Director of the Climate Solutions Lab Jeff Colgan recently authored a paper published in Annual Review of Political Science titled, "International Energy Politics in an Age of Climate Change."
Global climate change is opening up new questions and reinvigorating old lines of inquiry in the study of international energy politics. Many policymakers and stakeholders are pushing for a clean energy transition away from the fossil fuels that have long dominated the world's energy supply. On some issues, there is considerable consensus between political scientists and other analysts, such as the basic categories of the “winners” and “losers” from the clean energy transition. On other issues, however, political science tends to depart significantly from other disciplines. The politics of the desired clean energy transition are highly complicated and filled with obstacles beyond those typically highlighted by either economics or physical sciences. For these reasons, energy politics associated with oil and other fossil fuels are far from over and continue to develop, even as new political dynamics associated with the clean energy transition emerge.