suitability, and social acceptance interact to shape transition pathways. The results highlight the need for climate-informed planning, stable regulatory environments, and stronger spatial decision-support tools. It also identifies gaps in integrating climate risk, land-use modelling, and investment analysis and offers directions for future work on resilient, region-specific energy transitions.

1. Introduction

Energy transition regions (ETRs) are territories characterised by structural economic dependence on long-standing carbon-intensive activities, such as coal mining, hydrocarbon extraction, heavy industry, renewable megaprojects, or large hydropower cascades that are being restructured in line with decarbonisation and climate-neutrality goals [1]. ETRs face simultaneous and interdependent challenges, such as phasing out fossil-fuel infrastructures, deploying new renewable capacities, addressing socio-economic vulnerabilities, navigating complex land-use conflicts, managing path-dependent economic structures, and mitigating social vulnerability in combination with ambitious climate and energy targets [2,3,4,5,6,7]. These challenges extend well beyond technological substitution, given that decarbonisation pathways are shaped by the interaction of climate risks, geopolitical tensions, land-use pressures, investment conditions, governance capacity, and social legitimacy. In recent years, these interactions have become more pronounced as climate impacts intensify, renewable deployment accelerates, and competition for land and capital increases across multiple sectors. At the same time, the global push for low-carbon development, circular economy practices, and new forms of sustainable finance reshapes the conditions under which investments in energy systems and related infrastructures can be made [1,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. In this context, ETRs are not peripheral spaces but key testbeds for how climate-resilient and socially acceptable energy transitions can be designed and implemented.

A growing body of research has examined individual dimensions of this transformation. Studies on climate resilience and vulnerability have documented how droughts, heatwaves, floods, and wildfires affect energy infrastructure reliability, system performance, and demand patterns [18,19,20]. Parallel strands of literature focus on renewable energy deployment and system integration, highlighting technical challenges related to intermittency, grid capacity, storage, and system optimisation under environmental constraints [16,21]. At the same time, economic and policy-oriented research has emphasised the role of investment dynamics, financial risk, and regulatory stability in shaping the pace and spatial distribution of energy transitions [17,22,23].

Climate hazards are already altering the conditions for energy production, transmission, and demand in many of these territories. Droughts and shifting hydrological patterns affect the performance of hydro-dependent systems and thermal plants reliant on water for cooling [12,24,25]. Heatwaves and changing temperature profiles modify electricity demand patterns and reduce the efficiency of generation and transmission assets [18,20,26]. Coastal and riverine regions face increasing risks from flooding and storm surges, which can threaten energy infrastructure, critical facilities, and settlement patterns [19,20,27,28,29]. Territorial climate strategies and adaptation plans highlight the need to integrate such climate-risk information into long-term planning and investment decisions, yet this integration remains uneven across countries and regions [30,31,32,33].

Land and territorial constraints further complicate the development of low-carbon energy systems in ETRs. The deployment of wind, solar, storage, and grid infrastructure requires space that is often already claimed by agriculture, forestry, conservation, tourism, or urban expansion [7,34,35,36]. Siting studies show how zoning rules, setback distances, environmental designations, and local regulations can significantly narrow the set of technically and socially acceptable locations for new renewable energy projects [35,36,37,38,39,40]. In rural and peri-urban contexts, renewable plants and associated business models can reconfigure land values and local economies, creating both opportunities for new forms of development and conflicts over landscape change [4,41]. Urban and regional planning instruments are slowly beginning to reflect these tensions but often do so in parallel to, rather than fully integrated with, energy system planning [33,42,43,44,45].

Financial conditions and policy signals are equally important in shaping transition pathways. Empirical work links renewable energy investment to perceptions of financial risk, institutional quality, and the stability of climate and energy policies [1,17,46,47,48,49]. Green finance instruments, including green bonds, specialised credit lines, and taxonomy-aligned investment frameworks, are expanding, but their effectiveness depends on regulatory clarity and credible long-term transition strategies [23,50,51,52,53]. In many cases, uncertainty about carbon-pricing trajectories, environmental regulation, or climate policy ambition constrains capital flows or raises the cost of equity for low-carbon projects [13,22,54,55]. At the same time, there is growing recognition that digital technologies and financial innovation, including green fintech, can help manage risk, improve disclosure, and support more resilient investment decisions in the energy sector [51,56,57,58].

Social and spatial justice concerns run through these developments. ETRs are often marked by legacies of socio-economic dependence on carbon-intensive activities and by unequal exposure to both environmental degradation and climate risk [5,7,59,60]. Research on energy justice and just transition has emphasised that distributional, procedural, and recognition aspects of change must be considered alongside technical and economic metrics [60,61,62,63,64]. Community-based and cooperative renewable energy initiatives, as well as nature-based and ecosystem-oriented solutions, can offer alternative development pathways, but their feasibility depends on governance arrangements, access to finance, and the design of participation mechanisms [4,42,65,66,67]. In tourism-dependent, island, and rural regions, perceptions of fairness, place attachment, and place identity further influence how energy projects and wider transition strategies are received [41,68,69,70].

Despite this rich and rapidly growing body of work, the literature remains fragmented across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. Climate-risk studies often focus on physical exposure and system performance, with limited attention to financial constraints or land-use conflicts [12,19,28,71]. Analyses of green and climate finance frequently centre on national or sector-wide indicators, without fully capturing the territorial specificities and infrastructural legacies of ETRs [1,17,23,46,48]. Spatial planning and land-use studies examine zoning, regulatory frameworks, and conflicts around siting but only occasionally integrate detailed energy system modelling or investment behaviour [35,36,38,39,40,44]. Work on energy justice and just transitions, in turn, tends to highlight socio-political processes and distributional outcomes, often in parallel to, rather than integrated with, system design and investment analysis [59,60,61,62,63,64]. This separation makes it difficult to understand how climate risk, land constraints, financial conditions, and justice considerations jointly shape feasible energy pathways in specific regions.

There is therefore a need for an integrative perspective that can connect these strands and support decision-making in contexts where multiple pressures interact. While existing studies have examined climate resilience, energy investment, and land-use governance through parallel or partially overlapping analytical lenses, no unified framework has explicitly conceptualised their combined and reciprocal interactions in energy transition regions. In ETRs, questions about technology portfolios, siting strategies, network reinforcement, storage and flexibility options, as well as employment, local development, and ecosystem protection, are closely interdependent [3,72,73,74,75]. Approaches inspired by systems thinking, nexus methodologies, and adaptive pathways planning suggest ways of dealing with complexity and uncertainty but have not yet been systematically applied to the combined challenges of climate risk, land availability, investment dynamics, and justice in energy transitions [20,28,76,77,78]. What is missing is a framework that explicitly links these dimensions and enables empirical findings from different domains to be interpreted within a common analytical language.

Against this background, there is a clear need for an integrative perspective capable of connecting climate risk, land-use constraints, investment dynamics, and justice considerations within a single analytical framework. In energy transition regions, decisions regarding technology portfolios, infrastructure siting, grid reinforcement, storage options, and flexibility measures are inseparable from spatial planning choices, financial conditions, governance capacity, and societal acceptance [40,60]. While systems thinking, nexus approaches, and adaptive pathways planning offer useful conceptual foundations [19,28,79], they have rarely been applied in a way that explicitly captures the joint influence of climate vulnerability, territorial constraints, and investment behaviour on regional energy transitions [22,23,64,79]. Building on this synthesis, the paper develops and introduces the Resilience–Investment–Land Nexus (RILN) as a novel conceptual framework proposed by the authors.

