Overview
The Regional Energy Transitions Project will identify the characteristics of communities that successfully weather periods of economic change, enabling better policy and business decisions for a just transition.
Climate change is global, but justice is local. Conventional economic analysis of the low-carbon transition can overlook the many smaller communities that specialise in and rely on the fossil fuel industry.
This project will use data science to inform regional management of the global energy transition. This research will help policymakers, investors and civil society groups focus their resources to better prepare vulnerable communities for the impacts of a deceleration of high-emission industries.
Our funding will support Harvard’s research to uncover what makes communities resilient (or not) to the disruptive impacts of economic change and share best practice around how to transition local communities away from fossil fuels. We will support the Data Viz Lab for Social Policy to create a platform that uses the power of data visualization to enable users to identify the communities most vulnerable to energy transition shocks and suggest possible interventions (by identifying which factors of resilient communities that are lacking in that region) that could create more resilient communities that are able to manage those shocks effectively.
Learn more about this work on this Harvard Kennedy School podcast: hks.harvard.edu.