European Academic Debates on Energy Transitions: Reflection of Cross-National Differences in Academic Publications

Within the framework of the Green New Deal, the European Union officially aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 and achieve climate neutrality by 2050, which would require an Energy Transition of unprecedented proportions. Such a transformation in the societal modes of energy production and consumption would require a massive and rapid shift from fuels (coal, gas, oil) to renewable energy sources (wind, solar, geothermal, hydrogen). The feasibility of such transitioning to renewable energy depends on the social, political, and economic conditions in specific EU member states, as well as their technological capabilities and preexisting energy mix. Our presentation focuses on the reflection of those cross-national differences in the academic journal publications dealing with issues of energy transitions, green transformations and decarbonisation. The query of Web of Science and Scopus identified approximately 40 thousand publication records in this content domain, a plurality of which involved publications whose authors have been affiliated at European academic institutions. Using BERTopic, a machine learning approach to text mining and content classification, we classify these publications into stable, distinctive and coherent content clusters. In a second step, we explore the prevalence of research interests relative to the authors’ countries of origin as well as the types of funding agencies. We aim to investigate the ways in which country characteristics and the country-level public opinion patterns can be reflected in the academic output regarding energy transition policies and technology debates.