This paper addresses the following research question: How can energy transition regions optimise energy investment strategies by integrating justice, climate resilience, and vulnerability considerations into spatial planning and decision-making frameworks? Justice is included here because distributional and procedural dimensions shape social acceptance and governance legitimacy, which in turn influence permitting outcomes and the feasibility of investment strategies in energy transition regions. To answer this question, the study synthesises evidence from 231 peer-reviewed publications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125,126,127,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143,144,145,146,147,148,149,150,151,152,153,154,155,156,157,158,159,160,161,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,170,171,172,173,174,175,176,177,178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188,189,190,191,192,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,202,203,204,205,206,207,208,209,210,211,212,213,214,215,216,217,218,219,220,221,222,223,224,225,226,227,228,229,230,231] spanning energy systems analysis, climate adaptation and resilience, spatial and land-use governance, environmental and energy economics, green and climate finance, and energy justice research. Rather than treating these domains in isolation, the study examines how their interactions shape feasible transition pathways in regions undergoing structural change.

Section 2 describes the PRISMA-informed search and screening process and the bibliometric and qualitative synthesis methods used in this review. Section 3 synthesises the literature into four clusters. Section 4 elaborates on the RILN framework. Section 5 provides a cross-cutting discussion and outlines policy implications. Section 6 concludes.

2. Materials and Methods

This study adopts a structured literature review design, combining a PRISMA-informed search and screening process with bibliometric analysis and qualitative thematic synthesis. While bibliometric methods are used to map publication trends and thematic structures, the primary contribution of the review lies in the integrative qualitative analysis and the development of an analytical framework that synthesises insights across disciplinary boundaries.

Building on the conceptual synthesis outlined in the preceding section, the review employs the Resilience–Investment–Land Nexus (RILN) as the analytical framework guiding the structuring, screening, and interpretation of the literature. RILN is introduced in this review as a novel integrative framework, synthesising insights from previously separate strands of literature on climate resilience, spatial planning, energy investment, and justice, rather than reproducing an existing model. The framework is designed to capture systemic relationships between climate hazards and environmental pressures, land availability and spatial governance, financial risk and policy signals, and governance and justice outcomes.

Rather than functioning as a prescriptive model, RILN provides a structured lens through which fragmented empirical findings can be interpreted consistently. In methodological terms, the framework supports the identification of leverage points for policy and planning by highlighting how investment decisions, land-use choices, and climate-resilience measures co-evolve and condition the social legitimacy and long-term viability of energy transitions in territorially diverse contexts. To operationalise this framework within the review process, the literature was organised using four conceptual blocks reflecting the core analytical dimensions underpinning RILN (

Table 1. Conceptual building blocks underpinning the analytical framework (RILN) adopted in this study. The blocks represent thematic domains used to structure the synthesis and interpretation of the literature, rather than the operational search syntax. Details of database queries and screening procedures are provided in the Section 2 and the Appendix A.

Block A—Energy Transition (ET)	Includes more than 40 controlled synonyms such as “energy transition”, “clean energy transition”, “low-carbon transition”, “renewable energy transition”, “post-coal transition”, “decarbonisation/decarbonization”, “carbon neutrality”, “energy system transformation”, “transition pathway”. This block ensures broad coverage of decarbonisation processes in ETRs.
Block B—Energy Investment (EI)	Includes terms such as “energy investment”, “renewable energy investment”, “green investment”, “capital investment (energy)”, “FDI in renewable energy”, “energy investment risk”, and “investment in clean technology”. This block captures financial, economic, and decision-making studies.
Block C—Climate Resilience and Vulnerability (CRV)	Includes more than 50 resilience-related terms, such as “climate resilience/resilient”, “climate vulnerability”, “physical climate risk”, “extreme weather events”, “climate hazard”, “drought risk”, “resilience governance”, “adaptation planning”, “climate-resilient infrastructure”. This ensures strong coverage of climate hazard modelling and resilience assessments.
Block D—Geospatial Analysis and Governance (GAG)	Includes more than 40 spatial governance terms, including “geospatial”, “GIS-based analysis”, “spatial modelling”, “land-use planning”, “territorial governance”, “spatial decision support system (SDSS)”, “land-use management”, “spatial data infrastructure”, and “geospatial governance”. This block captures the spatial constraints essential for understanding ETRs.

).

It should be pointed out here that energy justice was included as a search dimension because justice-related concerns, such as procedural inclusion, distributional equity, and recognition, have been shown to influence social acceptance, governance stability, and ultimately investment feasibility in energy transition regions.

2.1. Review Design and Analytical Orientation

This study adopts an integrative review approach. Such methodologies are well-suited to sustainability and energy-transition research, where evidence spans multiple disciplines and methodological traditions (e.g., [21,121,218]). Here, instead of pursuing a bibliometric mapping or citation-network analysis as a primary objective, the study performs a thematic synthesis and relational interpretation, consistent with framework-oriented reviews in energy policy and regional transition studies (e.g., [3,221]).

The analytical orientation is grounded in the premise that transitions in ETRs emerge from interacting subsystems, i.e., climate risk and environmental pressures, spatial and land-use constraints, investment and financial conditions, and governance and justice processes, which are often examined separately in the literature (e.g., [60,61,64]). Addressing these interactions requires a synthesis strategy capable of linking empirical findings across domains rather than ranking or quantifying publication patterns. Accordingly, this review does not aim to exhaustively identify or statistically aggregate all available evidence but to synthesise and structure fragmented findings across disciplines into an integrative analytical framework.

2.2. Scope Definition and Literature Selection

The scope of the review was defined to capture studies addressing energy transitions under conditions of structural economic change, spatial constraint, and climate risk, with particular attention to regions characterised by fossil-fuel dependence, large-scale energy infrastructure, or accelerated low-carbon restructuring (e.g., [4,5,7]). The review primarily covers peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2015 and 2025, while also incorporating earlier foundational contributions that provide essential conceptual or methodological grounding (e.g., [18,124]). The 2015–2025 window was selected to align with the post-Paris Agreement period and with the observed expansion of interdisciplinary research explicitly linking energy transitions with climate vulnerability, governance arrangements, and investment risk—central dimensions of this review.

Literature was identified through structured searches in the Scopus database, commonly used in energy and environmental research. Search strings combined terms related to energy transition and decarbonisation with keywords associated with climate risk and resilience, spatial planning and land use, investment and finance, governance, and justice. Full database-specific search strings and keyword combinations are reported in Appendix A (

Table A1. Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Category	Inclusion Criteria	Exclusion Criteria
Database Source	Articles retrieved from Scopus, offering interdisciplinary coverage across energy, climate, and policy	Articles not sourced from Scopus or lacking academic indexing
Publication Type	Peer-reviewed journal articles with final publication status	Preprints, early access articles, reports, book chapters, or conference papers
Language	Written in English	Articles in other languages
Access Type	Open-access articles prioritised for transparency and reuse	Closed-access articles accepted only if conceptually critical
Publication Date	Published between 2015 and 2025	Published before 2015 or scheduled after 2025

) to ensure transparency and replicability without disrupting the narrative flow of the main text.

2.3. Screening Procedure and Inclusion Criteria

The initial search returned a broad set of records, which were screened through a multi-stage process. Titles and abstracts were first assessed to exclude studies clearly unrelated to energy systems, territorial transitions, or climate and sustainability challenges. Full-text screening was subsequently conducted to ensure that retained studies provided substantive analytical insights into at least one of the core dimensions relevant to ETRs.

Inclusion in the final corpus was based on analytical relevance rather than methodological homogeneity. Quantitative modelling studies, qualitative case studies, policy analyses, comparative assessments, and conceptual contributions were all considered, provided they examined climate hazards and vulnerability affecting energy systems [12,24], spatial planning and land-use constraints shaping energy infrastructure deployment [35,38,40], investment dynamics and financial risk [17,23,46], or governance, justice, and participation processes [60,61,63].

