Reliance on fossil fuels is a defining feature of our civilisation since the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century. Moving away from such reliance at the lowest social and economic cost is one of the major challenges humanity faces today. With support from a private foundation and the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the work in this cluster focuses on technological transitions and how they can be modelled to understand future energy scenarios. In the medium term, it also aims to develop a systematic survey of (i) the regulatory instruments (taxes, feed-in-tariff schemes, cap-and-trade systems, efficiency standards, etc.) used in different countries to prompt a shift in the energy matrix, (ii) their comparative performance based on common metrics, (iii) their interactions at the domestic level as well as through regional (e.g. European) and international (e.g. international organisations, forums, treaties, soft-law) coordination techniques.
Members active in this cluster:
Representative research outputs:
P. B. Holden, N. R. Edwards, A. Ridgwell, R. D. Wilkinson, K. Fraedrich, F. Lunkeit, H. E. Pollitt, J.-F. Mercure, P. Salas, A. Lam, F. Knobloch, U. Chewpreecha & J. E. Viñuales, Climate–carbon cycle uncertainties and the Paris Agreement, Nature Climate Change (2018) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0197-7
Mercure, J.-F., H. Pollitt, U. Chewpreecha, P. Salas, A. Foley, P. B. Holden and N. R. Edwards, ‘The dynamics of technology diffusion and the impacts of climate policy instruments in the decarbonisation of the global electricity sector’ (2014) 73 Energy Policy 686–700 : http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514004017
Lin Kun-Chin, ‘Protecting the Petroleum Industry : Renewed Government Aid to Fossil Fuel Producers’ (2014) 16(4) Business & Politics 549-578 : http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bap.2014.16.issue-4/bap-2014-0019/bap-2014-0019.xml
Mercure, J.-F., ‘An age structured demographic theory of technological change’, 4th International Conference on Sustainability Transitions, Zurich, 2013 : http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3602
Mercure, J.-F. and P. Salas, ‘On the global economic potentials and marginal costs of non-renewable resources and the price of energy commodities’ (2013) 63 Energy Policy 469–483 : http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513008392
Salas, P., ‘Literature review of energy-economics models, regarding technological change and uncertainty’, 4CMR Working Paper Series, October 2013: http://be.4cmr.group.cam.ac.uk/working-papers/pdf/4CMR_WP_03.pdf
Mercure, J.-F., ‘FTT:Power A global model of the power sector with induced technological change and natural resource depletion’ (2012) 48 Energy Policy 799–811 : http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4868
Mercure, J.-F. and P. Salas, ‘An assessment of global energy resource economic potentials’ (2012) 46 Energy Policy 322–336 : http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4693