Jan Christoph Steckel
Biographic Data
| ID | 6454922 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jan Christoph Steckel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jan Christoph |
| FAMILY NAME | Steckel |
| SIGNATURE | STECKEL J C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5325-9214 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 117 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 38 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Consensus or cheap talk? The discursive politics of South Africa’s just energy transition
Carbon pricing and household welfare
Policymakers frequently voice concerns that carbon pricing could impair economic development in the short run, especially in low-income countries such as Uganda. Using a consumer demand system for energy and food items, we assess how households’ welfare, and demand for food and energy, would respond to a carbon price of USD40/tCO2. We find welfare losses of 0.2–12 per cent of household expenditure on food and fuel, due to the carbon price. Averag…
The poverty and distributional impacts of carbon pricing on households
We examine the distributional impact of domestic carbon pricing in three Sub-Saharan African countries. We combine household expenditure surveys and sectoral carbon intensity data derived from a multi-regional input-output model for Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. Our findings indicate that domestic carbon pricing is progressive in all three countries. This primarily results from higher budget allocations for direct energy consumption in wealthier hou…
Dirty talk
This paper investigates media discourses on coal in South Africa to understand the state of progress of its energy transition. We approach discourse as a key element in policy sequencing, shaping the conditions under which regulatory change becomes possible. Using an integrated text-as-data pipeline, including topic modeling, named entity recognition, and sentiment analysis, we analyze approximately 8,000 national newspaper articles from 2010 to …
Coal transitions—part 2
A rapid phase-out of unabated coal use is essential to limit global warming to below 2 °C. This review presents a comprehensive assessment of coal transitions in mitigation scenarios consistent with the Paris Agreement, using data from more than 1500 publicly available scenarios generated by more than 30 integrated assessment models. Our ensemble analysis uses clustering techniques to categorize coal transition pathways in models and bridges evid…
Macroeconomic structural change likely increases inequality in India more than climate policy
The decarbonization of India’s economy will have different effects across income groups. As India is in the middle of the transformation process from an agriculture-based economy towards an industry- and service-based economy, called economic structural change, the extent of income distribution across households strongly depends also on the speed of economic transformation. While a number of recent studies have analyzed the distributional effects…
Investment in new coal-fired power plants after the Covid-19 pandemic
To avoid dangerous climate change, the global community has committed to phasing down coal at COP26 in Glasgow. Since policies and pledges currently implemented in the power sector are not sufficient to meet mitigation targets, countries are expected to increase their ambition over time within the UNFCCC process. Furthermore, some countries are bilaterally negotiating support packages to speed up the phase-out of coal through ‘Just Energy Transit…
The political economy of coal across 12 countries
Cash transfers in the context of carbon pricing reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean
Carbon Pricing and Household Welfare
The political economy of coal phase-out
Coal transitions—part 1
A rapid coal phase-out is needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but is hindered by serious challenges ranging from vested interests to the risks of social disruption. To understand how to organize a global coal phase-out, it is crucial to go beyond cost-effective climate mitigation scenarios and learn from the experience of previous coal transitions. Despite the relevance of the topic, evidence remains fragmented throughout different r…
Finance-based accounting of coal emissions
Most new coal-fired power plants are currently being constructed in Asia. These plants are financed by banks and investors, which in many instances reside elsewhere. This paper examines the international dimension of coal financing from commercial banks and institutional investors based on a newly constructed dataset. We analyse domestic as well as cross-border financial flows and propose a methodology to calculate ‘finance-based emissions’ assoc…
The political economy of coal
Distributional impacts of carbon pricing in developing Asia
Coal, power and coal-powered politics in Indonesia
The future of coal in a carbon-constrained climate
Phasing out coal requires expanding the notion of a ‘just transition’ and a roadmap that specifies the sequence of coal plant retirement, the appropriate policy instruments as well as ways to include key stakeholders in the process
Road to glory or highway to hell? Global road access and climate change mitigation
Transportation infrastructure is considered a key factor for economic development and poverty alleviation. The United Nations have explicitly included the provision of transport infrastructure access, e.g. through all-season road access, in their Sustainable Development Goal agenda (SDGs, target 9.1). Yet, little is known about the number of people lacking access to roads worldwide, the costs of closing existing access gaps and the implications o…
Actors, objectives, context
Understanding different perspectives on economic growth and climate policy
Should economic growth continue in a world threatened by the prospect of catastrophic climate change? The scientific and public debate has brought forth a broad spectrum of views and narratives on this question, ranging from neoclassical economics to degrowth. We argue that different positions can be attributed to underlying differences in views on (a) factors that determine human well‐being, (b) the feasibility and desirability of economic growt…
Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits
Truncation Error Estimates in Process Life Cycle Assessment Using Input‐Output Analysis
Process life cycle assessment (PLCA) is widely used to quantify environmental flows associated with the manufacturing of products and other processes. As PLCA always depends on defining a system boundary, its application involves truncation errors. Different methods of estimating truncation errors are proposed in the literature; most of these are based on artificially constructed system complete counterfactuals. In this article, we review the lit…
Reports of coal’s terminal decline may be exaggerated
We estimate the cumulative future emissions expected to be released by coal power plants that are currently under construction, announced, or planned. Even though coal consumption has recently declined and plans to build new coal-fired capacities have been shelved, constructing all these planned coal-fired power plants would endanger national and international climate targets. Plans to build new coal-fired power capacity would likely undermine th…
Short term policies to keep the door open for Paris climate goals
Climate policy needs to account for political and social acceptance. Current national climate policy plans proposed under the Paris Agreement lead to higher emissions until 2030 than cost-effective pathways towards the Agreements' long-term temperature goals would imply. Therefore, the current plans would require highly disruptive changes, prohibitive transition speeds, and large long-term deployment of risky mitigation measures for achieving the…
Mobilizing domestic resources for the Agenda 2030 via carbon pricing
Poverty and distributional effects of carbon pricing in low- and middle-income countries – A global comparative analysis
Even though concerns about adverse distributional implications for the poor are one of the most important political challenges for carbon pricing, the existing literature reveals ambiguous results. For this reason, we assess the expected incidence of moderate carbon price increases for different income groups in 87 mostly low- and middle-income countries. Building on a consistent dataset and method, we find that for countries with per capita inco…
Actors, objectives, context
Coal, power and coal-powered politics in Indonesia
Addressing policy credibility problems for low-carbon investment
Closing the emission price gap
Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits
How climate change mitigation could harm development in poor countries
Avoiding dangerous climate changes requires emission reductions in not only industrialized but also developing countries. This opinion piece argues that even if the ‘full incremental costs’ of abatement in developing countries would be covered by industrialized countries, the former's development prospects could be hampered by climate change mitigation due to the following reasons. First, financial inflows have the potential to induce a ‘climate …
The political economy of coal phase-out
From climate finance toward sustainable development finance
Decarbonizing the global energy system requires large‐scale investment flows, with a central role for international climate finance to mobilize private funds. The willingness to provide international finance in accordance with common but differentiated responsibilities was acknowledged by the broad endorsement of the Paris Agreement, and the Green Climate Funds in particular. The international community aims to mobilize at least USD 100 billion p…
The climate rent curse
Understanding different perspectives on economic growth and climate policy
Should economic growth continue in a world threatened by the prospect of catastrophic climate change? The scientific and public debate has brought forth a broad spectrum of views and narratives on this question, ranging from neoclassical economics to degrowth. We argue that different positions can be attributed to underlying differences in views on (a) factors that determine human well‐being, (b) the feasibility and desirability of economic growt…
Access to infrastructure services
The political economy of coal across 12 countries
The political economy of coal
Mobilizing domestic resources for the Agenda 2030 via carbon pricing
Towards a Better Understanding of Disparities in Scenarios of Decarbonization
Development without energy? Assessing future scenarios of energy consumption in developing countries
How climate change mitigation could harm development in poor countries
Avoiding dangerous climate changes requires emission reductions in not only industrialized but also developing countries. This opinion piece argues that even if the ‘full incremental costs’ of abatement in developing countries would be covered by industrialized countries, the former's development prospects could be hampered by climate change mitigation due to the following reasons. First, financial inflows have the potential to induce a ‘climate …
Closing the emission price gap
The role of capital costs in decarbonizing the electricity sector
Low-carbon electricity generation, i.e. renewable energy, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage, is more capital intensive than electricity generation through carbon emitting fossil fuel power stations. High capital costs, expressed as high weighted average cost of capital (WACC), thus tend to encourage the use of fossil fuels. To achieve the same degree of decarbonization, countries with high capital costs therefore need to impose a highe…
Productivity ranges of sustainable biomass potentials from non-agricultural land
Land is under pressure from a number of demands, including the need for increased supplies of bioenergy. While bioenergy is an important ingredient in many pathways compatible with reaching the 2 °C target, areas where cultivation of the biomass feedstock would be most productive appear to co-host other important ecosystems services. We categorize global geo-data on land availability into productivity deciles, and provide a geographically explici…
Implications of climate change mitigation for sustainable development
