On February 24, 2023, Nate Jensen and Josh Busby hosted an online workshop on the clean energy transition with leading scholars. These are their memos and video submissions. We’ve also prepared a short trailer and a longer synthesis video bringing together their findings and comments with the help of Bevo Video Productions.
Short Trailer
The premise of the project is that the clean energy transition requires government policy support to swiftly decarbonize the global economy. Most of the action to support the transition will require concerted government action by leading national economies. European countries and China have a head start The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the United States most significant foray into adopting a green industrial policy. There are political economy issues both in the enactment and implementation of IRA worth exploring. Other countries have a head start, having already supported domestic clean industries for years. We can learn from their experience.
A clean energy transition is under way. Renewable electricity is now cost competitive with fossil fuels, even cheaper in many places around the world. In the transport sector, the future is electric, with electric vehicles poised to overtake the internal combustion engine in the coming decades. Despite these rapid changes, if past energy transitions are any guide, the transition away from fossil fuels could take a century. However, in order to avoid dangerous increases in global temperatures due to climate change, that process needs to be telescoped over a few decades to lead to zero net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 or soon thereafter.
That will require government action in major polities around the world to intentionally steer national economies away from fossil fuels towards carbon-free sources of energy and/or capture of any emissions from fossil fuels. Intentional policy, whether it be regulation, subsidies, taxation, etc. will inevitably rewards some industries and penalize others. Because there are large potential profits by companies that produce products for the transition, certain transition policies could delay a transition or have other unintended negative consequences. Some policies could reward new clean energy firms interested in rent-seeking and regulatory capture that impede a fuller transition to zero carbon resources or broader public purposes such as equitable impacts and careful stewardship of tax dollars.
This project marries an interest in industrial policy with a political economy perspective that recognizes historic government policies of tax breaks and subsidies for private actors have often been achieved with little public benefit in terms of tax revenue and employment.