This process resulted in a final review dataset of 231 peer-reviewed studies. A detailed overview of the screening logic and selection outcomes is provided in Appendix A (Figure A1; Table A1).

2.4. Data Extraction and Thematic Coding

Initial coding categories were informed by transition and resilience frameworks, emphasising climate risk, spatial constraints, investment conditions, and governance capacity [20,28,78]. Subsequent iterations refined these categories and identified cross-cutting mechanisms such as policy coherence, uncertainty management, decision-support tools, and stakeholder participation [76,77,226]. This iterative coding process allowed patterns, relationships, and recurring analytical dimensions to be identified systematically while remaining open to themes not anticipated at the outset of the review, and the resulting thematic structure informed both the qualitative synthesis and the development of the Resilience–Investment–Land Nexus (RILN) framework. A full Boolean search strategy logic is reported in Appendix A (

Table A2. The Boolean search structure.

Single-block Boolean searches (A, B, C, D)	Each block was executed independently in Scopus using the extended synonym sets. Example structure (ET): ("energy transition" OR "clean energy transition" OR "low-carbon transition" … OR "zero-carbon transition") AND PUBYEAR > 2014 AND PUBYEAR < 2026 AND (LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, "j")) AND (LIMIT-TO (PUBSTAGE, "final")) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "ENER" OR "ENGI" OR "SOCI" OR "ECON" OR "ENVI")) Counts: ET: 81,800, EI: 20,552, CRV: 146,830, GAG: 303,874
Two-block intersections (AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD)	To ensure relevance to ETRs, intersections were required. Examples: ET ∩ EI (AB): 7334. ET ∩ CRV (AC): 9905. ET ∩ GAG (AD): 11,422. EI ∩ CRV (BC): 2823. EI ∩ GAG (BD): 2604. CRV ∩ GAG (CD): 38,733. These intersections ensure no single-domain papers enter the review.
Three-block intersections	The review emphasised studies addressing at least two, and preferably three, domains. Counts: ET ∩ EI ∩ CRV (ABC): 1351. ET ∩ CRV ∩ GAG (ACD): 2508. EI ∩ CRV ∩ GAG (BCD): 580. ET ∩ EI ∩ GAG (ABD): 1051. These studies represent the most integrative segment of the literature.
Full intersection (ABCD)	The most restrictive Boolean filter yielded ET ∩ EI ∩ CRV ∩ GAG (ABCD): 239 studies. These 239 studies formed the conceptual backbone of the review and the first screening pool.

).

Given the scale and disciplinary breadth of the review dataset, findings are synthesised thematically rather than attributed to individual studies on a one-to-one basis. Tables in Section 3, therefore, summarise dominant mechanisms and recurring patterns identified across groups of studies within each thematic cluster. Full mappings between individual studies, thematic codes, and cluster dimensions are documented in Appendix A.

2.5. Synthesis Strategy and Framework Development

The synthesis phase focused on identifying systemic interactions across thematic domains rather than aggregating results by method or region. Comparative analysis enabled the identification of recurring mechanisms, such as the influence of climate risk on investment behaviour through policy uncertainty or insurance costs, and the role of land-use governance in shaping social acceptance and financing conditions for renewable energy projects [4,22,35].

Based on this integrative synthesis, the proposed RILN framework was developed as a conceptual structure linking climate and environmental pressures, spatial and land-use constraints, investment and financial dynamics, and governance and justice outcomes. Similar framework-building approaches have been employed in energy-transition and climate-adaptation research to bridge disciplinary divides and support decision-making under uncertainty [3,20,55]. Exploratory quantitative mappings used during the analytical process, involving (a) documents by year, (b) documents by subject area, (c) documents by country or territory, and (d) the VOSviewer version 1.6.20 co-occurrence network, are documented in Appendix A (Figure A2, Figure A3, Figure A4 and Figure A5).

2.6. Methodological Considerations and Limitations

As with any integrative review analysis, certain limitations should be acknowledged. The focus on peer-reviewed journal literature may underrepresent practitioner reports or grey literature relevant in specific regional contexts. In addition, the diversity of methods and case-study designs limits the direct comparability of quantitative results. These limitations are well recognised in reviews of complex socio-technical systems [151,218] and are mitigated here through a synthesis strategy that prioritises relational insights and cross-domain consistency over statistical aggregation. Depth within individual technological or national contexts is necessarily limited by the integrative scope of the review, which prioritises cross-domain mechanisms over single-sector optimisation.

Additional methodological details, including the full Boolean search architecture, PRISMA-based screening procedures, and exploratory publication trend analyses conducted to contextualise the literature corpus, are provided in Appendix A.

3. Results

3.1. Structure of the Reviewed Literature and Analytical Clustering

The analysis of 231 peer-reviewed studies showed that the research field is characterised by both fragmentation and an increasing integration across different domains. The energy transition in ETRs is viewed not only as a technological change but also as a process that is deeply rooted in the geographical context. These transitions are influenced by factors such as climate risk, spatial limitations, investment ecosystems, and governance capacities [3,18,21,60,61,64,125,218,221].

The literature was organised into four main clusters, based on exploratory mapping (detailed in Appendix A.2) and further refined through thematic synthesis. These clusters highlight key themes and mechanisms:

• RED: climate risk, vulnerability assessment, and adaptation;
• BLUE: investment dynamics, green finance, and policy uncertainty;
• YELLOW: spatial governance, land-use conflict, and territorial planning;
• GREEN: energy system integration and renewables.

Although analytically distinct, the clusters exhibit strong interdependencies, reflecting the systemic nature of transitions in ETRs [20,28,79,151].

3.2. Cluster RED—Climate Risk, Vulnerability Assessment, and Adaptation Dynamics

The RED cluster primarily focuses on studies that examine how climate change impacts exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity in energy-relevant systems and regions. This body of work consistently identifies droughts, heatwaves, floods, and wildfires as significant contributors to infrastructure stress, altered demand patterns, and reduced system reliability. These factors affect both supply-side and demand-side dynamics [19,20,27,28,29,140]. A significant portion of the literature examines hydro-climatic impacts, particularly the sensitivity of hydropower systems and thermoelectric cooling to variations in precipitation, drought frequency, and extreme temperature events. These impacts extend beyond generation losses, affecting regional energy security, operational costs, and long-term investment risks [12,24,70,98]. Additionally, climate extremes have been shown to worsen energy poverty and demand volatility, especially in regions with vulnerable housing and limited capacity to adapt [26,72,112].

As synthesised in

Table 2. Core findings in cluster RED—climate risk, vulnerability, and adaptation dynamics.

Core Finding	Synthesised Evidence
Climate hazards reshape energy system vulnerability	Droughts, heatwaves, floods, and wildfires directly affect infrastructure reliability, cooling efficiency, hydropower output, and peak electricity demand, increasing operational stress across energy systems.
Hazard profiles alter feasible energy mixes	Drought-prone regions increasingly shift away from hydropower dependence toward solar–wind hybrid configurations, while flood-prone territories require grid redundancy, spatial reconfiguration, and hardened infrastructure.
Vulnerability is spatially differentiated	Exposure and sensitivity vary substantially across regions as a function of hydro-climatic regimes, land-use patterns, settlement structures, and socio-economic conditions, leading to uneven transition capacities within and across ETRs.
Adaptation capacity strongly conditions transition robustness and continuity	Regions with integrated climate modelling, adaptive planning, monitoring systems, and early-warning mechanisms show higher resilience and lower disruption during climate extremes.
Climate risk is insufficiently embedded in planning	Many studies report persistent gaps between climate risk assessments and spatial planning, energy system design, and investment appraisal processes.

