California and Germany share ambitious emission reduction targets. Yet California is ahead of Germany in electrifying transportation by several metrics, including the number of public charging stations.
We show that variation in the politics of coordination in California and Germany explains the different outcomes. Transforming energy systems requires coordination across various complementary technologies and infrastructures — here between the supply of electric vehicles and the buildout of charging stations.
In California, a strong electrification coalition emerged across automakers selling electric vehicles as well as utilities and third-party firms providing charging infrastructure. Power market rules made capital investments for charging infrastructure instantly profitable for California monopoly utilities.
By contrast, in Germany’s liberalized power market, investing in capital-intensive charging infrastructure was not profitable for electric utilities. As a result, utilities did not emerge as a political force in the electrification coalition. Instead, utilities and automakers were in gridlock, failing to coordinate electric vehicle rollout and public charging station buildout.
Our findings highlight the limits of business-led coordination, raising the question which institutions help address coordination failures in clean energy transitions.
February 18, 2026
In a paper for the May 2026 issue of the journal Energy Policy, BESI climate fellow Kathryn Chelminski and her co-authors Guixing Wei and Gian Pietro Bellocca investigate how utility governance structure affects electrical grid reliability in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.
February 14, 2025
BESI Climate affiliated faculty member Ryan Brutger and Designated Emphasis in Political Economy student Daniel Lobo co-authored this article for the American Political Science Review, which reviews their survey of white and Black Americans on their attitudes toward trade.
December 22, 2025
Many countries assume that leading with subsidies ("carrots") reduces the need for punitive policies ("sticks") to achieve decarbonization goals. In this paper for Nature, co-authored by BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling, the authors use an economic model that allows them to compare carrot- and stick-first policy decisions, finding that a carrot-first strategy still requires similar-sized sticks to a stick-first approach to achieve comparable levels of decarbonization.