About the SUS-POL research programme

Learn more about the SUS-POL research programme, funded by the UKRI Frontiers programme.

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Drawing on the fields of global political economy, international relations, sociology, geography, and transition studies, the SUS-POL project seeks to identify the political, economic, cultural, and social conditions and processes that give rise to, and help to spread, policies that seek to limit fossil fuel production and ensure that reserves remain in the ground.

By investigating the barriers and drivers to supply-side climate policies, and what motivates the actors that have implemented them, the project will generate conceptual and practical insights into how such policies can be adopted more widely across various contexts and levels of governance, and the conditions that give rise to them.

That large remaining reserves of fossil fuels need to stay in the ground to address the climate emergency is now beyond doubt. But how? Which conditions have enabled governments, international institutions, and other actors to adopt the necessary policies to fairly leave fossil fuels in the ground and what more can be done to support them? These are the pressing questions addressed by the SUS-POL project." - Professor Peter Newell, University of Sussex and Project Lead on the SUS-POL programme

Our Objectives

  1. To build an evidence base of global supply-side policies by developing a database and policy tracker of supply-side policies being adopted around the world.
  2. To foster an understanding of the political, economic, social, and cultural conditions that give rise to supply-side policies in a variety of contexts and at different levels of governance
  3. To explore the drivers for supply-side policies and the barriers to their uptake, the actors involved in the process, and the dynamics of resistance from incumbents, such as fossil fuel companies.
  4. To develop insights into ‘first mover’ countries that have implemented supply-side policies to date and how these examples can inform efforts to replicate and scale policies elsewhere by second and third movers.

We aim to achieve these objectives through the following workstreams:

  1. Developing an interactive and open-source database that tracks and maps existing supply-side climate policies around the world, across multiple levels of governance.
  2. Conduct fieldwork in existing first-mover countries or those with the potential to become a first-mover.
  3. Develop various scenarios to inform potential pathways to the introduction of supply-side climate policies at the national, regional, and international level.

To explore the policies that the project has tracked and mapped so far, please visit the SUS-POL Fossil Fuel Tracker.

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