Coal Transition Seminar Series: Coal, climate change mitigation and populism
The Energy Transition Hub Coal Transition Seminar Series: Seminar 1
In order to fulfil international climate targets, across the globe coal used in the energy sector will need to be phased out until mid of the century, at latest. This is at odds with current investments. Many countries, particularly developing and newly-industrializing ones, continue to invest in coal fired power plants. Based on research conducted at MCC, this talk will give an overview of reasons for current coal investments and why phasing out coal is often difficult and needs to be designed carefully. It will also sketch possible solutions.
This seminar is the first in a series of Energy Transition Hub hosted events on issues related to coal transition.
Jan Steckel heads the working group “Climate and Development” at Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). His research focuses on climate change mitigation in developing and newly-industrializing countries; more specifically he works on:
- Interactions between climate change mitigation and sustainable development
- Drivers of global carbon emissions
- Energy and economic development
- Climate policy and policy instruments in developing and emerging economies
- Political economy and distributional effects of climate policies
- Structural change
Jan received a Ph.D. in economics from TU Berlin and a Master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Flensburg and the University of Southern Denmark. From 2007 to 2013 he worked at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research. Jan has authored multiple academic articles and has been an author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Renewables as well as its 5th Assessment report. He led a chapter on phasing out coal for the UNEP emissions gap report 2017.
He is also affiliated with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and TU Berlin, where he teaches courses about Climate Change Economics and Climate Change and Development. Until December 2016 he was principal investigator in the project "Macroeconomic Sustainability Assessment" in the Collaborative Research Center 1026 ("Sustainable Manufacturing") funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).