Policies for Energy & Materials Transitions

Course goals

Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

• Critically analyze and evaluate current energy and materials policies based on their effectiveness (environmental impact), efficiency (cost-effectiveness), welfare implications, and fairness.
• Analyze and understand the interactions between policy instruments and targets.
• Assess the impact of metric selection in policy design.
• Understand and analyze the mechanisms behind emission certificate auctioning.
• Apply research tools within the context of energy and material policies.
• Write and present a coherent, data-driven, and well-argued policy note addressing a real policy-relevant research question.

Content

The energy and materials system lies at the heart of a diverse set of policies with varying aims and scopes. Some policies address climate change, while others focus on energy security, pricing, energy poverty, critical materials, innovation, or systemic transformation. Policymakers face the challenge of crafting just, coherent, and well-aligned instruments that effectively achieve the targets, ambitions, and agreements embedded in these policies.
This course equips students with a deep understanding of the interplay between policies and the energy and materials system. It encourages the development of ideas for designing intelligent, consistent, and equitable policies in a complex world. The course covers climate change mitigation (e.g., emissions trading, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and circular economy policies), geopolitics (e.g., energy security and critical materials), and broad welfare effects of the energy and materials transition (green industry policy, affordability, energy poverty, and fairness). Students will gain insights into the practical design of policy instruments that steer the system toward desired outcomes.