Research
Find out more about SUS-POL research. We advocate for transformative supply-side climate policies to meet the Paris Agreement goals, by curbing fossil fuel production and emissions.
Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement requires a new approach to climate governance that gets to the heart of the climate crisis: fossil fuel production. Efforts to mitigate climate change over the last three decades have predominantly targeted end-use emissions. But given the urgency of cutting emissions and the necessity of leaving large amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, this approach is no longer sufficient.
A growing number of countries, states, civil society actors, and international organisations are recognising this fact and endorsing the idea of supply-side climate policies that set limits on fossil fuel production, reduce financial flows to projects and corporations, and prevent new sites of extraction from being exploited.
The governance turn towards fossil fuel supply needs to be embraced and scaled up. To do this in a just and socially acceptable manner, it is important to understand the political, social, economic, cultural, and environmental dynamics of supply-side climate policies, the tensions that arise from their implementation, and how successes can be replicated elsewhere.
The project will deploy quantitative and qualitative research methods to understand and develop this emergent approach to climate governance involving the generation of new data, qualitative research in leading countries that have successfully implemented supply-side policies, and scenario-building work on pathways to supply-side policies at the national, regional, and international levels.
The project is inherently transdisciplinary and seeks to bring together academics, practitioners, policy experts, and advocates to pool insight and further the collective understanding of supply-side climate policies.
To explore the policies that the project has tracked and mapped so far, visit the SUS-POL Fossil Fuel Tracker.
Credit for image: Maxim Tolchinskiy from Unsplash