Peddling false solutions: corporate carbon management and climate delay strategies
with Thomas Klug and Carmen Garro, part of CSSN grant on doublespeak of fossil incumbents with Brown University
Fossil fuel companies face growing scrutiny for their role in the climate crisis and have shifted from denying climate change to portraying themselves as key actors in the energy transition. This discursive shift accompanies investments in both proven (e.g., wind, solar) and speculative (e.g., CCUS, biofuels, hydrogen) “low-carbon” technologies. Such investments greenwash corporate images, deflect accountability, and reinforce the continued necessity of fossil infrastructures, often extending sacrifice zones into marginalized communities. Using a novel text-as-data approach, we analyze 4,479 internal documents from five major U.S. fossil fuel firms submitted to the House Oversight Committee. We combine automated Named Entity Recognition and qualitative coding to trace connections between “low-carbon” projects, political and academic collaborators, and resistance from environmental justice communities. Our findings reveal how fossil fuel incumbents frame speculative technologies to legitimate their operations, lobby for favorable policies, and repurpose existing infrastructures, concentrating environmental and social risks in low-income communities of color. This study highlights how “low-carbon” investments function as a strategy of delay and opens avenues for critical investigation of their socio-spatial impacts.
A Resource Database of Cumulative Impacts Laws and Tools: Emerging Policy Opportunities to Protect Environmental Justice Communities from Additional Burden
with Yuykan Lam, Ana Baptista, Anna Yulsman, Madeleine Killough (forthcoming in Environmental Justice)
The Environmental Justice (EJ) movement has persistently called attention to the failure of government policies to prevent and reduce cumulative impacts (CI), the multiple and compounding social and environmental stressors that disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color. The crisis of CI facing these communities has resulted in decades-long organizing efforts to advance substantive government policies that can respond to this persistent problem at the heart of environmental injustices. Beginning in 2019, the Tishman Center created a broad compilation of national and sub-national laws, policies, mapping tools, agency guidance, and gray literature on CI and definitions of EJ communities. In recent years, there has been a proliferation, not only of CI assessment methodologies and mapping tools, but also of specific policy proposals to address CI in permitting decisions. Much of this policymaking has occurred at the state level, where grassroots EJ advocacy has resulted in the passage of innovative CI policies. In response to these developments, version 2.0 of this initial database was created to focus on CI mapping tools, assessment methodologies, and policies (laws and regulations) codifying a CI requirement in permitting decisions, for the purpose of more directly informing advocacy efforts to protect EJ communities through improved regulatory frameworks. Tools, methodologies, and policies were collected using key search terms of online media and legislative websites, as well as referrals from EJ advocates. Data were summarized on the purpose and scope, definitions of key concepts, calculations and points of comparison, burden or exposure indicators, and thresholds for determining CI. The current database includes 6 states with laws and/or regulations requiring CI consideration in permitting decisions, 7 states with tools or methodologies for assessing CI, and 5 states with proposed laws that are being considered. The policies are examined from the perspective of how CI laws, particularly at the sub-national level, have evolved over the last two decades, including insight into the commonalities and distinct differences of approaches to CI in permitting. We conclude by sharing some of the challenges, opportunities, and emerging trends in CI policymaking.
Consensus or Cheap Talk? Discursive Politics of South Africa's Just Energy Transition
with Thomas Klug, Giacomo Raederscheidt and Jan Steckel (in review)
The concept of a just energy transition has been hypothesized to serve as a unifying frame for designing socially accepted fossil fuel phaseout policies. We investigate how this concept is used in public debate, and whether the introduction of just energy transition policies re-orients or reinforces existing positions of actor groups. We use South Africa as an example, mapping the positions of different actor groups and tracing changes over time. Using a novel text-as-data approach, we examine approximately 2,300 newspaper articles published between 2008 and 2023. We deconstruct just energy transition narratives and classify political stances into three types: skeptics, opportunists, and realists. We validate these classifications with structural topic modelling and use them to train a machine-learning stance classifier that tracks discursive shifts and reactions to policy developments. While most actors agree that a just transition should address climate goals, energy access, and socioeconomic inequality, their visions differ in terms of preferred technologies, enabling policies, and the pace of transition. Our findings suggest that policies such as the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) tend to reinforce existing political stances rather than reshaping them.
A Political Backlash to Shifts in Coal Jobs? Lessons from Colombia
with Lennard Naumann and Jan Steckel (working paper)
Phasing out coal is a pivotal part of transitioning to an economy less reliant on fossil fuels that is compatible with a 1.5°C climate pathway. Potential socio-economic impacts of declining mining activity include losses in income and employment, outward migration, and generally regional economic contraction. However, the political implications of mine closures in industrializing countries are yet to be understood. Indeed, shifts in coal employment are potential contributors to increased political polarization. We investigate the case of Colombia, a country heavily dependent on coal exports that recently elected a left-wing president who won on an anti-mining agenda. Using a unique data set, we show how municipality-level changes in coal employment impact voting outcomes, looking at presidential elections from 2014 - 2022. Our findings show that changes in mining are associated with more support for pro-mining and reformist parties, and less support for anti-mining parties, hinting at political polarization. Voter backlash hence can pose an political-economy barrier to the public acceptability of phasing out fossil fuels that is crucial to be taken into account when designing just transition policies.