Sources (indicative studies): [12,18,19,20,24,26,27,28,29,40,98,99,108,140].

, the RED cluster illustrates that climate hazards actively reshape feasible transition pathways by changing optimal energy mixes, infrastructure design requirements, and spatial deployment strategies. Regions that are prone to drought are increasingly moving away from dependence on hydropower toward solar–wind hybrids and decentralised systems. Meanwhile, flood-prone areas need to focus on redundancy, system hardening, and the spatial reconfiguration of grids and generation assets [12,24,27]. Vulnerability is shown to vary significantly across different locations, reflecting the interactions between hydro-climatic conditions, land-use patterns, settlement structures, and socio-economic sensitivities within and across ETRs [26,98,108].

A significant theme emerging from RED studies is the operationalisation of climate adaptation through planning frameworks and adaptive pathways. The literature increasingly advocates for approaches that move beyond optimisation based on stationary climate assumptions. Instead, it emphasises the integration of deep uncertainty, scenario discovery, and adaptive pathway logic into decision-making processes [20,28,80]. These approaches are shown to improve robustness under uncertainty, particularly in regions facing multiple climate hazards.

However, several studies underline implementation gaps, where adaptation is acknowledged but not effectively incorporated into spatial planning instruments, infrastructure governance, and energy investment assessments. This disconnect is repeatedly identified as a source of maladaptation and lock-in, especially in areas characterised by fragmented governance or limited institutional capacity [18,40,99].

Overall, the RED cluster positions climate risk and vulnerability not only as background factors but as fundamental forces that influence the feasibility, sequencing, and long-term stability of energy transition pathways in ETRs. These findings establish climate exposure and adaptive capacity as essential inputs into the investment, spatial, and system-integration dynamics examined in the subsequent clusters, directly supporting the RILN framework.

3.3. Cluster BLUE: Investment Dynamics, Green Finance, and Policy Uncertainty

The BLUE cluster focuses on how investment decisions, financing conditions, and institutional stability impact or limit energy transition trajectories in ETRs. The literature reviewed indicates that investment is not treated as a passive response to technological readiness but rather as an active integrating mechanism that links climate exposure, spatial feasibility, governance credibility, and energy system performance. As a result, this cluster is the most cross-linked within the research corpus, connecting insights from climate risk research, spatial planning, and system integration studies. The core findings identified in this cluster are summarised in

Table 3. Core findings in cluster BLUE—investment dynamics, green finance, and policy uncertainty.

Core Finding	Synthesised Evidence
Financial risk suppresses renewable investment	Elevated risk premiums and uncertainty reduce capital allocation to solar, wind, and storage technologies, particularly in regions exposed to climate hazards or volatile policy environments.
Policy instability amplifies investment risk	Frequent regulatory changes, retroactive subsidy adjustments, and fragmented governance frameworks delay project deployment and weaken long-term innovation incentives.
Green finance is effective only with institutional stability	Green bonds, green credit, carbon pricing, and sustainable finance instruments accelerate decarbonisation where regulatory environments are predictable, transparent, and supported by enforcement capacity.
Digitalisation and R&D enhance investment resilience	Digital finance and green fintech, AI-enabled forecasting, smart-grid investments, and data-driven markets improve flexibility, risk screening, and operational resilience under climate volatility and market uncertainty.
Social preferences influence capital allocation	Public attitudes, climate awareness, and perceptions of fairness shape political priorities and policy design, influencing investor confidence and the stability of transition finance; distributive and procedural justice considerations affect legitimacy and thus capital flows.

Sources (indicative studies): [1,17,22,23,46,47,50,51,61,63,68,82,90,95,99,110,117,137,140,146,176,212,230].

, which consolidates evidence on risk pricing, regulatory credibility, the enabling role of green and digital finance, and the influence of social preferences on capital allocation in the context of ETRs [17,22,46,82,146].

Empirical evidence shows that financial risk and the development of renewable energy are shaped by a combination of macro-structural factors, such as urbanisation dynamics, resource rents, and the sectoral composition of the economy. Institutional quality and governance arrangements also play a significant role. Comparative analyses across different countries and regions indicate that urbanisation patterns and natural resource endowments affect both the scale and direction of investment in renewable energy, while weak institutional environments can amplify perceived risks and hinder capital mobilisation [46,113,117,230]. These dynamics are particularly evident in regions experiencing rapid structural change or transitioning away from fossil fuels, where existing infrastructures and labour dependencies increase uncertainty surrounding the transition [5,7].

A recurring theme identified in this cluster is the central role of policy uncertainty and regulatory credibility in shaping risk premiums, capital costs, and investment timing. Several studies show that unstable subsidy regimes, retroactive tariff adjustments, fragmented permitting systems, and inconsistent climate policy signals can undermine investor confidence, potentially delaying or distorting the geographical distribution of energy investments [22,90,95]. In contrast, transparent and stable regulatory frameworks, coupled with long-term policy commitments, are associated with lower financing costs and greater innovation uptake [47,112,176].

Social preferences influence capital allocation indirectly by shaping policy priorities, regulatory stability, and public support, which in turn affect perceived investment risk, permitting timelines, and the durability of revenue frameworks [22,35,82,90,230]. Recent contributions increasingly suggest that public investors tend to prioritise regulatory stability and policy credibility [17,22,46,82,176,230], private investors are more sensitive to climate risk exposure, land-use conflict, and regulatory uncertainty [46,90,95,146,176], and development-oriented actors place greater emphasis on vulnerability reduction, institutional capacity, and social legitimacy alongside financial viability [1,23,50,52]. Together, these patterns highlight the limitations of assuming a uniform investment logic in energy transition analysis.

In this context, much of the literature focuses on the role of green finance instruments, such as green bonds, green credit, climate finance mechanisms, and sustainable investment taxonomies. While these instruments are widely recognised as essential for accelerating low-carbon investment, evidence consistently indicates that finance alone is insufficient. Their effectiveness depends on governance capacity, regulatory coherence, and innovation ecosystems [17,23,52,146,176]. Furthermore, several studies highlight that green finance can worsen regional disparities when access is uneven, often benefiting regions with stronger institutional frameworks and mature financial markets [1,50,99].

More recent contributions point to the growing importance of green fintech and digital finance as enablers of resilience-oriented investment decisions, particularly in contexts where traditional financial systems fail to price climate risks adequately or to reach peripheral and rural regions. Digital platforms, fintech-enabled credit scoring, and data-driven risk assessment tools are shown to improve transparency, reduce transaction costs, and support investment under uncertainty [51,56,58,137]. However, the literature also warns that digital finance may reproduce or even intensify inequalities if regulatory oversight and inclusion mechanisms are weak [13,50].

An additional strand of the BLUE cluster emphasises the interaction between investment dynamics and social legitimacy. Public attitudes, climate awareness, and perceptions of fairness play a critical role in shaping policy design and political commitment, which, in turn, affect the investment landscape. Studies show that where energy initiatives align with local expectations and considerations of justice, investment conditions improve through enhanced stability and reduced conflict [61,63,68,82].

Taken together, the BLUE cluster supports a systemic interpretation that investment is a key mechanism for integrating efforts in ETRs. Capital allocation responds simultaneously to climate exposure, land-use constraints, governance credibility, and justice and legitimacy conditions, and in turn reshapes regional transition possibilities by enabling or constraining technological deployment, spatial planning options, and adaptive capacity. This integrative role of investment provides a key empirical foundation for the RILN framework, which is presented later in the paper.

