Towards a science of climate and energy choices

By P. Stern, Benjamin Sovacool, Thomas Dietz. 2016

227 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The linked problems of energy sustainability and climate change are among the most complex and daunting facing humanity at the start of the twenty-first century. This joint Nature Energy and Nature Climate Change Collection illustrates how understanding and addressing these problems will require an integrated science of coupled human and natural systems; including technological systems, but also extending well beyond the domain of engineering or even economics. It demonstrates the value of replacing the stylized assumptions about human behaviour that are common in policy analysis, with ones based on data-driven science. We draw from and engage articles in the Collection to identify key contributions to understanding non-technological factors connecting economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions, describe a multi-dimensional space of human action on climate and energy issues, and illustrate key themes, dimensions and contributions towards fundamental understanding and informed decision making.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e05b7eea6a94e1cee7a91d10bb12108a86263cc3

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Citations in the corpus

Promoting novelty, rigor, and style in energy social science: Towards codes of practice for appropriate methods and research design (2018, background): “warn that too little research in energy social science falls into “Pasteur’s Quadrant” of both advancing scientific or theoretical understanding and being immediately useful at addressing a pressing energy- or climate-related problem [46].”
Ordering theories: Typologies and conceptual frameworks for sociotechnical change (2017, unknown): “Similar calls for more inclusive, comparative, cross-disciplinary research have come recently from many researchers (e.g. Castree, 2016; Sovacool et al., 2015; Stern et al., 2016; Viseu, 2015; Webster, 2016).”
Reducing energy demand through low carbon innovation: A sociotechnical transitions perspective and thirteen research debates (2018, background): “Third, neoclassical economics assumes rational decision-making by firms and individuals and tends to pay limited attention to the broader, non-economic determinants of decision-making [12].”
Synthesizing building physics with social psychology: An interdisciplinary framework for context and occupant behavior in office buildings (2017, unknown): “Rather, integrative solutions and insights gained from trans-disciplinary expertise are needed [83].”
Energy justice in the transition to low carbon energy systems: Exploring key themes in interdisciplinary research (2019, background): “This objective is an unchangeable key component to sustainable approaches in energy policy-making [10].”
Energy justice: a policy approach (2017, unknown): “The world is set to invest over $300 trillion in renewable, fossil fuels and nuclear energy in the next ten to twenty years (Stern et al. 2016).”
The misallocation of climate research funding (2020, background): “During the same period, three times more money was spent on oil, gas, and coal facilities than on all forms of renewable energy infrastructure, including hydropower and biofuels [15].”