Acknowledgements

This book’s journey took place over the course of a decade spent researching and writing around the world from Geneva to Jakarta and Manila to Evanston and Providence. Throughout my travels, I was lucky to meet amazing, generous, and inspiring colleagues, mentors, and friends who have supported me and in turn helped to shape this book through mentorship, advice, feedback, exchange, collaboration, and camaraderie. I am incredibly thankful for the experience of writing this book and extend my gratitude to all who helped and supported me along the way.

Researching this book provided me with an incredible opportunity to study the important topic of energy transitions and provide insights on a subject that will undoubtedly shape the future of our world. The experiences of conducting field research in Indonesia and the Philippines and speaking with countless individuals who generously shared their time and perspectives on clean energy development, from the international policy sphere in Geneva and Brussels down to local communities in Munduk Village in Bali, had a tremendous impact on my research and writing. I am indebted to all the people who have helped me along the way during my field research trips, for the enriching conversations I had during my many interviews and casual chats, and for the incredible kindness, warmth, generosity, and hospitality that I was lucky enough to experience.

I have had the great fortune to be supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) (grant number 175034), which enabled me to be a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Environmental Governance Lab and at Northwestern University. Navigating the pandemic would not have been possible without the support of Matt Hoffmann and Karen Alter and the SNF’s flexibility in supporting me with an affiliation at the University of Toronto Environmental Governance Lab and the Northwestern University Department of Political Science. I am sincerely grateful to Karen Alter for her support and mentorship, as well as her helpful feedback and encouragement on my book manuscript during my affiliation with Northwestern University. I thank Matt Hoffmann for his encouragement and support during my affiliation with the University of Toronto, which was instrumental in helping me develop this book proposal and preparing the early version of my manuscript.

I am grateful to my mentor Jeff Colgan, Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab, and the Watson Institute’s postdoctoral fellowship program for the opportunity to join the postdoctoral fellowship, where I finalized the manuscript. Thank you to Jeff Colgan, my postdoctoral supervisor, for his mentorship, guidance, and feedback throughout the book revisions, as well as for the idea and support to organize a book workshop. Thank you to David Victor, Stacy VanDeveer, Thijs Van de Graaf, Mark Buntaine, and Jennifer Hadden for their time and detailed feedback on my manuscript during the workshop, and a big thank you to Jessica Green as well for her feedback. I am very grateful to colleagues and mentors who have shared their time and perspective on navigating book writing and book workshops, including Rose McDermott, Aditi Sahasrabuddhe, Blair Sackett, and Hayden Reiss. Many thanks to my Watson cohort and colleagues for their writing support, solidarity, coffees, and exchange during the postdoc year, particularly Laura Acosta, Sonia Planson, and Foroogh Farhang. My postdoc at Brown University was critical for my book writing journey. I am so grateful for this experience.

This book started as my PhD dissertation at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to study at the Graduate Institute, which opened my eyes to the world and its many complexities and provided me with the tools to analyze and understand it. To my PhD advisor, Liliana Andonova, I am incredibly grateful for her mentorship and support over the years. Thank you to Cedric Dupont, my second reader, for his guidance on all the political economy aspects of my research. I would like to thank the Swiss Network of International Studies (SNIS) Foundation for the financial support of my position as the principal PhD researcher and funding my field research in Indonesia. I am furthermore grateful to my friends and comrades in Geneva who supported me throughout the journey – I would not have gotten through the ups and downs without them – especially Emily Wiseman, Merih Angin, Nazli Yildirim, Hannah Dönges, Berfu Kiziltan, and Kristina Collins. I am particularly grateful to Ezgi Yildiz, whose advice on book publishing among many topics has been invaluable, and whose friendship has meant so much!

I am grateful to the Harvard Kennedy School Sustainability Science Program for the opportunity to join the Predoctoral Research Fellow in the Energy Technology Innovation Policy group. I would like to thank Henry Lee for his generous support and time in mentoring my fellowship year and serving as an external reader on my dissertation committee. My colleagues were a big part of my fellowship experience, and I am grateful for their friendship – especially Rebecca Stern, Karoline Steinbacher, and Pinar Akçayöz De Neve. I am thankful for the opportunity to have been a Visiting Doctoral Fellow at the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. A big thank you to David Reiner for his support and mentorship, and to the wider EPRG group for their feedback, which shaped my empirical analysis and findings. I would also like to acknowledge the generous support from the SNF (grant. no. 165424) and the Albert Gallatin Fellowships for International Affairs that made these predoctoral fellowships and field research visits possible, and special acknowledgement of further support from the SNF for funding the Open Access grant (no. 230070).

A special thank you to my editor, Matt Lloyd, for the tremendous opportunity to publish my book with Cambridge University Press and for his support as I finalized the manuscript. Thank you to my anonymous reviewers who have helped me to improve the book. Special thanks to Anna Paretskaya and Luke Barnhart for help with edits, and to Sarah Colbourn for research assistance. A special thank you to Diane Burko for granting permission to use her painting, Balbina Study #4, for my cover art. Her work beautifully captures the fragile tension between human development and environmental degradation.

Finally, I am so grateful for my parents’ and family’s support and love throughout this journey – I owe so much to them. Thank you to Alex, my love, for the encouragement and steadfast support, particularly as I pushed the book over the finish line. I am grateful to my daughter, Mia, whose smiling face I can turn to for endless joy, love, and inspiration.

From my affiliations in the academe to my experience in the field – whether in Indonesia and the Philippines or in the energy industry – each of these environments opened my eyes to new and deeper ways of understanding and seeing the world, interpreting complexities, synthesizing findings, and drawing big conclusions. As climate change impacts increase in severity and the world’s call for urgency mounts, I hope we can all work towards keeping this planet hospitable for present and future generations to come. I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to write and publish this book and would like to thank those along the way who have helped and supported me.