Computational Catalysis and Materials Lab

Abstract: The urgency of climate change necessitates asking why a clean energy transition in the world is not happening fast enough and at a scale that effectively erodes the dominance of fossil fuels. In academic and policy circles, there is a tendency to explain the reasons for stalled or tepid clean energy transitions by citing the technological and market barriers to renewable energy deployment. Yet technology and market determinacy crowds out alternative explanations and leads only to technocratic solutions that do not take into account the complex socioeconomic and political landscape where energy decisions are made. In this talk, Dr. Bayulgen will bring politics into focus for understanding clean energy transitions. With examples from her own research, teaching and advocacy work, she will highlight the importance of political variables and theories in explaining why certain energy pathways are prioritized over others and how energy reforms are enacted, implemented, and sustained over time. She will argue that energy transitions are neither inevitable nor linear and that interests, and the institutional context that shape power dynamics determine the nature, direction, and pace of energy transitions.

Speaker biography: Dr. Oksan Bayulgen is a political scientist with specialization on energy transitions, environmental politics, democratization and development. She has conducted extensive field work in Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Norway, and Turkey with the help of numerous external and university grants. Her first book (Cambridge University Press 2010) was on the relationship between regime types and foreign investments in the oil industry. She has numerous articles in leading journals such as Environmental Politics, Energy Research and Social Science, Journal of Human Rights, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, and International Studies Review. She teaches courses on politics in developing countries, politics of oil, introduction to comparative politics, politics and foreign policies of Russia, democratization, and sustainable energy. Her most recent book (Michigan University Press, 2022) is on the politics of clean energy development in developing countries. She is currently the department head of Political Science and director of Environmental Studies at UConn.

Livestream link: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/lqwur