How “technology-smart” are governments? Assessing policies to succeed in the global technology race on Lithium-ion batteries

Speaker: Dr Sebastian Sewerin, Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich

Sebastian Sewerin is a senior researcher and lecturer with the Energy Politics Group since October 2015. He explores countries’ low-​carbon energy policy mixes, thinking about ways to conceptualize and measure policy change in a systematic and comparable way. He is particularly interested in understanding long-​term policy dynamics and their underlying interplay between policy output, policy effects and subsequent politics. To this end, he aims to bring together theories and concepts from political science (policy change, policy feedback, policy design) and innovation studies (technology characteristics) to better understand the co-​evolution of policy and technology. Current projects include a comparative study of countries’ policy design approaches regarding lithium-​ion battery manufacturing. Sebastian also contributes to international organizations’ reports like the UN Environment’s recent 6th Global Environment Outlook