NEW REPORT: The New Economics of Innovation and Transition: Evaluating Opportunities and Risks
Watch a recording of the launch event of our latest report. Download the report from this page.
The most outstanding successes so far in low carbon transitions in China, India, Brazil and Europe were achieved by policies implemented despite, not because of, dominant economic analysis and advice. That was the striking finding of an EEIST report released at COP26.
Now the same team launched its third report, which represents a major effort to demonstrate the value of new economic modelling to policy questions relevant to the low carbon transition. Through fifteen real-world global, regional, and national case studies, developed in partnership with policy stakeholders, the report demonstrates how new economic modelling approaches can deliver crucial insights for decision makers. It also provides guidance on how to evaluate and choose between different modelling approaches, and how to support their use.
Case studies in the report cover the global energy transition, the power and industrial sectors, transport, agriculture, the economic impact of the transition, national decarbonisation plans, and finance’s role in the transition.
This event launched the report and host a discussion on new economic modelling of the energy transition, and the policy and analysis lessons for Germany and Europe.
Dr Peter Barbrook-Johnson
Pete Barbrook-Johnson is a Departmental Research Lecturer at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Environmental Change Institute, and the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. His research interests sit at the crossroads of social science and economics, complexity science, and environmental and energy policy. He uses a range of methods in his research including agent-based modelling, network analysis, and systems mapping, to explore applied social, economic, and policy questions, and to support complexity-appropriate policy evaluation, but is equally interested in more theoretical aspects of complex adaptive systems.
Simon Sharpe
Simon Sharpe is Director of Economics for the UNFCCC Climate Champions and a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute, and leads policy engagement on the Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition project. Simon was previously Deputy Director of the UK government’s COP26 Unit, where he led international campaigns on energy, transport, land use, science and innovation.
His other roles in government included leading international climate change strategy, developing the approach to clean growth in the UK’s industrial strategy, and serving as head of private office to Ministers of State for Energy and Climate Change. He also served on diplomatic postings to China and India.
Simon has published academic papers on climate change science and economics, and policy reports on climate change risk assessment, economics, and diplomacy. His current focus is on the Breakthrough Agenda – a process to strengthen international collaboration to accelerate transitions in each emitting sector of the global economy; and on projects to apply new economic thinking to climate change policy.
Dr Cristina Peñasco
Cristina is a University of Cambridge Lecturer in public Policy at POLIS (Department of Politics and International Studies). At Cambridge, she is also a Fellow at Queens’ College, a Centre Fellow at Centre for the Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG), and an associate researcher of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
Her research is multidisciplinary in nature, bringing together aspects of environmental economics, innovation policy and energy economics in green and energy efficiency technologies, with a focus on policy instruments enabling the transition to low-carbon economies
Fernanda Senra de Moura
Dr Fernanda Senra de Moura is a Research Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), the School of Geography and the Environment, at the University of Oxford.
Fernanda’s research focuses on political institutions and environmental policy in developing countries. She also studies gender inequality. Fernanda uses both microeconomic theory and applied methods. She has worked in climate risk management with international development and government institutions in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.
Current projects include: Data-driven systems mapping of SDGs and their interaction with the energy transition; The Heterogeneous Effects of Reelection Incentives: Evidence from Brazil; Gender Gaps in Parliament: Access to Public Funds by Legislators in Brazil; Climate risk financing in developing countries.