Cluster leader: Aleh Cherp
Faculty associated with the cluster: Michael LaBelle, Diana Ürge-Vorsatz
The Energy Transitions and Climate Change area focuses on the changes in energy production, transformation and use which are needed to avoid dangerous climate change while meeting other sustainability and development challenges. We are researching the change in energy systems at the corporate, sectoral, urban, national and global scales. Our scholarship is connected to such disciplines as energy economics, engineering economics, energy systems analysis, urban studies, innovation and organizational studies, socio-technical transition studies and political science. We use a variety of methods ranging from quantitative modeling to qualitative comparative analysis of cases and discourse analysis. Our specific topics and themes include energy security, national energy transitions, urban systems, energy systems innovations, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and multiple impacts of climate change mitigation.
Associated working groups:
Ongoing projects:
- Exploring National and Global Actions to reduce Greenhouse gas Emissions (ENGAGE) H2020, lead of work package on multidimensional feasibility of climate mitigation pathways;
- Sustainable Energy Transitions Laboratory (SENTINEL) H2020, Lead of work package on energy demand modeling;
- ENEFIRST project in H2020: Making energy efficiency first principle operational;
- and the Otto-Wagner-Areal Plus project, funded by the Austrian Research Agency, to plan the renovation of the OWA into an energy plus district, the first such historic district in the world.
Research highlights:
- Jewell, J., Vinichenko, V., Nacke, L., Cherp, A. 2019. Prospects for powering past coal Nature Climate Change https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0509-6
- Cherp, A., Vinichenko, V., Jewell, J., Brutschin, E., Sovacool, B. 2018. Integrating techno-economic, socio-technical and political perspectives on national energy transitions: A meta-theoretical framework. Energy Research and Social Sciences 37, 175-190.
- LaBelle, M.,2017. In Pursuit of Energy Justice. Energy Policy, Vol. 107: 615-620.
- LaBelle, M., 2017. A state of fracking: Building Poland’s national innovation capacity for shale gas. Energy Research and Social Sciences, Vol. 23: 26-35
- Ürge-Vorsatz, D., Rosenzweig, C., Dawson, R. J., Rodriguez, R. S., Bai, X., Barau, A. S., ... & Dhakal, S. 2018. Locking in positive climate responses in cities. Nature Climate Change, 8(3), 174.
- Güneralp, B., Zhou, Y., Ürge-Vorsatz, D., Gupta, M., Yu, S., Patel, P. L., ... & Seto, K. C. 2017. Global scenarios of urban density and its impacts on building energy use through 2050. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 114(34), 8945-8950.