3.4. Cluster YELLOW: Spatial Governance, Land-Use Conflicts, and Territorial Planning

The YELLOW cluster confirms that spatial governance is a fundamental aspect of energy transitions in ETRs, rather than a peripheral implementation issue. The analysis of the literature carried out here showed that land availability, zoning regimes, siting regulations, and multi-level planning coherence mediate the translation of national and supranational decarbonisation objectives into regionally feasible and socially acceptable infrastructure deployment [4,35,36,38,40].

A consistent finding is that land-use conflicts often serve as significant constraints, particularly when the expansion of renewable energy competes with agriculture, the conservation of biodiversity, forestry, cultural heritage landscapes, or settlement patterns. Numerous studies have documented the trade-offs relating to the conversion of agricultural land, the protection of forests, and spatial incompatibilities, which increase the friction involved in obtaining permits, delay project timelines, and fuel local contestation [34,181,183,231]. In particular, the siting of wind energy installations is highly sensitive to governance structures. Factors such as permitting procedures, public participation, and procedural transparency significantly influence social acceptance, legal challenges, and perceived investment risks [35,40,171].

The cluster also highlights a rapidly expanding toolkit of spatial decision-support methods, which includes GIS-based suitability modelling, multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), analytic hierarchy processes (AHPs), and hybrid evaluation frameworks. These tools are increasingly used to integrate land constraints, environmental impacts, climate exposure, and stakeholder priorities within a single analytical framework [78,79,92,193]. However, several studies caution that spatial tools alone are insufficient to resolve conflict or reduce uncertainty unless they are incorporated into coherent governance structures and linked to investment screening and climate resilience assessments [79,171,181].

As summarised in

Table 4. Core findings in cluster YELLOW—spatial governance, land-use conflicts, and territorial planning.

Core Finding	Synthesised Evidence
Land availability is a binding constraint	Renewable energy deployment increasingly competes with agriculture, biodiversity protection, heritage landscapes, and tourism economies, constraining feasible siting options.
Spatial planning shapes transition feasibility	Zoning regimes, siting rules, and spatial suitability analysis determine deployment speed, legal certainty, and social acceptance of projects.
Governance fragmentation increases investment risk	Overlapping jurisdictions and inconsistent planning competencies delay permitting, raise uncertainty, and deter large-scale investment.
Climate variability intensifies land-use trade-offs	Flood and drought risks alter siting priorities, infrastructure design requirements, and environmental constraints, increasing spatial conflict under climate change.
Adaptation finance is territorially uneven	Urban regions tend to attract adaptation and transition finance more readily than rural or coal-dependent regions, widening spatial disparities in resilience capacity.

Sources (indicative studies): [34,35,38,40,46,47,50,78,79,92,99,117,171,181,183,193,230,231].

, spatial governance mechanisms often serve as channels through which climate vulnerability (RED) and investment uncertainty (BLUE) materialise as concrete implementation barriers. Climate variability intensifies land-use trade-offs by altering flood risk, drought exposure, and ecosystem sensitivity, thereby reshaping siting priorities and infrastructure design requirements [36,231]. At the same time, access to adaptation and transition finance is uneven across different regions, with urban areas typically attracting funding more easily than rural or coal-dependent regions. This disparity reinforces spatial inequalities in transition capacity and resilience [1,50,99].

Overall, the YELLOW cluster demonstrates that spatial governance and land-use conflicts are systemic factors through which climate risks and financial uncertainties impact real-world transition outcomes, rather than just presenting implementation challenges. These findings position territorial planning as a critical hinge linking climate adaptation, investment dynamics, and energy system design, directly informing the RILN framework developed in the subsequent section.

3.5. Cluster GREEN: Energy System Integration and Renewables

The GREEN cluster focuses on the technical and operational aspects of energy transitions, with particular attention to system integration and renewable deployment under conditions of increasing variability, constraint, and resilience requirements. Across the examined literature, studies address challenges related to renewable integration in microgrids [100] and large-scale systems [16,69], flexibility and storage needs, system design optimisation, and technology-specific siting and performance considerations [86].

A key area of research within this cluster examines techno-economic optimisation of renewable energy systems under spatial and environmental constraints. Contributions analyse the optimisation of floating solar PV layouts, spacing, tilt strategies, and hybrid configurations [86,193], as well as microgrid integration challenges linked to intermittency, demand variability, and operational stability [100]. Off-grid and decentralised transitions emerge as both technical and developmental strategies, particularly in vulnerable or remote contexts where grid extension is infeasible and where reliability and resilience jointly determine transition viability [79,154,199,211].

Crucially, the technical literature increasingly acknowledges cross-domain dependencies that link system design to climate risk, spatial governance, and investment dynamics. Resource availability and system performance are shaped by climate variability and extremes, while land constraints and public acceptance influence technology choice, scale, and configuration [12,21,27]. At the same time, inadequate grid capacity, limited storage deployment, and weak forecasting accuracy are shown to reduce investment returns and amplify vulnerability, feeding back into financial risk assessments and policy uncertainty [22,23,230].

As synthesised in

Table 5. Core findings in cluster GREEN—energy system integration and renewables.

Core Finding	Synthesised Evidence
System integration conditions transition performance	Without adequate grid capacity, forecasting accuracy, storage deployment, and flexibility mechanisms, renewable integration reduces returns and increases system vulnerability.
Multi-criteria tools support system optimisation	MCDA, AHP, and hybrid optimisation approaches are widely applied to balance cost, resilience, land-use impacts, and social acceptance across diverse contexts.
Cross-sector integration improves resilience	Coupling energy systems with water, agriculture, and urban systems reduces long-term vulnerability and enhances adaptive capacity.
Technical choices interact with justice outcomes	System design decisions influence the distribution of benefits and burdens, affecting social acceptance and long-term system durability.
Nature-based solutions support system stability	Urban greening, shading strategies, and microclimate-sensitive design reduce heat stress, cooling demand, and peak loads.

Sources (indicative studies): [12,16,21,22,23,34,60,63,64,78,79,86,92,100,154,193,199,211,230].

, system integration emerges as a major conditionality for successful energy transitions in ETRs. Without coordinated investments in grids, storage, digital control, and flexibility mechanisms, renewable deployment may exacerbate volatility rather than enhance resilience. Several studies highlight the growing use of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), analytic hierarchy processes (AHPs), and hybrid evaluation frameworks to balance cost, resilience, land-use impacts, and social acceptance across diverse contexts, including cities, hospitals, islands, and industrial zones [78,92,171].

Beyond purely technical performance, an emerging strand of the GREEN cluster links system design to justice and equity outcomes. Technical choices, such as centralised versus decentralised configurations, or the allocation of storage and grid upgrades, shape who benefits from transition investments and who bears associated costs and risks [60,63,64]. In parallel, nature-based and urban design solutions, including greening, shading, and microclimate interventions, are increasingly recognised as complementary measures that reduce heat stress, stabilise demand, and enhance overall system resilience [21,34].

Taken together, the GREEN cluster demonstrates that energy system integration is not a purely technical exercise but a systemic enabler that mediates interactions among climate exposure, spatial constraints, investment conditions, and justice outcomes. These findings reinforce the view that technical system design constitutes a critical leverage point within the RILN framework.

3.6. Cross-Cluster Interactions and Emergent System Dynamics

Across the studies that were analysed in the framework of this analysis, the most consistent and policy-relevant result is the presence of strong interdependencies across the four analytical clusters, indicating that energy transitions in ETRs emerge from coupled rather than isolated dynamics. This pattern is particularly evident in regions exposed to compound climate and economic stress, such as drought-affected hydropower systems and coal-dependent industrial regions, where climate impacts, land constraints, and investment conditions interact directly. As synthesised across Table 2, Table 3, Table 4 and Table 5 and the cross-cluster mechanisms in

Table 6. Cross-cluster mechanisms shaping energy transition outcomes.

