The Political Economy of Coal Policy: Comparative Analyses of Stakeholder Strategies and Resource Industries' Embeddedness in the International Economy.

Coal-fuelled power generation is the single largest source of CO₂ emissions worldwide. In order to fulfil the 2016 Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the increase in global average temperature to below 2℃, over 80% of the world’s coal reserves must remain unused. Therefore, many countries are considering adopting policies to reduce the use of coal and its mining. This project aims to reveal why some countries have opted for phase-out policies, whereas some others have not even included the issue on their political agenda.

These differences cannot be explained only by country-level factors, such as the economic development level, coal reserves, trade patterns or the number of interest groups advocating for environmental protection. This project thus pays attention to the interests, goals and activities of different policy actors.

The project asks the following questions:

– What are the key energy stakeholders’ interests related to coal and what coalitions emerge among them?

– Why are some actors more influential than others in translating their interests into policy outcomes?

– What lessons can countries draw from coal policy trajectories in other countries?

Conceptually, the project will first bring the relevant theories from different disciplines together. Subsequently, the research team will analyze the links among energy stakeholders’ resource endowments, their policy-related activities and the evolution of discourses around coal energy.

These analyses include a special emphasis on the role and the abilities of local resource -production industries, their positioning in global resource trade and their employees.