The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said it wishes to transition toward a less carbon-intensive energy system, both as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and as one of a number of investments in ‘green’ research and development, technology and power generation. However, given the complexity of the UAE political system, which requires consensus among seven relatively sovereign and independent emirates, as well as commercial and financial interests, it is not immediately clear which policy instruments that might drive the UAE energy transition will prove acceptable and politically plausible. Here, we apply the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB) platform, a model of collective decision-making processes (CDMPs), to assess the political will to agree to and to implement an array of different policy alternatives within the current UAE context.
Brian Efird
Director of Strategic Partnerships
Brian Efird is the Director for Strategic Partnerships at KAPSARC. His responsibilities include planning and oversight of KAPSARC’s global outreach…
Brian Efird is the Director for Strategic Partnerships at KAPSARC. His responsibilities include planning and oversight of KAPSARC’s global outreach and engagement, as well as forging multiparty collaborations that conceptualize and facilitate high impact, applied research projects in the areas of energy economics, policy, and sustainability. He previously served as the Program Director for Policy and Decision Science, managing a team of researchers that covered a global program of work focused on the nexus between geopolitics, domestic and local politics, energy, and climate change. This included multi-disciplinary analysis of the geopolitics of energy and the environment, quantitative models of collective decision-making processes (CDMPs), geospatial information system (GIS) applications to energy economics and energy policy, and the impact of political phenomena on global energy markets. Dr. Efird was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.; a consultant on defense and international security matters in Washington; and a consultant applying quantitative models to support corporate, investment banking, and legal negotiations in New York. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science and M.A. in International Studies from Claremont Graduate University.