This study is a policy-governance-oriented systematic review examining how institutional, financial, and regulatory asymmetries shape outcomes of the Global North-South energy transition. The case of India, an emerging economy with rapid growth in green energy, is explored to exemplify these gaps and differences. Key factors examined include energy affordability gaps, fossil fuel lock-ins, infrastructure deficiencies, technology access limitations, human resource gaps, and financial mechanisms. The PRISMA systematic framework, combined with the VOSviewer bibliometric method, is applied to comprehensive publication data, primarily from the Web of Science and Scopus (2000-2025). This study identifies seven cluster-based themes using VOSviewer. It examines seven scenarios: global energy transition, bioenergy, transitional fuels, blending, shipping fuels, innovation and policy, and green finance . The review reveals that research on policy finance interests is dominant, with significant gaps in research on technology transfer, affordability mechanisms, capacity building, and country-specific finance mechanisms. Findings further reveal that governance fragmentation, weak financial institutions, and limited technology transfer mechanisms, rather than resource scarcity, are the principal barriers to a just energy transition in the Global South. This study offers seven policy-relevant conclusions for governance practitioners and energy transition stakeholders.
Choudhary et al. (Thu,) studied this question.