Governments are increasingly using industrial policy to address the transition to a low-carbon economy. Such policy aims to transform the structure of the economy by providing support to specific industries, companies or technologies, and to secure and reshape global value chains for critical materials. The recent surge of industrial policy as a tool to achieve the clean energy transition is thus highly relevant for the field of environmental economics when it comes to making policy-relevant recommendations. While economic theory has long criticized industrial policy on the ground of coordination failures and advocated carbon pricing instead as the main policy, there is a need for more systematic theoretical and empirical analysis about the benefits and costs of such policies.

SURED 2026 will provide an opportunity to present and discuss the latest research in industrial environmental policy, and more generally in the area of climate policy. It will explore how economic policy can limit the most severe adverse impacts and identify potential opportunities that will help map a path forward into a sustainable future.