A research article co-authored by Aileen Lam, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau (UM), has been published in Nature Energy, a leading international journal with an impact factor of 60.858, which mainly publishes the best research studies on energy. The articles published in this journal deal not only with the generation and distribution of energy, but also with the impacts of energy technologies and policies on different societies.

Titled ‘Reframing Incentives for Climate Policy Action’, the article presents evidence to prove that the transformation of energy systems is well underway, and explores the economic and strategic implications of the emerging energy geography. The article argues  that, given the economic implications of the ongoing energy transformation, the framing of climate policy as economically detrimental to those pursuing it is a poor description of strategic incentives. Instead, a new climate policy incentive configuration emerges where fossil fuel importers are better off decarbonising, competitive fossil fuel exporters are better off flooding the market, and uncompetitive fossil fuel producers suffer from their exposure to stranded assets and lack of investment in decarbonisation technologies. The Guardian and The Moscow Times also highlighted the findings presented in the article.

The corresponding author of the paper is Dr Jean-Francois Mercure; All co-authors include Pablo Salas, Pim Vercoulen, Gregor Semieniuk, Hector Pollitt, Phil Holden, Negar Vakilifard, Unnada Chewpreecha, Neil Edwards and Jorge Vinuales made important contributions to the study.

Dr Lam is an environmental economist and her research areas include energy policy, energy innovation modelling, macroeconomic impact of low-carbon innovation, and innovation diffusion in transportation. She is also a Research Fellow of Asian Economics of UM’s Asia-Pacific Academy of Economics and Management.

For more information about the research article, please visit https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00934-2#citeas.