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Dr. Florentine Koppenborg, Research Fellow at the Chair of Environmental and Climate Policy

Dr. Florentine Koppenborg

Office: B.258
Phone: 089/ 907793 - 225
Email: florentine.koppenborg(at)hfp.tum.de
Social Media: LinkedIn , ‪Google Scholar‬

Short bio

Florentine Koppenborg holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and works as a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Chair of Environmental and Climate Policy at the Technical University of Munich. Her research focuses on the dynamics of global climate governance and drivers of decarbonization efforts, including climate clubs, phase-out policies, and energy transitions’ interactions with climate policy. She is the author of "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell University Press, 2023) and has published peer-reviewed articles on Japan's nuclear energy and climate policy, phase-out policies, and climate clubs in journals including Politics and Governance and Environmental Politics. Beyond her research, she serves on the executive board of the German Association for Social Science Research on Japan (VSJF), the advisory board of the Stiftung Energie und Klimaschutz, and as a deputy member on the TUM Sustainability Board. She also reviews for numerous academic journals.

Her current research examines the nature and role of climate clubs as an emerging instrument in climate governance. With support from HfP project seed funding, she published "Phase-out clubs: an effective tool for global climate governance?" in Environmental Politics, with additional publications in preparation. To advance scholarship in this area, she organized and chaired a panel on climate clubs at the 2025 ECPR Conference. She has presented a new manuscript on “Why do countries initiate and join normative climate clubs? The role of club benefits and country interests” at both the 2025 ECPR and APSA conferences. Building on these pre-studies, she is currently developing a funding application for a multi-year project on climate clubs.
 A further research strand examines the effectiveness of global climate governance, which emerged from her teaching on national and international climate politics. As part of this work, she has organized observer delegations to UN climate conferences, attending COP26, COP28, and COP29 with students.

5 Key Publications

2025 Phase-out clubs: an effective tool for global climate governance? in: Environmental Politics, Vol 23 (1).

2023 Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance, Cornell University Press.

2023 The Evolution of "Phase-Out" as a Bridging Concept for Sustainability: From Pollution to Climate Change” (with Gregory Trencher, Adrian Rinscheid, Daniel Rosenbloom, Nhi Truong & Pinar Temocin) in: One Earth.

2021  Japan’s Climate Change Discourse: Toward Climate Securitisation? (with Ulv Hanssen, Soka University) in: Politics & Governance, Vol 9 (4).

2021 Nuclear Restart Politics: How the ‘Nuclear Village’ Lost Policy Implementation Power in: Social Science Journal Japan, Vol 24 (1). 

Projects

BA 

  • Environmental Policy in Comparison – National and subnational Perspectives (seminar language German; 1.4*) - Fall ‘17/18; Spring ‘19
  • Climate Politics – International, National and Local Dimensions (seminar language English; 1.1*) - Fall ‘18/19; Fall ‘19/20; Fall ‘20/21; Fall ‘21/22; Fall ‘22/23; Fall ‘23/24
  • Lecture Introduction to Comparative Politics (seminar language German; 2.1*) Fall ‘22/23

MA 

  • Environment and Climate Transformation in the Asia-Pacific (seminar language English; 1.3*) - Spring ‘18; Spring ‘19; Spring ‘20; Spring ‘21
  • Multi-level Governance - Environmental, Climate and Energy Policy and Technology in a Global Context (seminar language English; 1.0*) - Spring ‘18; Spring ‘21; Spring ‘22
  • International and National Dimensions of Climate Strategies in the Context of UNFCCC (seminar language English; 1.8*) – Fall ‘21/22; Fall ‘22/23, Fall ‘23/24; Fall ‘24/25

*Student evaluation on a scale from 1 = “very good” to 5 = “very unsatisfied” 

Recent Activities (digest)

Leading a TUM excursion to international climate negotiations in Glasgow (COP 26) in 2021, about which TUM students reported in our “TUM goes COP” blog. (Link in the picture)
Giving a book talk about “Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance” at Temple University in Tokyo, Japan. (Link to the full talk in the picture)
Chairing a panel on “Climate Clubs: A New Tool for Effective Climate Governance” at the 2025 ECPR Conference in Thessaloniki (Link in the picture)
Leading a TUM excursion to international climate negotiations in Dubai (COP 28) in 2023, about which TUM students reported for the Foundation for Energy and Climate Mitigation / Stiftung Energie und Klimaschutz. (Link in the picture)

CV

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