Research

Market environmentalism has traditionally been the dominant paradigm in global climate policy. It views climate change as a market failure and considers carbon pricing the optimal solution. Over the past two decades, a different policy paradigm that builds on the principle of catalytic action has become dominant. This ‘catalytic decarbonization’ paradigm views climate change as an investment problem and demands industrial policy over carbon pricing. I build on these observations to trace the evolution of both sets of ideas in EU climate policy and to identify patterns and mechanisms of change. I find that market environmentalism was particularly dominant in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, it was from the beginning blended with ideas related to catalytic decarbonization. The lack of international commitment to carbon pricing, the momentum for investment-based climate action after the financial crisis, and the simultaneous diffusion of green industrial policy in the late 2000s and early 2010s led the EU to transform its approach to climate policy and made catalytic decarbonization the dominant paradigm. This shift unfolded progressively and did not result in a full abandonment of market environmentalism. Instead, EU institutions served as bricoleurs, repurposing and recombining existing ideas to adapt to changing circumstances.

China has traditionally served as a leader of the Global South in global climate governance, building on its self-identification as a developing country. As expectations rose to contribute more resolutely to global climate action, China found itself confronted with a role conflict. Creating the auxiliary role of climate leader has not resolved this conflict, since the two roles are essentially associated with conflictual expectations. In this paper, I demonstrate how China sustains its dual role by employing three discursive tactics to balance the conflict: role segregation, role supplementation, and role merging. For this purpose, I develop and apply a theoretical framework of role conflict management strategies and associated tactics in foreign policy and international relations. This framework integrates previous literature from the field and some of the foundational interactionist scholarship on role conflict management, thereby contributing to a more systematic understanding of how states navigate role conflict.

Contemporary international organizations (IOs) are routinely portrayed as being more accessible to a wide variety of actors than ever before. The recent hyper-institutionalization of youth in international politics testifies to this pluralization, at least quantitatively. This paper traces the historical emergence of youth as an object of concern among health IOs. Covering a period of over 50 years, we analyse semantic fields surrounding youth and find that young people have primarily been portrayed as society’s future capital in development discourses or as a risk-prone group in the context of HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. Only since the beginning of the 21st century can we trace portrayals of youth that emphasize rights, inclusion and engagement in global health. Our study addresses an empirical research gap on youth in global health and prompts us to critically re-evaluate the optimistic liberal assessments that have marked International Relations (IR) theories on the ‘opening-up’ of IOs.

We study the impact of California’s cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions in the electricity and industrial sectors. We use US state-level panel data covering the period 2005–2019 and apply the synthetic control method to construct an optimal counterfactual for per capita emissions in each sector. In our experiment, emissions in the power sector fall below counterfactual emissions by 48%. In the industrial sector, the state’s emissions are 6% higher than those of the synthetic control unit by the end of the observation period. Thus, cap-and-trade failed to deliver decarbonization across both sectors. While the abatement in the power sector was facilitated by complementary policies and driven by a switch from natural gas to renewables, California’s policy mix has disincentivized emission reductions in the industrial sector.

The decarbonization of energy-intensive industries demands large amounts of low-emissions hydrogen, which will not be available at low prices everywhere. Countries with a high potential for renewable energy can capitalize on these resources to produce renewable hydrogen, while others need to rely on imports to decarbonize their industries. Since transporting hydrogen will remain expensive, firms in the steel and chemical industries, among others, might move production sites to countries that produce cheap low-emissions hydrogen. Thus, hydrogen-based decarbonization creates geoeconomic competition and could unsettle the current distribution of energy-intensive value chains. However, renewable energy resources are not the only determinant for future industrial geographies. In this chapter, we review these determinants, discussing the role of resource endowments, transport networks, and technological and financial capacities. Industrial policies are of particular importance for shaping these markets. We therefore show how governments craft hydrogen strategies to align policy mixes with national economic and security objectives. Building on a typology of strategies, we provide an empirical analysis of multiple country cases. Thereby, we illustrate that industrial decarbonization imposes competition, but also potentials for cooperation.