How to make fossil fuel subsidy reform socially acceptable in Colombia: the role of information and compensatory policies
with Farah Mohammadzadeh Valencia, Brigitte Castañeda Rodríguez, Jan Steckel, Jorge Garcia, and Jorge Bonilla. Collaboration between PIK and Uni Andes, part of EfD grant (OSF registry)
Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies needs to be a cornerstone policy to reach the Paris Climate Agreement. A common concern for introducing adjustments to prices is related to the possible adverse (or regressive) impacts on poverty and inequality. Colombia is in the process of phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, both for diesel and for gasoline. Since these types of policies generate public revenue, experts suggest to design pricing policies that include revenue recycling schemes. The underlying question we aim to answer is what type of revenue recycling scheme significantly increases public support for fossil fuel subsidy reduction (FFSR) in Colombia. We carry out a country representative survey experiment (N=4000 households) to test for different revenue recycling schemes and whether additional information on fairness, effectiveness and environmental impacts could further increase support. The results and analysis will highlight viable entry points for the development of climate policies and related communication campaigns in Colombia.
From Coal to What? Ten Years of Coal Media Narratives in India
with Arne Arens (submitted, working paper)
We present a systematic map of ten years of narrative dynamics in India’s coal discourse, based on over six thousand English-language news articles, to understand state of energy transition. Using dynamic topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and named entity recognition, complemented by targeted qualitative analysis, we quantify topic trajectories, tone, and actor salience. The results show how energy-transition discussion remains marginal and mostly nested within coal supply and energy-security frames. Discursive power is visible in the privileging of certain problem definitions and actors, which structures agenda setting around continuity rather than change. Business and energy-security frames dominate persistently. Environmental and governance frames remain marginal or episodic. Event-driven spikes are short-lived and do not durably reweigh the discourse.
Positive tones are most often associated with topics in proximity to power, and status-quo business. We further highlight the dominance of certain organizations, agencies, and regions, and show Coal India Limited absolute discourse dominance. China is the most frequent actor in the energy transition topic. The results provide an evidence-based foundation for subsequent analyses of policy windows and framing strategies around the necessary energy transition away from coal.
Conflicts and Perception in the Nickel Boom: Understanding Public Narratives of Chinese Investment in Indonesia
with Xiaoran Li and Jan Steckel (part of Geoclimrisk)
Chinese investment in Indonesia’s nickel industry has grown rapidly over the past decade, making the country central to global electric vehicle (EV) supply chains. A key turning point was Indonesia’s 2014 ban on raw nickel ore exports, designed to capture more domestic value through downstream processing and to reinforce a resource-nationalist agenda. While the policy successfully attracted large-scale foreign investment, most prominently from Chinese firms. It also imposed significant short-term costs and fueled local contestation over environmental damage, corruption, and other social issues. Existing evaluations of the ban emphasize its economic trade-offs and institutional challenges, but much less is known about how these dynamics are reflected in public discourse. This paper addresses that gap by analyzing Indonesian media coverage of nickel projects to investigate: (1) the types of conflicts and environmental problems associated with nickel investments, and how they have evolved since the export ban; and (2) how conflicts is framed in public narratives, including whether Chinese-backed projects are disproportionately targeted or “scapegoated.” Using machine-learning methods (topic modeling and sentiment analysis) combined with qualitative framing analysis, we aim to link patterns in media discourse to the broader political economy of critical minerals. The study contributes to debates on resource nationalism, the geopolitics of the energy transition, and the contested legitimacy of Chinese-led development models.
Orthodoxy’s obstruction of climate policy, and what can be done about it.
with Andres Bernal
Denial 2.0: Internal Communications of Fossil Fuel Majors
with Julian Barg, Thomas Klug, Holly Caggiano, and Madison Lore (database publication)
Deconstructing the ivory tower: the liminal space between margins and centers in climate research
with Zakia Soomauroo and Camille Belmin
Industrial pollution and green economic fitness: A complexity approach
with Maria Enrica Virgillito, Lorenzo Tortora and Angelica Sbardella
Contested voices: an automated text-as-data pipeline to grasp public attention to green hydrogen conflicts in Spain
with Marcel Llavero Pasquina, Arnim Scheidel and the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice
The Environmental Justice (EJ) Atlas maps and documents socio-environmental conflicts around the world. We investigate hydrogen as a commodity that perpetuates energy colonialism and pushes the frontiers of sacrifice zones. Simultaneously, voices of local opposition to green energy projects are multiplying. News media echo local acceptance and opposition, juxtaposing contested visions. We propose a novel pipeline that maps geolocalised hydrogen projects in Spain to news coverage on opposition and resistance via the LexisNexis database. Using the conflicts already coded in the EJ Atlas, we train an algorithm that automates coding classification based on newspaper coverage.