Just Transitions and power shifts: capital, labour and energy in the North Sea region

The project will explore what a rapid shift in energy politics in the North Sea could mean as the UK and Norway shift away from oil and gas and towards green sources of energy such as wind and tidal.

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Frames in Production: Actors, Networks, Diffusion (FRAMENET)

Where do frames come from in the first place? Why do actors choose the specific frames they use? The project thus aims to create a new, comparative research agenda that investigates when and how specific statements emerge in a political debate, by which kinds of actors they are proposed, and whether and how they diffuse to others. The research team is comprised of six colleagues (Özlem Atikcan from Warwick, Philip Leifeld from Essex and Kerem Öge from KCL, Anna Holzscheiter from Dresden in Germany, Jean Frédéric Morin and Yannick Dufresne from Laval in Canada). The project is funded jointly by the ESRC in the UK, DFG in Germany, and SSHRC in Canada. The total budget including all three countries is around £1,000,000.

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Anatomy of Disbelief: Explaining Polish Climate Scepticism

A number of authors have assumed that a rise in right wing populism poses a major and severe challenge for climate policy. We are interested in exploring the political economy of climate policy, including the structural but also ideological foundations of climate policy in Poland. This research seeks to explain the changing role of experts and politicians in public and political discourse on climate change, and critically examine the source, extent and character of climate scepticism in the country. This will be based on the collection, coding and analysis of data derived from media analysis and elite interviews. TEAM: The primary investigators are Tomas Maltby (King’s College London) and Kacper Szulecki (University of Oslo), in close collaboration with Aleksandra Wagner (Jagiellonian University). FUNDER: Noble Foundation

Under what conditions does concern about air pollution translate into political action? A scoping exercise focused on Poland.

This interdisciplinary scoping project focuses on how, when and why public concern about air pollution translates into political action in Poland. Forty-eight thousand premature deaths are caused by air pollution in the country, where 36 of Europe’s 50 most air polluted cities are located. The main puzzle we are exploring here is why is there greater deliberation and citizen and political action on air-pollution in some heavily polluted areas than in others? Our project will map a series of potentially explanatory variables that may help explain the variation, with political activism being our dependent variable. TEAM: Dr Tomas Maltby (Joint Principal Investigator, Political Economy) Dr Kris De Meyer (Joint Principal Investigator, Neuroimaging and Geography) Professor Adam Fagan (Political Economy), Professor Sarah Birch (Political Economy), Dr Gabriella Rundblad (ECS). FUNDER: King's Together Seed Award.

Climate-Related Disclosures Policy Forum

In September 2020, the IFRS Foundation consulted on preliminary proposals for how climate reporting should be integrated into existing financial reporting. To inform the IFRS Foundation’s deliberations, the Qatar Centre of Global Banking & Finance convened a policy forum of experts to debate the issues involved in designing a set of coherent standards.

• Climate-Related Disclosures Policy Forum