Most countries regulate pollution from burning fossil fuels, but almost none restrict the extraction of coal, oil, and gas itself. This project investigates the handful of "first mover" nations that have done so—and asks how such supply-side policies might spread globally. Current climate governance focuses almost entirely on cutting end-use emissions, yet a large share of remaining fossil fuels must stay underground to meet Paris Agreement targets. The gap is that we know very little about why some countries limit supply, how those policies emerge, or what blocks their adoption elsewhere. This research will build the first global dataset of supply-side policies and combine quantitative analysis with interviews in pioneering countries. If successful, the work could reveal practical pathways for expanding supply restrictions to major fossil-fuel producers. That would fundamentally shift climate strategy—from managing demand to directly capping extraction. The findings could reshape international governance regimes and give policymakers a new lever for addressing the climate crisis. This is applied social science with a clear target: understanding how to make supply-side climate policy politically viable at scale.
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To achieve the goals of the Paris agreement on climate change, a radically new approach to climate governance is needed. The regulation of end-use emissions is no longer an adequate approach since a large proportion of remaining fossil fuels need to remain in the ground through supply-side policies (SUS-POL). This research considers how policies have been adopted to date by 'first mover' countries to limit the supply of fossil fuels and what pathways and mechanisms might support their wider adoption. Resistance to such policies is widespread and establishing the conditions for their wider uptake is an ambitious endeavor, but a vital one if we are to address the climate crisis. This research will provide the first attempt to identify the political-economic and socio-cultural conditions and processes that give rise to innovative policies focused on reducing fossil fuel supply. The aim is to understand what motivates early adopters of policies to curtail fossil fuel extraction; to explore how these new policies might spread to other countries, including via international governance regimes, and to understand the nature of resistance to them. This project thus has two objectives: (1) to develop a global political economy account based on an integrative and inter-disciplinary understanding of the dynamics driving new national policies by identifying key interacting political-economic and socio-cultural factors and the regional and international geopolitical contexts which shape policies aimed at limiting fossil fuel extraction (2) To explore political pathways for expanding these early successful efforts to other fossil fuel producing nations, including via international regimes. To achieve this, it will develop a quantitative analysis of supply-side policies supported by the production of a novel dataset and combine this with both primary qualitative research in a number of first mover countries and forward-looking scoping of future pathways.
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