Benjamin Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool is director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at the Department of Business Technology and Development and a professor of social sciences at Aarhus University. He is also professor of energy policy at the University of Sussex, where he directs both the Center on Innovation and Energy Demand, one of six End Use Energy Demand Centres in the United Kingdom, and the Sussex Energy Group. His research interests include energy policy, environmental issues, and science and technology policy. He is the author or editor of eighteen books and 300 peer-reviewed academic articles and chapters and has written opinion editorials for the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. Sovacool is editor-in-chief of Energy Research & Social Science, which explores the interactions between energy systems and society.

Education

• 2006—Ph.D., Science and Technology Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States
• 2005—M.S./Graduate Certificates, Science Policy, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States
• 2003—M.A., Rhetoric, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States
• 2001—B.A., Philosophy and Communication Studies, John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH, United States

Academic experience

Sovacool is Director of the Center for Energy Technology and professor of business and social sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark.^[1][2] He is also Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.^[3] He was formerly associate professor at Vermont Law School and founding director of the Energy Security & Justice Program. This was located within the Institute for Energy and Environment, which aims to "expand global access to sustainable energy and craft national energy policies that adapt to climate change without worsening socioeconomic inequality".^[4] The program, in cooperation with the MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Asia Research Institute, and the National University of Singapore, has published a series of case studies examining energy security in Asia.^[4] Sovacool lectures on energy security, alternative and renewable energy, environmental economics, and energy policy.^[5]

Sovacool is a Lead Author to the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) on "Mitigation and development pathways in the near-to mid-term". He also served in 2012 as an Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar at Central European University in Hungary. He has often consulted for the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Program, and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.^[5] He was awarded the Dedication to Diversity and Justice Award from the American Bar Association in 2015.^[6]

Research

Sovacool's main area of interest is energy policy. At the National University of Singapore, he led research projects supported by the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation about improving energy security for impoverished rural Asian communities.^[5]

Publications

Sovacool has authored numerous academic articles and book chapters and has written opinion editorials for the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle.^[5] According to Google Scholar his scientific publication has (2019) an h-index of 69.^[7]

In 2007, Sovacool co-edited Energy and American Society: Thirteen Myths.^[8][9] In 2008, he wrote The Dirty Energy Dilemma: What’s Blocking Clean Power in the United States which was published by Praeger and won a 2009 Nautilus Book Award.^[10]

In Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power (2011) Sovacool says, following a detailed analysis, that there is a "consensus among a broad base of independent, nonpartisan experts that nuclear power plants are a poor choice for producing electricity", and that "energy efficiency programs and renewable power technologies are better than nuclear power plants".^[11]

Books

• Sovacool, BK and MA Brown (Eds.) Energy and American Society: Thirteen Myths (New York: Springer, 2007)
• Sovacool, BK. The Dirty Energy Dilemma: What’s Blocking Clean Power in the United States (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008)
• Mendonça, M, D Jacobs, and BK Sovacool. Powering the Green Economy: The Feed-In Tariff Handbook, (London: Earthscan, 2009)
• Sovacool, BK (Ed.) Routledge Handbook of Energy Security (London: Routledge, 2010)
• Sovacool, BK. Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power: A Critical Global Assessment of Atomic Energy (London: World Scientific, 2011)
• Brown, MA and BK Sovacool. Climate Change and Global Energy Security: Technology and Policy Options (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011)
• Sovacool, BK and SV Valentine. The National Politics of Nuclear Power: Economics, Security, and Governance (London: Routledge, 2012)
• Sovacool, BK and IM Drupady. Energy Access, Poverty, and Development: The Governance of Small-Scale Renewable Energy in Developing Asia (New York: Ashgate, 2012)
• Sovacool, BK and CJ Cooper. The Governance of Energy Megaprojects: Politics, Hubris, and Energy Security (London: Edward Elgar, 2013)
• Sovacool, BK. Energy & Ethics: Justice and the Global Energy Challenge (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013)
• Sovacool, BK, R Sidortsov, and B Jones. Energy Security, Equality and Justice (London: Routledge, 2013)
• Halff, Antoine, J Rozhon and BK Sovacool (Eds.). Energy Poverty: Global Challenges and Local Solutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
• Sovacool, BK and MH Dworkin. Global Energy Justice: Principles, Problems, and Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
• Sovacool, BK (Ed.). Energy Security (London: Sage, Six Volumes, 2014)
• Sovacool, BK (Ed.). Energy, Poverty, and Development (London: Routledge Critical Concepts in Development Studies Series, Four Volumes, 2014)
• Sovacool, BK and BO Linnér. The Political Economy of Climate Change Adaptation (Basingstoke UK/New York United States: Palgrave Macmillan and the Nature Publishing Group, 2015)
• Sovacool, BK, MA Brown, and SV Valentine. Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy: Fifteen Contentious Questions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016)
• Van de Graaf, T, BK Sovacool, F Kern, A Ghosh, and MT Klare (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy (Basingstoke UK/New York United States: Palgrave Macmillan Handbooks in International Political Economy Series, 2016)
• Valentine, SV, MA Brown, and BK Sovacool. Empowering the Great Energy Transition: Policy for a Low-Carbon Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019)