Llewelyn Hughes

• PhD (MIT)
• Professor of Public Policy at Australian National University

Policy efforts to address climate change are increasingly focused on adaptation, understood as adjustments in human systems to moderate the harm, or exploit beneficial opportunities, related to actual or expected climate impacts. We examine individual-level determinants of support for climate adaptation policies, focusing on whether individuals’ ex...

The Chinese and US governments played significant roles in the development of renewable energy industries, seeing them as key growth sectors and crucial to addressing climate change. While the US and China cooperated in renewable energy development, since 2011 the countries have engaged in a protracted and major trade dispute in the solar photovolt...

The politics of energy is reemerging as a major, substantive area of inquiry for political science after two decades of relative quiet. Interest in the topic spiked during the oil shocks of the 1970s but subsequently waned along with oil prices during the 1980s and 1990s. This essay surveys the earlier literature as well as recent developments that...

A large literature in political economy argues that governments in the advanced industrialized states retrenched from the application of industrial policy while resisting pressure to reform in a limited number of sectors. In this article, I argue that retrenchment and resistance do not fully describe the range of choices made by governments. Throug...

This chapter reviews Japan's hydrogen strategy with a particular focus on its international elements. It begins by outlining Japan's international commitment to reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions. The chapter then reviews Japan's domestic policy settings designed to support the deployment of hydrogen in power generation, transport, and in...

Offshore wind power is an important technology option for decarbonising the electricity sector. An emerging region for the deployment of offshore wind is the Asia-Pacific. We conduct an expert elicitation of future cost expectations for offshore wind in the Asia-Pacific region, covering fixed-bottom and floating offshore wind technologies. We also...

Offshore wind and hydrogen are identified as key technologies supporting the decarbonization of energy systems globally. Hydrogen is potentially useful in enabling the decarbonization of sectors difficult to enable through direct electrification. In addition to direct electricity generation, offshore wind is an option for supplying the electricity...

The low carbon energy transition in the Indo-Pacific will affect the demand for fossil fuels, with important implications for regional energy security. The Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) is a useful tool for understanding how decarbonisation pathways in the Indo-Pacific could affect energy trade, with implications for Australian exports of car...

This essay examines the relationship between critical minerals and resource security and then considers Australia’s current strategy toward the critical minerals sector as well as its emerging international strategy.

This study assesses key barriers to offshore wind power (OWP) development in Vietnam and policy options for the development of the sector. A survey of 39 experts from government agencies, research institutions, industry, and civil society plus 22 follow-up interviews were conducted over January-September 2021, coupled with a broader analysis of key...

Offshore wind power (OWP) is an important technology option for decarbonising the electricity sector globally. A key focus for the deployment of offshore wind is the Asia-Pacific region. The future prospects for the technology are dependent, however, on overcoming technological and economic challenges, and public policy is identified as having a ke...

China's ability to use process innovation in manufacturing made the country a key player in the clean tech sector. Specifically, China's dominance in solar and battery manufacturing has triggered political discussions in Western capitals about re-offshoring from China to alternative locations, and possible reshoring to geographies closer to home. T...

This study considers the emissions implications of co-combusting imported ammonia in coal-fired power stations. The study adopts a supply chain approach, estimating the emissions reduction potential of 20% ammonia co-combustion in coal-fired power stations in the country of use, and the emissions associated with ammonia production in the country of...

Offshore wind and hydrogen are identified as technologies that support the decarbonization of energy systems. Hydrogen is potentially useful in enabling the decarbonization of sectors difficult to enable through direct electrification, and offshore wind is an option for providing the electricity used in hydrogen production. We consider the possibil...

Policies promoting the localisation of economic benefits are commonly deployed in support of energy transitions. However, localisation policies can face challenges in ensuring alignment with energy transition goals while adapting to changes in the technological and market environment. We use the Australian Capital Territory's localisation policy, t...

We evaluate the treatment of climate-related financial risk by bilateral finance organizations and related policymaking bodies involved in the design and implementation of thermal coal power generation technology financing. Our empirical focus is Japanese bilateral financing of thermal coal power generation in the Asia-Pacific. We differentiate bet...

The study of Japanese politics has flourished over the past several decades. This Handbook provides a state-of-the-field overview for students and researchers of Japanese. The volume also serves to introduce Japanese politics to readers less familiar with Japan. In addition, the volume has a theme of “evaluating Japan’s democracy.” Taken as a whole...

Sub-national governments are important actors in mitigating climate change, but often face political constraints. We investigate ability of policy mixes to overcome political constraints while supporting localization of economic benefits and accelerating technological innovation. Examining the case of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), our fin...

We study the greenhouse gas emissions of different technology choices for ammonia production for power generation. We adopt a global supply chain approach, considering emissions generated at the point of manufacture in addition to consumption for ammonia co-combustion in coal fired power stations using a range of ammonia production technologies. Th...

Extreme weather patterns can be linked to the effects of anthropogenic climate change with increasing confidence. Evidence from the USA suggests a weak relationship between individuals’ experiences of many types of weather events and concern about climate change. Using data from Australia, we investigate the effects of experiences of increases in m...

The COVID-19 economic crash threatens the international trade networks that make clean energy cheap — abandoning them puts the climate at risk. The COVID-19 economic crash threatens the international trade networks that make clean energy cheap — abandoning them puts the climate at risk. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02499-8

Swiss trading houses enjoy 35% of global market share in crude oil. How can we explain the importance of Swiss traders in the global oil market? This article argues that Swiss trading houses are part of the private governance arrangements that emerged in response to the wave of nationalization sweeping across the world’s prime oil producers. As the...