Mechanism	Cluster Interaction	Systemic Implication
Climate risk propagates into investment risk	RED → BLUE	Exposure to droughts, floods, heatwaves, and wildfires increases asset vulnerability, insurance costs, and risk premiums, reshaping investment timing and technology choice.
Land constraints condition capital allocation	YELLOW → BLUE	Permitting delays, land-use conflicts, and spatial incompatibilities reduce investor confidence and redirect capital toward regions with lower governance and siting friction.
Policy instability limits system upgrading	BLUE → GREEN	Regulatory uncertainty and weak investment signals delay grid reinforcement, storage deployment, and flexibility upgrades, constraining system integration.
System rigidity amplifies climate vulnerability	GREEN → RED	Inflexible systems with limited storage and redundancy increase exposure to climate extremes, reinforcing vulnerability and operational instability.
Spatial injustice undermines governance credibility	YELLOW → BLUE	Unequal distribution of land burdens and benefits erodes social acceptance, increasing contestation, legal risk, and volatility of policy.
Integrated planning reduces systemic transition risk	RED–YELLOW–BLUE–GREEN	Coordinated climate risk assessment, spatial planning, investment screening, and system design improve resilience, legitimacy, and long-term transition stability.

Sources (indicative studies): [3,12,16,20,21,22,23,35,38,40,60,61,64,79,95,139,230].

, climate hazards and vulnerability (RED) shape investment risk and finance conditions (BLUE) both directly, through impacts on asset performance, reliability, and operational costs, and indirectly via insurance markets, regulatory responses, and heightened uncertainty [12,20,22,230].

At the same time, spatial governance and land-use constraints (YELLOW) delimit the feasibility, timing, and social legitimacy of infrastructure deployment, thereby shaping both investment outcomes (BLUE) and the configuration of technical systems (GREEN). Evidence shows that permitting delays, zoning conflicts, and fragmented planning frameworks translate climate exposure and financial uncertainty into concrete implementation barriers, increasing capital costs and discouraging large-scale deployment [35,38,40,171].

In turn, energy system design and integration choices (GREEN) can either mitigate or amplify vulnerability by influencing system flexibility, exposure to extremes, and the capacity to absorb and recover from shocks. Studies consistently show that inadequate grid capacity, limited storage, and rigid system architectures increase sensitivity to climate variability, reinforcing vulnerability patterns identified in the RED cluster [16,21,23]. Conversely, integrated and flexible system designs can dampen climate impacts and stabilise investment environments.

Across all clusters, justice and legitimacy considerations emerge as critical feedback mechanisms. Inequitable spatial outcomes, exclusion from decision-making, or uneven distribution of transition benefits undermine social acceptance, weaken governance credibility, and feed back into investor confidence and policy durability [60,61,63,64]. These dynamics demonstrate that justice is not an external normative add-on but an endogenous factor shaping system stability.

Taken together, these coupled interactions provide the empirical foundation for the RILN framework introduced in the following section. The framework formalises the feedback structure linking climate exposure (RED), spatial constraints (YELLOW), investment ecosystems (BLUE), and system integration and justice outcomes (GREEN), offering a coherent lens for analysing transition pathways under climate and institutional uncertainty [3,20,79].

4. The Resilience–Investment–Land Nexus (RILN) Framework

ETRs operate at the intersection of technological transformation, structural economic change, and accelerating climate impacts, a reality that is particularly evident in regions facing simultaneous industrial decline and climate stress, such as lignite regions in Central Europe or drought-exposed energy systems in Africa. The findings of this study indicate that successful transition trajectories in such contexts are shaped not only by technology choices or the availability of capital but by continuous feedback between climate vulnerability, investment ecosystems, and land-use constraints [20,22,28]. The RILN framework is therefore introduced as an integrative conceptual architecture that reflects these interdependencies and the conditions under which transition outcomes are delivered. (Figure 1). As such, the RILN framework is intended as an analytical and diagnostic structure derived from systematic synthesis, rather than as a predictive model.

Compared to established energy transition frameworks such as technology–organisation–institution (TOI) or socio-technical transition models, RILN differs in two key respects. First, it explicitly integrates climate hazard exposure and land-use constraints as coequal structural conditions, rather than treating them as external context variables. Second, it positions investment decision-making as the integrating mechanism through which climate risk, spatial feasibility, governance credibility, and justice outcomes interact, shifting analytical focus from component optimisation to constraint diagnosis and sequencing. This distinction allows RILN to operate as a decision-oriented synthesis framework rather than a descriptive system typology [55,60,64].

The RILN framework depicts a hybrid conceptual and system-dynamics representation of energy transitions in ETRs, moving beyond approaches that treat climate risk, investment, and land as separate domains. Instead, it conceptualises transitions as relational and cyclical processes in which financial flows, climate exposure, spatial feasibility, and governance mechanisms jointly shape system performance and social outcomes [20,60,64]. This perspective aligns with evidence from the analysed literature showing cross-domain dependencies between hazards and vulnerability [19,29], investment risk and policy stability [46,90,230], and spatial governance constraints [38,40].

At the core of the RILN framework lies the recognition that investment optimisation functions as the system’s integrating mechanism, rather than as a linear output of policy or technology choices. Investment decisions are continuously reshaped by climate exposure, land competition, regulatory credibility, and local perceptions of fairness; in turn, these decisions alter regional risk profiles, governance legitimacy, and social expectations [22,61,63]. As illustrated in Figure 1, the nexus operates through reinforcing and balancing feedback loops: climate hazards shape risk premiums and asset performance, land constraints delimit spatial feasibility, policy stability and public trust condition capital allocation, and transition outcomes feed back into resilience and acceptance [3,20,79]. Unlike existing energy–water–land or socio-technical transition frameworks that primarily map sectoral interactions, RILN explicitly positions investment decision-making as the integrating mechanism linking climate exposure and spatial feasibility, thereby focusing analytical attention on actionable bottlenecks rather than on system components in isolation.

4.1. Structural Drivers

The first dimension of RILN concerns structural drivers, most notably financial risk, policy stability, and innovation capacity. The literature consistently shows that volatile subsidy regimes, policy reversals, and fragmented regulatory environments elevate risk premiums and destabilise investment strategies, whereas transparent governance, digitalisation, and sustained R&D mobilisation enhance investor confidence and operational resilience [22,51,90,95,146]. Findings on green finance further indicate that instruments such as green bonds and green credit can mobilise capital, but effectiveness depends on institutional credibility and complementary innovation capacity [17,23,52,176].

Social legitimacy is repeatedly identified as a pivotal determinant of whether transition policies translate into material change, particularly in regions facing distributional tensions, historical distrust, or entrenched industrial identities [60,61,63,64]. Complementary evidence also suggests that climate awareness and perceptions of initiative effectiveness influence behavioural and political support for energy policies, with downstream implications for investment stability [68,82].

4.2. Spatial–Environmental Constraints

The second dimension addresses spatial and environmental constraints, which impose tangible boundaries on transition pathways. Land availability, agricultural competition, biodiversity protection, and hydrological variability condition the feasibility and social acceptability of renewable energy expansion [34,183,231]. Evidence from spatial planning studies shows that zoning regimes, siting rules, and multi-level planning coherence shape deployment speed, legal certainty, and local acceptance [35,36,38,40].

Climate hazards, like drought, heat stress, flood exposure, and wildfire probability, modify not only infrastructure safety and cost structures but also the resilience value embedded within investment portfolios and the long-run viability of specific technology choices [12,24,26,27]. In this sense, spatial planning and climate modelling define the territorial geometry of transition feasibility, rather than acting as downstream implementation considerations [20,28,171].

