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Articles by Michaël Aklin
Enable a just transition for American fossil fuel workers through federal action
Officials in the United States and around the world are launching new “just transition” initiatives at an unprecedented pace, creating policies and programs to help workers impacted by the clean energy transition. Several U.S. state leaders are included among those that have recently undertaken just transition initiatives, including Colorado and New Mexico. The rapid adoption of just transition initiatives can be explained by three factors.
Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change
Climate change policy is generally modeled as a global collective action problem structured by free-riding concerns. Drawing on quantitative data, archival work, and elite interviews, we review empirical support for this model and find that the evidence for its claims is weak relative to the theory’s pervasive influence. We find, first, that the strongest collective action claims appear empirically unsubstantiated in many important climate politics cases.
Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change
Climate change policy is generally modeled as a global collective action problem structured by free-riding concerns. Drawing on quantitative data, archival work, and elite interviews, we review empirical support for this model and find that the evidence for its claims is weak relative to the theory’s pervasive influence. We find, first, that the strongest collective action claims appear empirically unsubstantiated in many important climate politics cases.
Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change
Scholars have largely converged on collective action theory to explain the global failure to mitigate climate risks (inter alia Bernauer 2013; Keohane and Victor 2016; Ostrom 2009; Stern 2007). According to this received wisdom, every country wants a stable climate but also faces individual incentives to free-ride off other countries’ climate mitigation efforts. This pushes all countries to unsustainably exploit the global atmospheric commons.
The European Union Emissions Trading System reduced CO2 emissions despite low prices
Significance International carbon markets are an appealing and increasingly popular tool to regulate carbon emissions. They put a price on carbon emissions and make pollution less attractive for regulated firms. However, carbon markets often produce prices which are deemed too low relative to the social cost of carbon. We argue that despite low prices, carbon markets can help reduce emissions.
How robust is the renewable energy industry to political shocks? Evidence from the 2016 U.S. elections
. . “An Evaluation of the 2016 Election Polls in the United States.” American Association for Public Opinion Research. , , and . . “ The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation .” ( ): –401. . . “The Tortoise and the Hare: Political Constraints on Renewable Energy Deployment.” Working Paper. , and . . “ Political Competition, Path Dependence, and the Strategy of Sustainable Energy Transitions .” ( ): –58. .
How India’s impressive electrification compares with South Asian nations
Modi’s flagship Saubhagya scheme is completing a decade of intense efforts that started with Manmohan Singh’s aggressive policies. On 28 April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the country’s last village without electricity had been electrified. This is a stunning achievement and crowns a decade of efforts. But how does it compare to the rest of South Asia?
Renewables | The MIT Press
Wind and solar are the most dynamic components of the global power sector. How did this happen? After the 1973 oil crisis, the limitations of an energy system based on fossil fuels created an urgent need to experiment with alternatives, and some pioneering governments reaped political gains by investing heavily in alternative energy such as wind or solar power. Public policy enabled growth over time, and economies of scale brought down costs dramatically.
Off-grid power not a silver bullet for rural India
A quarter of Indian households have no access to electricity. Swiss researcher Michaël Aklin - who studied the impact of solar microgrids in the country's villages - opines on whether off-grid solar power could change people's lives. People living in wealthy countries rarely stop to consider the benefits of electricity. Consider, for a moment, the plight of households that have no electricity.
Off-grid solar power and rural electrification
While grid extension is the main driver of rural electrification in India today and almost all Indian villages are now electrified, the reality at the habitation and household level is very different. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the electrification of rural households remains a daunting challenge for state governments.Considering these facts and the falling costs of off-grid solar power, distributed alternatives to grid extension have drawn a lot of attention in India.
Does basic energy access generate socioeconomic benefits? A field experiment with off-grid solar power in India
This article assesses the socioeconomic effects of solar microgrids. The lack of access to electricity is a major obstacle to the socioeconomic development of more than a billion people. Off-grid solar technologies hold potential as an affordable and clean solution to satisfy basic electricity needs. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India to estimate the causal effect of off-grid solar power on electricity access and broader socioeconomic development of 1281 rural households.
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