Conceptualizing and Understanding Climate Clubs

Rapidly progressing changes in the climate constitute a major challenge that requires innovative governance solutions. As climate change mitigation actions under the Paris Agreement fall short of limiting projected global warming to well below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, scholarly and political attention has turned to climate clubs as a new governance mechanism. This growing political and academic interest in climate clubs has not been matched by systematic academic investigation, however. To address this gap, this project has 2 aims: First, to provide a clear conceptualization of climate clubs and, second, to assess them in comparative perspective. 

Published in Environmental Politics, the first paper “Phase-out clubs: an effective tool for global climate governance?” studies six climate clubs focused on phasing out unsustainable substances, technologies, and substances, including the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), and the Global Methane Pledge (GMP). This study analyses different aspects of six phase-out clubs: (1) membership size and composition; (2) adopted obligations; (3) member compliance; (4) member benefits; and (5) club function within the climate regime. The first three aspects come from regime effectiveness theory, while the last two come from club theory. Findings reveal these clubs as state-led, multi-stakeholder coalitions aiming to complement the Paris Agreement and build global momentum within the UNFCCC to phase out fossil fuels. The Global Methane Pledge, potentially the most effective club, combines low entry barriers, deep commitments, material and other exclusive member benefits, and members represent a large share of targeted emissions.

Published in Nature Climate Change, the second paper titled “A coalition on compliance carbon markets to make climate clubs politically feasible” discusses the political feasibility of climate clubs that employ sanctions to incentivize non-members to take action on climate change mitigation. Economists have spent a decade designing the perfect economic climate club, yet political reality has hitherto rendered these designs practically infeasible. The Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets that came out of the 2025 UN climate negotiations in Belém (COP 30) offers a path forward, but only if its architects recognize that understanding political feasibility is crucial to turning a declaration into a functioning carbon pricing club that could close the emissions gap.

Data collection on 41 normative climate clubs and related studies are currently in progress. 

 

Duration: Since 2023 

Funded by: HfP Project Seed Fund (2024) and Chair for Environmental and Climate Policy (2025). A third-party funding application is currently in progress. 

Project Team

Publikationen

Koppenborg, F.: “Phase-out clubs: an effective tool for global climate governance?” Environmental Politics, 2025, 1-23 more… Full text (DOI) 

Koppenborg, F. "Open Coalition to Make Climate Clubs Politically Feasible" Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/s41558-025-02541-5 

Koppenborg, F. "Climate Clubs: A Typology and a Research Agenda" (under review with Climatic Change)   

Koppenborg, F. “Mapping Normative Climate Clubs: Insights from a New Data Set” (manuscript in progress)