Studies identify cost as a key factor determining the effectiveness of economic sanctions. We argue that failing to account for market dynamics in the sector in which sanctions are imposed undermines the validity of estimates of the economic costs imposed on target countries, and we propose that market structure powerfully conditions sanctions effe...

Social science has a crucial role to play in informing policymakers about political and institutional strategies conducive to implementing more ambitious energy-related climate change policies. In this chapter I review major avenues of research in political science and related disciplines that examine the politics of energy and climate change. I fo...

The global energy industry is transforming as governments invest in clean energy technologies to address climate change, enhance energy security, and strengthen national competitiveness. Comparative research on clean energy transitions highlights the domestic drivers and constraints of clean energy transitions. This article contends that we need to...

Governments support clean technologies to advance both environmental goals and national competitiveness. By adopting environmental policies early on, governments are argued to create durable competitive advantages for domestic companies that develop clean technologies for export to late adopters. This paper argues that policy competition between le...

Governments apply a range of policy instruments to promote the electrification of personal transport using technologies such as Plug-in Hybrid, Battery Electric, and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles. We introduce a framework for comparing public policies cross-nationally used to support the research, development, and deployment of electric vehicles. We...

Major policy changes are occurring in Japan’s power sector, centrally reforms to the regulation of competition, and the management of the integration of new sources of renewable energy. I argue in this chapter that these changes imply a transformation of the regulations governing Japan’s power sector. I also suggest that the negotiation of market r...

In this chapter we review research on public policy in low-carbon technology industries. We place particular emphasis on the implications of an important change in changes in the structure of global production – the rise of global production networks (GPNs) - for a range of issues of interest to scholars of international political economy (IPE). GP...

Governments invested substantially in renewable energy industries in responding to climate change, while seeking to promote economic growth. They also engaged in a series of major trade disputes, notably in the solar photovoltaic and wind sectors. The European Union (EU)–China solar dispute is one of the largest such cases. In 2013, the European Co...

Global production is increasingly organized through supply chains made up of firms that specialize in specific stages of production. This raises an important question: how does firms' participation in global supply chains affect their trade preferences? Research shows that multinational corporations (MNCs) tend to prefer open trade, while domestic...

Increased use of natural gas in the Asia-Pacific region could bring substantial local and global benefits. Countries in the region could take advantage of newly abundant global gas supplies to diversify their energy mix; the United States, awash in gas supplies thanks to the fracking revolution, could expand its exports; and climate change could sl...

Analysis of energy markets has long focused on the concern that fossil fuels might be used as instruments of coercion. In this chapter, we review the state of knowledge on the relationship between energy, coercion, and sanctions. We argue that historical concerns in the major energy-importing countries regarding the potential for coercion have larg...

This paper examines whether experience of extreme weather events—such as excessive heat, droughts, flooding, and hurricanes—increases an individual’s level concern about climate change. We bring together micro-level geospatial data on extreme weather events from NOAA’s Storm Events Database with public opinion data from multiple years of the Cooper...

In this chapter, Hughes argues that Japan and Germany are taking divergent paths toward shifting the mix of fuels used in the energy system. This difference has emerged despite the similar goals announced by the German and Japanese governments of reducing the role of nuclear power in the energy mix, and increasing the role of renewable energy sourc...

What is the relationship between oil and coercion? For decades states have worried that their dependence on oil gives producers a potential lever of coercion. The size, integration, and sophistication of the current oil market, however, are thought to have greatly attenuated, if not eliminated, the coercive potential of oil. The best way to analyze...

Energy policy shifted to the margins of the 2014 House of Representatives (HR) election. This is remarkable given the importance of energy within the national political debate since the disaster of March 11, 2011. In addition to compensating those suffering from the lingering effects of the disaster, and managing the thorny problem of decommissioni...

In this chapter I review the Japanese government’s strategy towards managing security of energy supplies, and the implications of this strategy for regional cooperation and competition. I focus in particular on how the government’s approach to Northeast Asian energy security is influenced by the weak commercial position of Japanese firms in interna...

Understanding the implications of China’s rising demand for natural resources requires an appreciation of scale. If we focus on fossil fuels, Chinese oil consumption increased from 216,000 to over 10.7 million barrels per day in the almost five decades between 1965 and 2013, rising from less than 1% to more than 12% of aggregate global demand. Dema...

Oil is the world's most important commodity. It is also one of the most politicized, with national oil companies controlling most of the world's reserves. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Llewelyn Hughes shows that governments across the advanced industrial states responded to the politicization of oil in the 1970s by freeing prices, lowering barri...

In three important areas of international cooperation - global trade, nuclear security, and climate change - states are shifting away from inclusive multilateralism towards more exclusionary forms of interstate cooperation. In this article we offer an historical institutionalist account for the shift towards exclusive forms of international coopera...

This essay argues that responding effectively to the rise of new powers in energy markets requires carefully identifying the range of risks associated with this change. It shows that physical scarcity in the international oil market can be discounted as a risk worthy of policymaker attention. The essay then proposes that important national security...

Japan's status as a nonnuclear weapons state remains of ongoing interest to policy analysts and scholars of international relations. For some, Japanese nuclearization is a question not of whether but of when. This article reassesses the state of the evidence on the nuclearization of Japan. It finds that support in Japan for the development of an in...

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