Energy Research & Social Science最新文献

{"title":"What women want: Financing a gender-responsive clean cooking transition","authors":"Olivia Coldrey ,&nbsp;Philip LaRocco ,&nbsp;Paul Lant ,&nbsp;David Allan","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104538","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104538","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite the clear health, socioeconomic and climate benefits of cooking with clean fuels, many people in low- and middle-income countries are unable to do so. Women and girls experience the effects of cooking poverty most acutely. This paper explores the nexus of clean cooking, gender and finance by investigating how the financial sector can be used as a lever of change to support a gender-responsive clean cooking transition. Expert interviews with funders, gender advisors, entrepreneurs and multilateral organisations reveal a system in which institutions do not treat women as socially, culturally or financially equal to men when it comes to eradicating cooking poverty. Nor do they recognise inherent differences in outlook and risk appetite between genders, or that credit assessments often rely on rigid criteria that can disproportionately exclude women. This results in a lack of visibility, agency and influence for women in policy and funding processes that affect them, and limited access to financial resources. Our research findings suggest a roster of institutional and societal reforms that, if enacted, could lead to substantial progress in advancing a gender-just clean cooking transition. We call attention to public banks as influential institutions with mandates to address structural barriers to socioeconomic development. By mainstreaming gender in their funding operations, taking a proactive approach to women's financial inclusion, and nurturing a more gender-responsive financing ecosystem, public banks can contribute significantly to eradicating cooking poverty, reducing gender-based discrimination and improving women's livelihoods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104538"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145981395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How are Indigenous groups participating in large renewable energy project co-ownership? Mapping global progress","authors":"Vigya Sharma ,&nbsp;Julia Loginova","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104557","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104557","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Indigenous co-ownership of renewable energy projects is increasingly proposed as a tangible pathway towards economic reconciliation, enabling Indigenous communities to assert sovereignty over their lands and land use decision-making. This is despite limited empirical understanding of the value of Indigenous co-ownership, how and where it exists, and what its on-the-ground influence may be in advancing Indigenous self-determination and economic resilience. To address this gap, this paper offers a first-of-its-kind foundational, evidence-based knowledge of the state of play on Indigenous co-ownership of large renewable energy projects. We present an original dataset, comprising 61 projects carefully curated to establish a much-needed global baseline on the spatial and temporal trends and patterns across technology, project size, development stage and equity share. Overall, we find evidence of growth in the number of renewable energy projects with Indigenous equity over the last three decades across four jurisdictions. Most projects in Canada (mainly wind) and New Zealand (geothermal) are operational, while many in Australia (mostly solar) and the US (transmission) are in the planning stages. Indigenous equity shares range from 3.2% to full ownership, with minority ownership the most prevalent. Our findings contribute insights into the emerging modes of Indigenous peoples' engagement with the low-carbon energy development globally. As an open-access project registry, it provides the necessary evidence to shape further critical deliberations on the role of co-ownership in the energy transition as a value proposition for First Nations communities. The paper concludes with areas requiring further research, including the need for contextually nuanced grounded assessments of how co-ownership or equity shares may influence Indigenous groups' engagement with renewable energy developments on their lands.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104557"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146189663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond geography, destiny, and politics: Exploring policy styles for industrial decarbonisation in Norway, the United Arab Emirates and the United States","authors":"Marfuga Iskandarova ,&nbsp;Joao M. Uratani ,&nbsp;Dylan D. Furszyfer Del Rio ,&nbsp;Steve Griffiths ,&nbsp;Hans Jakob Walnum ,&nbsp;Benjamin K. Sovacool","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104563","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104563","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines industrial decarbonisation in Norway, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States using sectoral policy styles as a theoretical lens. These countries are major fossil fuel producers with significant renewable energy resources, technical expertise, and financial capabilities to implement decarbonisation, each also representing distinct political systems. It asks: What are the most salient features and instruments mobilised by policymakers and regulators in designing industrial decarbonisation policies in these countries? The study goes beyond notions of geography, destiny, and politics to closely analyse the coalescence of actors, institutions, and policy instruments shaping industrial decarbonisation in each country. While all three countries share similar ambitious climate targets, their policy styles and implementation approaches differ considerably. Norway's approach emphasises technological neutrality, carbon pricing, and collaborative policy development. The UAE's policy style is characterised by centralised decision-making, a strong emphasis on international engagement, and the leading role of government-owned anchor industries. The United States exhibits a more complex multi-level governance system, with significant variations across states, a reliance on market-based incentives, and a historically limited role for industrial planning. The findings suggest that national policy styles and regime characteristics strongly influence the implementation of industrial decarbonisation policies, despite the increasing convergence of policy formulation due to international agreements and the exchange of best practices. Acknowledging the persistent divergence in implementation due to unique national contexts and institutional settings contributes to a better understanding of the factors driving