Political pathways for overcoming opposition to energy policy

Why are some countries more effective at transforming their economies in response to energy challenges than others?

In transitioning energy systems from planet warming fossil fuels to clean energy, governments face opposition from business and voters bearing the costs of the transition. In this book project, we argue that politicians can pursue three pathways in response to that opposition: insulation - ignore political backlash, compensation - buy support from policy losers, and mobilisation - incentivize business and voters through public investment rather than fighting the opposition. Yet countries’ unique individual institutions - the rules of the political game - determine the extent to which policymakers can insulate, compensate, or mobilize and thus accelerate the clean energy transition to fight climate change. If countries lack relevant institutions, they will leave the transition to markets. We show how these three pathways have played an outsize role in shaping how countries have responded to two era-defining energy challenges: the oil crises of the 1970s and climate change today. By telling the stories of both energy transitions, the book offers important lessons about how institutions shape the political opportunities and constraints for energy transitions across countries. This has implications for how to develop smart clean energy policy that aligns with a country’s institutional landscape.

Meet our speaker

Jared J. Finnegan is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public Policy in the Department of Political Science at University College London. He studies how governments, voters, and businesses understand and address long-term policy challenges, particularly climate change. Previously, he held postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and Princeton University and was a Visiting Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE. He received his PhD in Political Science from the LSE Department of Government in 2019, with visiting research at UC Berkeley. His work has been published in The Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Science, Nature Energy, Socio-Economic Review, and Climate Policy. He holds an MRes in Political Science and an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from LSE, and a BA in Latin American and Latino Studies and Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before entering academia, he was a Research Analyst at the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC, where he worked on climate policy design and evaluation.

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