4.3. Decision-Support Environment

The third dimension, the decision-support environment, represents the methodological and institutional infrastructure through which constraints and drivers are translated into strategic action. The literature shows convergence toward integrated spatial–financial decision-support tools, including GIS-based risk mapping, multi-criteria decision analysis, scenario modelling, and techno-economic simulations, enabling joint evaluation of cost, resilience, land-use impacts, emissions, and social acceptance [78,92,181,193]. Reviews of urban and regional energy system design similarly emphasise the need for integrated frameworks that connect technical performance with governance and planning realities [21,79].

Approaches addressing uncertainty, adaptive pathways, scenario discovery, and robustness-oriented planning are increasingly advocated to avoid maladaptation and lock-in under non-stationary climate conditions [20,28,80]. These decision-support advances provide the operational layer through which RILN feedback can be made actionable.

4.4. Resilience and Justice Outcomes

The fourth dimension focuses on resilience and justice outcomes, which emerge as essential performance indicators rather than secondary considerations. Resilience is framed as the capacity of communities, infrastructures, and institutions to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to climate and market volatility, while justice, procedural, distributional, and recognition conditions acceptance, political durability, and governance stability [60,61,64]. Evidence consistently indicates that infrastructures perceived as inequitable, through land burdens, uneven benefit allocation, or exclusion from decision-making, face higher resistance and lower durability, feeding back into investment risk and policy credibility [35,63].

Taken together, the RILN framework reframes energy transitions in ETRs as systems of conditional interdependencies, in which climate exposure, spatial governance, financial systems, and societal legitimacy continuously influence one another [3,79]. It advances the field by positioning ETR transitions not as isolated technological substitutions but as territorially grounded, climate-informed, financially credible, institutionally coordinated, and socially legitimised processes [20,21,40]. The framework, therefore, functions as both a conceptual synthesis and a practical lens for identifying the binding constraint limiting transition momentum in specific regional contexts. While RILN is presented here as a qualitative synthesis framework, its structure is compatible with future quantitative and system-dynamics applications.

4.5. Applying the RILN Framework: A Hybrid Decision-Tree Logic for Energy Transition Regions

Although the RILN framework has been introduced as an integrative analytical framework, its primary contribution lies in how it can inform real-world decision-making in contexts characterised by uncertainty, spatial constraint, and institutional complexity. In this sense, RILN can be interpreted as a hybrid decision-tree logic, supporting planners, policymakers, and investors in diagnosing dominant constraints and sequencing interventions in ETRs.

Rather than functioning as a prescriptive model, the framework offers a structured way of thinking through trade-offs and priorities. It combines sequential reasoning with adaptive branching, allowing decisions to respond to regional characteristics, investment behaviour, and evolving climate and governance conditions.

A first step in applying RILN involves establishing the regional context and exposure profile. This entails a preliminary assessment of whether climate-related risks (such as droughts, floods, or heat stress), land-use pressures (including competition with agriculture, biodiversity protection, or settlement patterns), or governance-related factors (for example, regulatory instability or fragmented permitting processes) represent the most immediate constraints on transition pathways. At this stage, the objective is not detailed modelling but an initial screening that helps clarify which pressures are likely to dominate early investment and planning decisions. In many hydropower-dependent or climate-vulnerable regions, climate exposure may emerge as a first-order concern, whereas in densely populated or environmentally sensitive areas, land availability and siting conflict often play a more decisive role.

Once the broader context has been clarified, attention shifts to the nature of the investment actors involved. A key insight from the analysed literature is that capital in ETRs is highly heterogeneous. Public or state-led investors, private commercial actors, and development or blended-finance institutions respond differently to climate risk, land-use conflict, and policy uncertainty. Public investors may be more willing to engage in complex spatial or high-risk environments but are constrained by fiscal capacity and political accountability. Private investors, by contrast, tend to be more sensitive to regulatory volatility and social contestation, while development banks often operate at the intersection of financial discipline and public mandates. Recognising these differences is essential, as the same constraint may deter one type of investor while mobilising another.

Building on this differentiation, RILN supports the identification of the binding constraint that most strongly limits progress at a given point in time. This constraint may stem from inadequate climate resilience, restrictive spatial governance, unfavourable investment conditions, or deficits in social legitimacy. Importantly, the framework emphasises that not all constraints can be addressed simultaneously or with equal urgency. Instead, it encourages prioritisation, focusing attention on the bottleneck whose relaxation is most likely to unlock subsequent transition steps.

Strategy selection then follows from this diagnosis. Depending on the dominant constraint and the investment context, relevant interventions may include integrating climate risk more explicitly into spatial planning, revising zoning and siting rules, strengthening regulatory credibility, introducing risk-sharing financial instruments, or investing in system flexibility and decentralised solutions. In many cases, governance and participation measures, such as improved stakeholder engagement or benefit-sharing arrangements, play a critical role in stabilising both social acceptance and investment conditions. RILN does not imply a single optimal pathway; rather, it supports context-sensitive sequencing, in which spatial, financial, technical, and institutional measures are aligned with regional realities. For example, governance capacity and social legitimacy often constitute the dominant binding constraints in coal-dependent regions, whereas climate exposure and system flexibility tend to dominate early decision stages in island or hydropower-dependent systems, illustrating how RILN supports place-sensitive prioritisation. Across all decision stages, justice-related considerations, such as procedural inclusion, benefit distribution, and recognition of territorial identities, act as cross-cutting conditions shaping social acceptance, governance credibility, and ultimately the bankability of transition investments.

Finally, the framework explicitly acknowledges that energy transitions unfold under changing conditions. Climate impacts, market dynamics, and political priorities evolve, often altering which constraints are most binding. For this reason, RILN is best understood as an iterative decision-support logic, encouraging periodic reassessment and adjustment as new information becomes available. In this way, the framework moves beyond static planning approaches and offers a practical lens for guiding adaptive, place-based transition strategies across diverse ETRs.

Figure 2 translates the Resilience–Investment–Land Nexus (RILN) into a hybrid decision tree that illustrates how the framework can be used to support planning and investment decisions in energy transition regions. Rather than prescribing a single transition pathway, the figure visualises a structured diagnostic logic in which decision-makers first assess regional climate exposure, land-use pressures, and governance conditions, then identify the dominant binding constraint shaping investment feasibility. By explicitly distinguishing between different investment actor profiles, the decision tree highlights how the same constraint can generate divergent responses depending on whether capital is primarily public, private, or development-oriented. The figure further shows how constraint diagnosis informs the selection and sequencing of spatial, financial, technical, and governance interventions, while feedback loops emphasise the need for periodic reassessment as climate, market, and policy conditions evolve. In this way, the figure operationalises RILN as a decision-support logic that is adaptive, place-sensitive, and compatible with existing planning and investment processes.

5. Discussion

The findings of this literature review confirm that energy transitions in carbon-intensive and climate-exposed regions do not unfold as linear processes of technological substitution but as territorially embedded transformations shaped by interacting climatic, spatial, financial, governance, and social factors. Evidence from coal-dependent regions in Central and Eastern Europe and climate-vulnerable hydropower systems in Sub-Saharan Africa illustrates that transition trajectories are mediated by regional context rather than driven by technology alone [20,21,221]. Across the literature, a consistent pattern emerges: transition outcomes are determined by the interactions between domains such as climate exposure, land-use governance, investment dynamics, and social legitimacy, rather than by the performance of any single domain in isolation [3,60,64]. Across the reviewed literature, justice emerges not as a parallel concern but as an endogenous mechanism through which climate risk, land-use decisions, and investment strategies translate into durable or contested transition outcomes.