Evaluating the trade-offs between the risks related to climate change, climate change mitigation as well as co-benefits requires an integrated scenarios approach to sustainable development. We outline a conceptual multi-objective framework to assess climate policies that takes into account climate impacts, mitigation costs, water and food availability, technological risks of nuclear energy and carbon capture and sequestration as well as co-benefi…
Teleconnected food supply shocks
The 2008–2010 food crisis might have been a harbinger of fundamental climate-induced food crises with geopolitical implications. Heat-wave-induced yield losses in Russia and resulting export restrictions led to increases in market prices for wheat across the Middle East, likely contributing to the Arab Spring. With ongoing climate change, temperatures and temperature variability will rise, leading to higher uncertainty in yields for major nutriti…
From climate finance toward sustainable development finance
Decarbonizing the global energy system requires large‐scale investment flows, with a central role for international climate finance to mobilize private funds. The willingness to provide international finance in accordance with common but differentiated responsibilities was acknowledged by the broad endorsement of the Paris Agreement, and the Green Climate Funds in particular. The international community aims to mobilize at least USD 100 billion p…
Addressing policy credibility problems for low-carbon investment
The climate rent curse
Access to infrastructure services
Truncation Error Estimates in Process Life Cycle Assessment Using Input‐Output Analysis
Process life cycle assessment (PLCA) is widely used to quantify environmental flows associated with the manufacturing of products and other processes. As PLCA always depends on defining a system boundary, its application involves truncation errors. Different methods of estimating truncation errors are proposed in the literature; most of these are based on artificially constructed system complete counterfactuals. In this article, we review the lit…
Reports of coal’s terminal decline may be exaggerated
We estimate the cumulative future emissions expected to be released by coal power plants that are currently under construction, announced, or planned. Even though coal consumption has recently declined and plans to build new coal-fired capacities have been shelved, constructing all these planned coal-fired power plants would endanger national and international climate targets. Plans to build new coal-fired power capacity would likely undermine th…
Short term policies to keep the door open for Paris climate goals
Climate policy needs to account for political and social acceptance. Current national climate policy plans proposed under the Paris Agreement lead to higher emissions until 2030 than cost-effective pathways towards the Agreements' long-term temperature goals would imply. Therefore, the current plans would require highly disruptive changes, prohibitive transition speeds, and large long-term deployment of risky mitigation measures for achieving the…
Mobilizing domestic resources for the Agenda 2030 via carbon pricing
Poverty and distributional effects of carbon pricing in low- and middle-income countries – A global comparative analysis
Even though concerns about adverse distributional implications for the poor are one of the most important political challenges for carbon pricing, the existing literature reveals ambiguous results. For this reason, we assess the expected incidence of moderate carbon price increases for different income groups in 87 mostly low- and middle-income countries. Building on a consistent dataset and method, we find that for countries with per capita inco…
The future of coal in a carbon-constrained climate
Phasing out coal requires expanding the notion of a ‘just transition’ and a roadmap that specifies the sequence of coal plant retirement, the appropriate policy instruments as well as ways to include key stakeholders in the process
Road to glory or highway to hell? Global road access and climate change mitigation
Transportation infrastructure is considered a key factor for economic development and poverty alleviation. The United Nations have explicitly included the provision of transport infrastructure access, e.g. through all-season road access, in their Sustainable Development Goal agenda (SDGs, target 9.1). Yet, little is known about the number of people lacking access to roads worldwide, the costs of closing existing access gaps and the implications o…
Actors, objectives, context
Understanding different perspectives on economic growth and climate policy
Should economic growth continue in a world threatened by the prospect of catastrophic climate change? The scientific and public debate has brought forth a broad spectrum of views and narratives on this question, ranging from neoclassical economics to degrowth. We argue that different positions can be attributed to underlying differences in views on (a) factors that determine human well‐being, (b) the feasibility and desirability of economic growt…
Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits
Coal transitions—part 1
A rapid coal phase-out is needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but is hindered by serious challenges ranging from vested interests to the risks of social disruption. To understand how to organize a global coal phase-out, it is crucial to go beyond cost-effective climate mitigation scenarios and learn from the experience of previous coal transitions. Despite the relevance of the topic, evidence remains fragmented throughout different r…
Finance-based accounting of coal emissions
Most new coal-fired power plants are currently being constructed in Asia. These plants are financed by banks and investors, which in many instances reside elsewhere. This paper examines the international dimension of coal financing from commercial banks and institutional investors based on a newly constructed dataset. We analyse domestic as well as cross-border financial flows and propose a methodology to calculate ‘finance-based emissions’ assoc…
The political economy of coal
Economics (30 works) · Business (22 works) · Climate Change Policy and Economics (21 works) · Natural resource economics (18 works) · Engineering (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Climate change (12 works) · Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies (12 works) · Coal (11 works) · Energy and Environment Impacts (10 works)