Why Climate Promises Fall Short: The Limits of the Decarbonisation State
Governments promised a green transition – yet emissions keep rising. New research from ECH members Ulrich Brand, Alina Brad, and Etienne Schneider in 'Nature Climate Change' reveals why the ‘decarbonisation state’ hits structural limits - and how a true transformation might redefine prosperity, justice, and the role of the state itself.
From Climate Hope to Political Deadlock
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement marked a turning point. Green parties gained strength, and a new decarbonisation state seemed to emerge - a state that would finally move from fossil dependence to renewable futures. When the global climate movement took to the streets in 2019, its message was unambiguous: “Listen to the science.” Millions demanded that governments act on the evidence that human-made climate change threatened life on Earth. For a moment, it seemed as if leaders were listening.
Only some years later, that optimism has faded. Under Donald Trump, the United States abandoned the Paris Agreement; the European Union continues to delay fossil-fuel phase-outs. Around the world, far-right parties promise to roll back green policies. “It’s too easy to say this is merely a failure of political will,” argues Ulrich Brand, political scientist at the University of Vienna. “We must understand the deeper structures of the liberal capitalist state - and how they limit real transformation.”
In a Nutshell
- Measures taken by the emergent decarbonisation state to bring down greenhouse emission are not enough to combat the climate crisis. Green growth cannot halt climate change.
- A transformation state is needed - which not only substitutes fossil fuel energy production with green energy production, but also prioritises sufficiency over growth, strengthens the public sector and guarantees social provisioning.
- This means overcoming serious structural obstacles, as such measures will be resisted by industry and sections of society. A social and ecological transformation will need to fence the interests of fossil capital and involve scientists, trade unions, social movements and employers in order to be successful.
The Legacy of the Environmental State
Brand and his colleagues Alina Brad and Etienne Schneider, all members of the University’s Environment and Climate Research Hub (ECH), trace in their analysis in Nature Climate Change today’s stalemate back to the 1970s. That was when the environmental state first emerged, promoting ecological modernization - making industries cleaner without altering their underlying growth logic. Green growth, as it has become known, promised efficiency improvements while outsourcing the dirtiest industries to the Global South.
This model, Brand explains, was built on a paradox: environmental protection without touching the fossil-fuelled foundations of prosperity. The state’s legitimacy rested on ensuring growth, revenues, and high consumption for its citizens - what Brand calls “the imperial mode of living”. The comforts of the Global North, from cheap flights to year-round produce, depended on resource extraction and pollution elsewhere.
The Black Box Opens
For decades, this system worked because the state did not intervene too much into the economy. Regulations improved air and water quality without disrupting everyday life. But as political scientist Alina Brad notes, “Strategies of the decarbonisation state are different. They reach directly into people’s lifestyles - from car use to food choices - and that makes it deeply political.”
Her colleague Daniel Hausknost from the Vienna University of Business and Economics (WU) describes this as the black box problem. In the past, the state could hide its economic interventions behind market mechanisms. Now, the push to phase out fossil fuels exposes the mechanics of power. Industries resist, workers fear job losses, and voters rebel against visible lifestyle constraints. “The automotive and fossil sectors are powerful enough to shape public perceptions of what climate policy should look like,” Brad warns.
Growth’s Structural Grip
Even where governments commit to renewables, fossil fuels have not been replaced - merely supplemented. Total energy use keeps rising. For Etienne Schneider, this reveals the structural limitation of the decarbonisation state: “It cannot confront fossil growth without undermining its own legitimacy.” Economic expansion remains its organizing principle. As a result, emissions reductions fall far short of what climate science demands.
Green Extractivism and Global Tensions
The shift to electric mobility and renewable energy, for example, creates new dependencies. Lithium and cobalt, which are used in batteries, must be mined – often under exploitative social and environmental conditions. Lithium mining projects in Spain and Serbia demonstrate that green extractivism is now extending even into the peripheries of Europe, while the appropriation of resources in the Global South is intensifying, as is the contestation of it.
Towards a Transformation State
So, what should come next? The authors envision a transformation state - one that goes beyond technological substitution to reduce the material and energy throughput of entire societies. Such a state would prioritize sufficiency over growth, strengthen the public sector, and guarantee social provisioning. “If we want transformation, we need strong welfare systems, reduced working hours, and decent living standards for all,” argues Alina Brad.
Achieving this, however, requires more than new policies; it demands new forms of knowledge. “We need engineers, natural scientists, social scientists, and historians working together,” Schneider emphasizes. But collaboration must also extend beyond academia. “To understand how production, consumption and labor can change, we need workers, unions, and managers at the table.”
One example of this is the Austrian Academy for Social and Ecological Transformation, whose board includes the three researchers. The academy brings scientists, trade unions, and social movements together to explore ways of achieving a just and sustainable future. As Ulrich Brand explains, “The decarbonisation state shows us the limits of our current system. The transformation state points to the possibility of something genuinely new.”
The path beyond the decarbonisation state will not be simple. It will require confronting the economic and political structures that have long sustained the fossil age. But, as Brand insists, “only by reimagining the state itself can we hope to create a future that is both liveable and just.”
About the researchers
Alina Brad is senior scientist at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna. In her research she explores the politics of carbon dioxide removal, the dynamics of socio-ecological transformation, and the evolution of European and international climate policy, with a particular focus on how technological promises and policy priorities shape pathways toward deep decarbonization.
Ulrich Brand teaches and conducts research as a professor of international politics at the University of Vienna on the crisis of liberal globalisation, imperial mode of living, socio-ecological transformation, Latin America and post-growth. He is a member of the board of the German monthly 'Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik and Diskurs'. Das Wissenschaftsnetz.
Markus ZahradnikEtienne Schneider is an APART-GSK fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna. His research focuses on carbon dioxide removal and the intersection of industrial and climate policy in the EU in light of current geopolitical shifts in the global political economy.
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