Climate exposure increasingly functions as a systemic condition influencing both infrastructure performance and investment risk. Drought-prone territories experience declining hydropower yields and cooling-water scarcity [12,19,29], while wildfire-prone regions face heightened infrastructure fragility and operational disruption [24,26,27]. Flood-exposed areas, in turn, incur higher insurance requirements and redundancy costs, further altering project feasibility [27,29]. At the same time, climate vulnerability can act as a catalyst for diversification and resilience-oriented system design. Several studies document shifts toward hybrid energy portfolios, decentralised generation, and adaptive system architectures in response to increasing climate stress [20,28,199]. Regions that integrate hazard mapping, probabilistic forecasting, and scenario-based planning into decision frameworks demonstrate greater capacity to allocate technologies resiliently and to balance hydropower variability, solar–wind complementarities, and microgrid deployment [21,79,80].

Spatial constraints and land-use competition further shape transition trajectories by defining where and how renewable infrastructures can materialise. The literature consistently shows that land is neither neutral nor infinitely divisible but embedded within ecological systems, productive bases, cultural meanings, and regional identities [34,231]. Renewable energy deployment, therefore, competes directly with agriculture, forestry, biodiversity corridors, tourism, and heritage landscapes, making siting decisions central to perceptions of fairness and legitimacy [35,183]. Empirical studies indicate that even technically mature and economically viable projects may stall when spatial governance is fragmented or when land-use decisions impose disproportionate burdens on specific communities [171,181]. In contrast, regions characterised by strong territorial governance capacity—including multi-level coordination, transparent permitting, and long-term spatial planning—tend to experience more rapid adoption and lower levels of contestation [36,40].

Within this landscape, investment dynamics emerge as a key mediating mechanism linking climate exposure and spatial feasibility to realised transition outcomes. Financial flows respond not only to resource availability or cost competitiveness but also to regulatory credibility and institutional quality [22,230]. Stable and transparent policy environments are associated with lower risk premiums and accelerated deployment [47,112], whereas abrupt policy shifts, subsidy withdrawals, or opaque administrative procedures amplify uncertainty and deter capital mobilisation [90,95]. The expansion of green finance instruments—such as green bonds, concessional credit, climate funds, and revenue-recycling mechanisms—has demonstrated the capacity to steer low-carbon investment, but only when embedded within coherent regulatory frameworks and robust governance structures [17,23,52,176]. Digitalisation and innovation ecosystems further reinforce investment confidence and operational resilience, particularly through data-intensive forecasting, smart-grid technologies, and adaptive market instruments [51,137,146].

Justice and legitimacy considerations cut across all these dimensions. Procedural, distributional, and recognition-based justice increasingly influence investment decisions, permitting processes, and long-term system stability [60,61,64]. Where communities perceive exclusion, unequal benefit allocation, or cultural and environmental harm, resistance intensifies, increasing the likelihood of delays, legal challenges, and governance breakdowns [35,63]. Conversely, participatory planning, transparent benefit-sharing arrangements, and mechanisms for local ownership and co-investment have been shown to foster acceptance and reduce institutional friction [66,68,229]. This reinforces a growing consensus that resilience is not only infrastructural but fundamentally social, rooted in trust, equity, and the capacity of institutions to negotiate change [3,19].

Taken together, these dynamics affirm the analytical value of the RILN as a problem-driven, integrative framework. By framing energy transitions as systems of conditional interdependence among climate exposure, spatial feasibility, investment behaviour, governance capacity, and justice outcomes, RILN provides a coherent lens for interpreting why constraints differ across regions and why similar policy instruments produce divergent results [22,23,79]. Rather than categorising challenges into isolated domains, the framework emphasises interaction and prioritisation, enabling identification of the binding constraint in a given territory—whether climate vulnerability, land-use conflict, policy credibility, or decision-support capacity—and supporting more targeted and effective intervention design.

In summary, the success of energy transitions depends not solely on investment scale or technological sophistication, but on the alignment of finance and technology with territorial realities, climate constraints, governance maturity, and social legitimacy. By foregrounding these interactions, the RILN framework advances a relational understanding of transition dynamics that complements existing transition and nexus literature while providing a structured basis for decision-oriented synthesis.

6. Conclusions

This study demonstrates that the trajectories of energy transition regions (ETRs), including industrial coal regions, peripheral rural territories, and climate-vulnerable hydropower-dependent areas, are shaped by interdependent climate, spatial, financial, and governance dynamics, rather than by technological deployment alone. By synthesising evidence across 231 peer-reviewed studies, the analysis shows that energy transition outcomes depend critically on how climate hazards, land-use constraints, investment conditions, and social legitimacy interact at the regional level, determining whether transitions accelerate, stall, or encounter sustained resistance.

A central finding of the study is that investment optimisation in ETRs cannot be treated as a purely financial or techno-economic exercise. Climate vulnerability alters the feasibility and risk profile of technology portfolios, land scarcity and spatial conflict constrain where infrastructures can be realised, and governance maturity and regulatory predictability shape investor confidence as strongly as subsidy design or market signals. Justice considerations, including procedural inclusion, benefit sharing, and recognition of territorial identity, emerge not as peripheral concerns but as structural conditions influencing policy durability and long-term system stability.

In response to these interconnected challenges, the Resilience–Investment–Land Nexus (RILN) is introduced in this review as a novel integrative framework, synthesising insights from previously separate strands of literature on climate resilience, spatial planning, energy investment, and justice, rather than reproducing an existing model. Importantly, RILN is not only explanatory but also decision-oriented. As illustrated in Figure 2, the framework can be operationalised through a hybrid decision-tree logic that guides decision-makers through (i) contextual diagnosis of regional constraints, (ii) identification of the dominant binding bottleneck, (iii) differentiation of investment actor profiles, and (iv) selection and sequencing of targeted spatial, financial, technical, and governance interventions. By embedding feedback loops, the framework also supports adaptive reassessment as climate, market, and policy conditions evolve.

This operational perspective allows the research question guiding the review to be answered explicitly: energy transition regions can optimise energy investment strategies by integrating climate resilience and vulnerability considerations into spatial planning and decision-making, moving beyond isolated financial or technological criteria through structured constraint diagnosis, actor-sensitive prioritisation, and adaptive sequencing of interventions. Rather than prescribing uniform solutions, RILN supports place-sensitive strategies that recognise heterogeneity across regions and investment contexts.

The review also highlights several strategic implications. First, regulatory stability and institutional credibility are decisive for reducing investment risk and mobilising long-term capital. Second, spatial planning must explicitly integrate climate hazard information, land-use competition, and ecological sensitivity to avoid maladaptive siting and lock-in. Third, investment in geospatial and multi-criteria decision-support tools enhances the capacity of regional authorities to negotiate trade-offs transparently and coherently. Fourth, justice and participation need to be embedded early in transition planning, as neglecting social legitimacy consistently increases conflict, delay, and policy volatility.

Finally, the review priorities for future research. Further work is needed to operationalise RILN through integrated decision support, system dynamics, or agent-based models capable of simulating feedback among climate risk, investment behaviour, land-use conflict, and governance responses under alternative scenarios. Comparative analyses across different ETR types—such as coal-dependent regions, island systems, and rapidly urbanising territories—are also required to explain why similar policy instruments produce divergent outcomes. Advancing empirical indicators for procedural, distributional, and recognition-based justice remains an additional research priority.

In conclusion, energy transitions will ultimately be judged not only by emissions reductions or installed capacity, but by their ability to enhance resilience, support communities, steward landscapes, and maintain institutional trust. By explicitly linking resilience, investment, and land within a decision-oriented framework, RILN provides a robust basis for designing energy transitions that are not only low-carbon but also adaptive, equitable, and territorially grounded.