Working Paper
Governing clean energy transitions in China and India

China and India will have to radically transform their electric power systems in order to decouple economic growth from unsustainable resource consumption. While the majority of transition literature has focused on the diverse socio-technical factors that could enable such a transformation, more recently scholars have called for a deeper analysis of political economy factors.

This paper contributes to this approach by studying how a ruling coalition’s ability and willingness to promote a clean energy transition is shaped by societal pressures, vested interests, and its power and cohesiveness. In doing so, we identify central drivers and barriers to a clean energy transition in China and India.