The United States has been building public institutions to promote cleantech commercialization since the 1970s oil crisis. The ascent of new industrial policy has accelerated this process substantially since 2020, resulting in a doubling of the total number of institutions by 2024. Introducing a dataset of 122 institutions, we show how institutions perform five functions: goal setting, coordination, derisking, imposing discipline, and external engagement. Further, we demonstrate how post-2020 institutions extend and diverge from historical trends, highlighting the recent buildout of planning capacity, the widespread use of conditionalities, and the pivot toward engagement with local and non-firm actors. We conclude with an analysis of how the second Trump administration is transforming the cleantech commercialization system through retrenching, redesigning, repurposing, and maintaining institutions. We offer a bottom-up, institution-level examination of the emergence and evolution of state capacity for green industrial policy in the United States, its functions, and current developments.
August 13, 2026
A journal article for Nature Communications by UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Ph.D. student Taryn Fransen and BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling provides an empirical account of the strategic objectives of emissions reduction pledges via interviews with 40 policymakers. They find that the main purpose of emissions reduction pledges is to influence international actors, not enact domestic preferences.
July 20, 2023
In this journal article, which received the American Political Science Association's Theodore J. Lowi Award, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling and his coauthor Nicholas Goedeking, researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, advance a model of the politics of tipping points based on trans-subsystem policy feedback that results in "coalition cascades."
September 1, 2025
BESI climate affiliate Meg Mills-Novoa and Boise State human-environment geographer Sophia Borgias human-environment geographer conduct a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles and atlas profiles to understand the nature of contest hydropower development and the dynamics of social resistance. They find that in most cases, contested projects were backed by multiple types of funders, with a notable shift toward public-private and bilateral finance.
