Blog Posts

Special Issue published on Climate Policy Expansion and Dismantling

31/7/2024

'Climate Action through Policy Expansion and/or Dismantling: Country-Comparative Insights' is a new special issue published in the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice. It is edited by Simon Schaub, Jale Tosun and Andrew Jordan, with the collection arising from a DeepDCarb workshop held in Mannheim in October 2022.

The articles in this special issue investigate factors that induce politico-administrative actors to adopt climate policies and dismantle anti-climate policies to advance decarbonisation. Together, the contributions show that interactions between politico-administrative actors and publics, organised interests, and international organisations shape climate and anti-climate policy change.

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Report on the Future of British Climate Strategy

8/7/2024

Chantal Sullivan-Thomsett is a co-author on a new report “Navigating the Backlash: The future of British Climate Strategy”. In this report, based on a workshop of academic experts and key NGO participants, the key implications of recent changes are presented, notably a rising backlash against climate policy, and the shift in the government approach to it.

Find out more about the project and read the report here.

How not to transform: Learning from the backlash against low-carbon heating policy in Germany

8/5/2024

In a new policy briefing for the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), we look at the case of the so-called ‘heat hammer’ in Germany to provide a novel insight into how politicians engage with the challenge of deep decarbonisation, and how policymakers in the UK could learn from it. This is based on findings from elite surveys with 34 national MPs in Germany conducted during the period of backlash between April and July 2023.

Governance for Net Zero report

29/2/2024

The British Academy has just published a new report - Governance for Net Zero - which cautions that the way the net zero transition is conducted, not just the technicalities, is critical to its success. Governance is an essential tool to manage the social and economic transformations at the pace required.

The report identifies two critical channels to enable and accelerate the transition to net zero: Clear and committed leadership and a people-centred approach.

Andy Jordan served as an advisor to the BA and published an op-ed - "Why local governance is important on the path to net zero" - summarizing its main findings.

British Public Divided on Oil and Gas Expansion

17/1/2024

In a new blog post at UK in a Changing Europe, we examine public opinion in Britain towards issuing licenses to permit new oil and gas extraction, a proposal currently being pursued by the present Conservative government. This is based on findings from a representative national survey of 2,002 adults we fielded in November/December 2023.

New Publication on European Climate Pact Ambassadors

10/8/2023

Overcoming the governance traps in climate politics requires action by diverse societal groups. This is acknowledged by the European Climate Pact which has established an ambassadors’ model for accelerating the transformation towards climate-neutrality. Climate Pact Ambassadors are volunteers who can be driven by different motivations.

In our new study titled "For Young and Future Generations? Insights from the Web Profiles of European Climate Pact Ambassadors" and published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation, we analyse the analyses the publicly available web profiles of the European Climate Pact Ambassadors. We show that only very few Climate Pact Ambassadors refer to the interests of the current young and future generations as the motivation for their engagement, including Climate Pact Ambassadors who self-identify as members of the current young generation. However, young Climate Pact Ambassadors as well as those who indicate being active in the education sector identify the current young generation as the main targets of their activities.

Irene Lorenzoni delivers inaugural professorial lecture

6/3/2023

On 27th February, Irene Lorenzoni delivered her inaugural professorial lecture entitled "Seeing and believing? Opportunities and challenges of living with climate change". Drawing upon a range of studies spanning several decades, she explored developments in individual and societal views of climate change, discussed the complexities and challenges of mitigation and adaptation, and reflected on living with change more broadly.

This lecture can be viewed in full through the link below.

DeepDCarb Publications - January 2023

12/1/2023

Global climate action requires cooperation on various levels of the political system. In the international arena high-level forums on clean energy have emerged additionally to the UNFCCC framework.

In the recent article Who takes the lead? A disaggregate analysis of the EU's engagement in the Clean Energy Ministerial and Mission Innovation published in the Journal of Cleaner Production as part of the special issue The End Game: How to Achieve Carbon Neutrality we analyse the cooperation between the major economies on clean energy technologies in the frame of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM; initiated in 2010) and Mission Innovation (MI; initiated in 2015).

Climate Action Through Policy Expansion and/or Dismantling: A Workshop

30/11/2022

The DeepDCarb team organized a workshop on climate policy expansion and/or dismantling in Mannheim in October 2022. It aimed at advancing the state of the art on these topics and showcase it in a series of papers which will eventually be published in a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.

The comparative study of climate policy has advanced a lot in recent years but has mostly concentrated on the adoption of new targets, policies and policy instruments to curb emissions. Often it is politically more feasible to adopt new targets, policies and instruments than to weaken or entirely dismantle policies that are already in place (e.g., fossil fuel subsidies).

DeepDCarb Publications - October 2022

31/10/2022

Despite the proliferation of national climate change advisory bodies, very little is known about what advice they provide, to whom, and when. In Advising National Climate Policy Makers: A Longitudinal Analysis of the UK Climate Change Committee - recently published in Global Environmental Change - we systematically analyse all 700 of the recommendations made by the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) in the period 2009–20. The article shows for the first time how the CCC’s mitigation and adaptation recommendations have changed over time with respect to their addressee, sectoral focus and policy targets. We reveal that they became: more numerous per year; more cross-sectoral in their nature; clearer in targeting a specific addressee; and more focused in referring to specific policy targets.