industrial decarbonisation and offers insights for effective policy design and implementation in different political and economic contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104563"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146189662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Renewable transition building on resettlement society: The case of Inner Mongolia, China","authors":"Zhanping Hu,&nbsp;Nikita Sud","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104535","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104535","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The climate crisis demands concerted mitigation efforts. In the coal and critical minerals hub of Inner Mongolia, China, green energy projects are rapidly taking over a landscape degraded by intensive resource extraction. In this paper, we propose the analytical concept of a resettlement society. We argue that renewables transition in Inner Mongolia is built on a resettlement society long in the making. Our qualitative research shows resettlement society to be founded on routine, even repeated unsettlements and resettlements of populations to make way for agrarian, industrial, extractives, and most recently, green development. In frontier regions, resettlement society reinforces the power of the controlling state over subordinated populations. The state, allying with companies that benefit from vacated land, pens displaced populations into resettlement complexes, embroils them in complex and technical regimes of compensation, and engenders increased dependence in a context of shrinking livelihood opportunities. Despite this highly unequal and dependent relationship, our research also notes ordinary people's agency, visible in resistance to displacement, creative means of seeking increased compensation, and lack of enthusiasm for the state's post-resettlement community building or reskilling schemes. Our research, conducted in the emerging renewables centers of Ordos and Baotou shows the green economy of PV power generation and PV silicon manufacturing, benefiting from and reproducing Inner Mongolia's resettlement society.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104535"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145947975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Understanding policymaker support of energy decarbonization policies for buildings","authors":"Reid Dorsey-Palmateer ,&nbsp;Imran Sheikh ,&nbsp;Sharon Shewmake ,&nbsp;Philip Thompson ,&nbsp;Xi Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104536","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104536","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Residential and commercial buildings represent about 40% of energy use and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. We survey U.S. state legislators and city council members to understand the levels and drivers of support for various public policy instruments aimed at reducing these carbon emissions from building energy use, finding a wide range of instrument support among our respondents. Policymakers self-reported priorities as well as their jurisdictional financial characteristics impact their likelihood of support of the policy instruments. We find that the priorities of “freedom of choice” and “environmental group support” have the most consistent impacts on the likelihood of supporting each of the policy instruments, while placing a higher value on “local and indoor air quality” uniquely drives support for command-and-control style policy instruments for building decarbonization. We also do not find substantial differences in the likelihood of support for the various building decarbonization policy instruments between state and municipal policymakers after controlling for the policymakers' varying priorities and jurisdictional attributes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104536"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145981336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Deconstructing the ivory tower: The liminal space between margins and centers in climate research","authors":"Camille Belmin ,&nbsp;Charlotte Sophia Bez ,&nbsp;Zakia Soomauroo","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104553","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104553","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>What does it mean to produce climate science in 2026? Building on the dialogical approach of Fenner and Harcourt <span><span>[1]</span></span>, this paper explores how positionalities and emotional landscapes shape the work of three female researchers in climate science. Through a collective, reflexive dialogue, we confront the personal and structural tensions embedded in global climate science, examining power asymmetries, the tokenization of diversity, and the hegemonic dominance of quantification and masculinized norms. Our reflections draw attention to how scientific practices often, even unintentionally, perpetuate the very injustices they aim to address. These inherent exclusionary practices lead us to the idea of academia as a border. By weaving together anecdotal recollections and critical theory, we illuminate how situatedness matters, not just methodologically but politically. We critique the neoliberal and heteronormative underpinnings of academic institutions and propose a future-oriented agenda grounded in relationality, emotional honesty, and epistemic inclusivity. Our concluding recommendations aim to shift academic practice from extractive performance metrics to spaces of resistance, care, and collective transformation. As part of this, we bring a reflective tool inspired by Audre Lorde's <span><span>[2]</span></span> <em>Questionnaire to Oneself</em> to invite deeper engagement with the contradictions and silences within our own scholarly work.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104553"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146078838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Settler colonialism lock-in: Transitions and the prefiguring of settler futurities","authors":"Suzanne Chew ,&nbsp;Tracey Galloway","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104515","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104515","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Transitions research commonly assumes the dominant Western paradigm of modern ontology and its ideological colonial and capitalist relations. Yet these assumptions, left uninterrogated, endanger the emancipatory and liberatory potential heralded by new energy futures within just transitions, eliding decolonial futurities that honour tenets of Indigenous resurgence as well as truth and reconciliation. In colonized places where the invaders never left, these onto-ideological assumptions risk perpetuating settler colonialism and its manifest harms, reproducing the status quo of social inequity and