July 2023 has been considered as the hottest day on Earth, based in recorded history. Enacting solutions to tackle climate change is thus urgent and the transition to carbon neutral societies, namely based in renewable energy production, energy efficiency and nature-based services, has been deemed by governments in the last decades and across the world, as a key solution. However, local and social movements and social sciences’ research have made it increasingly evident that the current materialization of the so-called green transition also brings with it key challenges, namely in terms of socio-environmental impacts and injustices. In this keynote, I aim to discuss these challenges and to propose that Psychology, particularly a critical psychosocial approach to the green transition, is crucial to better understand and overcome those challenges and, with that, contribute to create more sustainable and fairer socio-ecological systems. I will identify and discuss the pillars of this critical psychosocial approach to the green energy transition and will illustrate them based on different examples from my empirical research on the green transition in Portugal. The applied and research implications of this approach and agenda will be discussed.

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