Benjamin K. Sovacool


Benjamin K. Sovacool is director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at the Department of Business Technology and Development and a professor of social sciences at Aarhus University. He is also professor of energy policy at the University of Sussex, where he directs both the Center on Innovation and Energy Demand, one of six End Use Energy Demand Centres in the United Kingdom, and the Sussex Energy Group. His research interests include energy policy, environmental issues, and science and technology policy. He is the author or editor of eighteen books and 300 peer-reviewed academic articles and chapters and has written opinion editorials for The Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. Sovacool is editor-in-chief of Energy Research & Social Science, which explores the interactions between energy systems and society.

Education

Sovacool is Director of the Center for Energy Technology and professor of business and social sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark. He is also Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. He was formerly associate professor at Vermont Law School and founding director of the Energy Security & Justice Program. This was located within the Institute for Energy and Environment, which aims to "expand global access to sustainable energy and craft national energy policies that adapt to climate change without worsening socioeconomic inequality". The program, in cooperation with the MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Asia Research Institute, and the National University of Singapore, has published a series of case studies examining energy security in Asia. Sovacool lectures on energy security, alternative and renewable energy, environmental economics, and energy policy.
Sovacool is a Lead Author to the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report on "Mitigation and development pathways in the near-to mid-term". He also served in 2012 as an Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar at Central European University in Hungary. He has often consulted for the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Program, and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. He was awarded the Dedication to Diversity and Justice Award from the American Bar Association in 2015.

Research

Sovacool's main area of interest is energy policy. At the National University of Singapore, he led research projects supported by the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation about improving energy security for impoverished rural Asian communities.

Publications

Sovacool has authored numerous academic articles and book chapters and has written opinion editorials for The Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. According to Google Scholar his scientific publication has an h-index of 69.
In 2007, Sovacool co-edited . In 2008, he wrote The Dirty Energy Dilemma: What’s Blocking Clean Power in the United States which was published by Praeger and won a 2009 Nautilus Book Award.
In Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power Sovacool says, following a detailed analysis, that there is a "consensus among a broad base of independent, nonpartisan experts that nuclear power plants are a poor choice for producing electricity", and that "energy efficiency programs and renewable power technologies are better than nuclear power plants".

Books