hegemonic power relations. Learning from the concepts by Seto et al. (2016) of ‘carbon lock-in’ and Byrd's (2011) ‘transit of empire’, we aim to further illuminate such risks by characterizing this path dependency as <em>settler colonialism lock-in</em>. Here, settler colonialism lock-in refers to the entrenchment of an enmeshed modern ontology, contemporary capitalism, and colonialism within the institutional, political, social, and infrastructural (legal, financial, physical) fabric of transitions, by default prefiguring and prioritizing settler futurities. Centering equity and justice necessitates reflection upon the crux of the question: <em>whose priorities</em>, and <em>whose futurities</em>, do transitions centre? Through such reflection, we call upon researchers and practitioners working on transitions to consider different worlds and learn from Indigenous thought, and in resisting neoliberal worlds, to reimagine who can and should profit from transitions. The idea of settler colonialism lock-in aims to provoke thought and reflection in discerning such path dependency to avoid these slippery paths, towards building just transitions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104515"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146039109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Driving decarbonization? Corporate responses to the Paris climate agreement in the global automotive sector","authors":"Fiona Bare ,&nbsp;Jeff D. Colgan ,&nbsp;Alexander S. Gard-Murray","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104549","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104549","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Did firms accelerate decarbonization as a result of the 2015 Paris Agreement, particularly in industries where low-carbon options were technologically feasible? Paris marked a milestone in climate cooperation, but its effectiveness depends on the behavior of firms, which generate most global carbon emissions. Prior studies disagree on whether international agreements influence corporate action, and few analyze climate accords directly. This paper examines whether the Paris Agreement shifted corporate strategy in “convertible” industries, focusing on the automotive sector. Our analysis covers twelve global automakers, responsible for almost 80% of worldwide vehicle production, using six categories of primary evidence to assess strategic change. We find only limited evidence of decarbonization strategies tied to the Paris Agreement, suggesting that firm responses were at best incremental rather than transformative. These findings challenge optimistic accounts of the Paris Agreement's influence and call for continued efforts to understand the limits of international agreements in driving firm behavior to address climate change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104549"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146079439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who owns the transition narrative? BERTopic text mining of Polish press discourse on the energy transition (2015–2023)","authors":"Piotr Cichocki,&nbsp;Mariusz Baranowski,&nbsp;Piotr Jabkowski","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104554","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2026.104554","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study uses the Multi-Level Perspective to map the coverage of energy-transition issues in the Polish press from 2015 to 2023. Specifically, we examine how coverage is distributed across landscape, regime, and niche levels and how these distributions and topic salience vary among business, liberal, and right-wing press titles. We compiled 3152 articles that mentioned “energy transition” and used a transformer-based BERTopic pipeline to identify 50 topics. At the landscape level, our study revealed that the Polish press emphasized European Union climate regulations, macroeconomic conditions, and geopolitics in its coverage. At the regime level, coverage focused on coal controversies, energy infrastructure, prices and affordability, environmental, social, governance, finance, renewables, and small modular reactors. Niche content put emphasis on hydrogen and alternative fuels and highlighted the impact of digitalization and automation. Additionally, we found that business outlets overrepresented finance and markets, framing sustainability in commercial terms while downplaying partisan conflict and broad environmental policy. Liberal outlets prioritized domestic politics and social debates over technical or market dimensions. Right-wing outlets emphasized climate and the environment within national frames, highlighting hydrogen and infrastructure tied to security and independence while downplaying financial-market perspectives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104554"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146039082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When a forest is masked by trees: How French subsurface industries involved in decarbonisation and transition policies are instrumentalising poor social acceptance","authors":"Xavier Arnauld de Sartre ,&nbsp;Sébastien Chailleux","doi":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104517","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.erss.2025.104517","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many policy-makers and industrialists consider that, over and above technology, social acceptance is the main obstacle to any decarbonised industrial use of the subsurface. Our aim in this paper is to challenge – and criticise – this point of view, by showing that even if a lack of social acceptance can explain the non-deployment of some subsurface technologies, generalising this explanation to every industrial failure hides – sometimes intentionally – the different reasons explaining why various promises from subsurface industries have failed to materialise in France. Through an analysis of three subsurface industries over a period of 15 years (underground carbon storage, shale gas development and mining prospects), this article shows how a coalition of subsurface industries and policymakers have built up a narrative emphasising the lack of social acceptability. We first show why the narratives about the lack of social acceptance fail to describe the various conflicts and project failures, and then categorise three different ways the lack of social acceptance is used to describe opponents, hide other reasons for failure and obtain policy reforms. We discuss the limitations of these frames to promote energy transition projects and the use of the very notion of social acceptance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48384,"journal":{"name":"Energy Research & Social Science","volume":"132 ","pages":"Article 104517"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145981402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}