Brazil has set the ambitious goal of becoming the world’s most competitive hydrogen producer by 2030, leveraging its vast renewable energy potential. The development of a market for low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia is central to Brazil’s green industrial policy and its new strategy for re-industrialization. While the country holds strong prospects for green hydrogen production, it presently lags behind current frontrunners, with most low-carbon hydrogen projects still in early stages. The recently introduced Hydrogen Act and accompanying tax credits are pivotal in shaping a policy framework, fostering low-carbon hydrogen production and usage. In the absence of a national hydrogen strategy, some states, most notably Ceará, have pushed ahead attracting considerable investments for hydrogen production and export in the past years. Internationally, Brazil has begun reasserting its engagement in hydrogen governance, hosting key global forums, and advancing bilateral and multilateral hydrogen cooperation. This chapter elaborates on these trends and provides a comprehensive review of policy objectives and initiatives, stakeholders, pilot projects, and international cooperation efforts related to the endeavor of creating a market for low-carbon hydrogen in Brazil.

This policy paper takes stock of ongoing hydrogen policy developments in Europe, placing particular attention on how the European Union (EU) can most effectively mobilize its domestic hydrogen potential. While the paper acknowledges that hydrogen imports from countries outside the EU are likely to play a significant role, it departs from the premise that the large-scale mobilization of cost-competitive domestic resources is an essential element for ensuring the EU’s energy security and industrial leadership in the sector. It begins with an overview of future renewable energy demand in Europe within the context of decarbonization, on the one hand, and potentials for renewable hydrogen production and their distribution across the EU, on the other. It then contrasts this with hydrogen-related targets and announced investments in the Member States. Against this background, the paper provides a review of key EU-level policies, focusing on the promotion of hydrogen production and use. Questions related to infrastructure for storage and transport of hydrogen are beyond the scope of the paper and are not considered. Building on the policy review, the final section proposes five recommendations for further development of EU hydrogen policy and funding schemes.

Can policy proposals generate public backlash even before their costs materialize? We hypothesize that anticipated losses from a salient policy proposal erode citizens' willingness to bear the costs of future policy and their trust in the institutions involved in the policy process. We test this hypothesis using Germany's 2023 heating reform, which included a proposal to ban new fossil-based heating systems and sparked intense public controversy. Four panel survey waves, covering the periods before, during, and after the debate, allow a difference-in-differences comparison between individuals highly exposed to the projected costs and less affected individuals. We find that higher exposure significantly reduced trust in government and willingness to accept higher fossil fuel prices for climate change mitigation. These effects persisted even after the proposed installation ban was postponed. Our findings suggest that policy proposals which threaten concentrated costs can already generate lasting public backlash when the costs are still uncertain.

Carbon taxes have been adopted in many countries around the world, despite their alleged political unviability. To make sense of this and to improve our understanding of the political conditions for the adoption of carbon taxes, we conduct a systematic review of the academic literature. Using an exhaustive search methodology in combination with machine-learning-assisted abstract screening, we identify relevant actors, their objectives, and context factors from 64 case studies, corresponding to 46 policies across 35 jurisdictions. We find that the adoption of carbon taxes is motivated by a variety of objectives, many of which are unrelated to the original idea of pricing environmental pollution. Clustering the data reveals common barriers and enabling factors across different policy cases. Based on these findings, we argue that carbon taxes are adopted when governments are exposed to problem pressure and able to craft advocacy coalitions that are sufficiently strong to moderate countermobilization and overcome institutional barriers.

In recent debates about the energy transition, diagnoses of "failure" and calls for a "restart", "reset", and more "realism" have gained traction. We trace the emergence of this discourse in Germany and show that, despite strong terminological overlap, it comprises competing narratives with distinct policy demands. Building on the Narrative Policy Framework and a systematic analysis of 81 media articles and policy documents, we distinguish three narratives that structure the German "restart discourse". The restoration narrative portrays the energy transition as a fundamentally misguided project of a green elite and seeks its rollback. The reorientation narrative criticizes the unbalanced pursuit of climate change mitigation at the cost of economic prosperity and energy security. The recalibration narrative suggests an adjustment of the policy mix in the light of accumulated experience and changing contextual conditions. In addition, we build on the climate obstruction literature to develop five discursive markers and identify obstructive properties in each narrative. Our analysis shows that by 2025 the restart discourse had spread from opinion pieces in conservative and right-wing media to institutional actors such as the federal government and business actors. This mainstreaming reduced the overall prevalence of obstructive properties. However, it also blurred the boundary between obstructive and non-obstructive contestations. This, we argue, benefits obstructionist actors, allowing them to borrow the legitimacy of more moderate, reform-oriented positions while advancing an obstructive agenda.