Rate My Professor Benjamin Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool is the Founding Director of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability and Professor of Earth and Environment in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research addresses global energy policy and politics, energy security, energy justice, climate change mitigation and adaptation, renewable energy and energy efficiency, politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, ethics and justice of energy, and building adaptive capacity to climate change consequences. He has authored or co-authored 22 books, including Empowering the Great Energy Transition: Policy for a Low-Carbon Future with Scott V. Valentine and Marilyn A. Brown (Columbia University Press, 2020), Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy: Fifteen Contentious Questions with Marilyn A. Brown and Scott V. Valentine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Global Energy Justice: Problems, Principles, and Practices with Michael Dworkin (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Energy Poverty: Global Challenges and Local Solutions with Antoine Halff and Jon Rozhon (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Climate Change and Global Energy Security: Technology and Policy Options with Marilyn A. Brown (MIT Press, 2011). Sovacool has published 574 refereed articles, with highly cited papers such as “Industrial clusters for deep decarbonization” in Science (2022), “Sociotechnical transitions for deep decarbonisation” in Science (2017), and “What Are We Doing Here? Analyzing Fifteen Years of Energy Scholarship and Proposing a Social Science Research Agenda” in Energy Research & Social Science (2014). As of January 2024, his Google Scholar metrics include 64,000 citations, h-index of 131, and i10-index of 518.

Sovacool holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies (2006), MS/Graduate Certificates in Science Policy (2005) from Virginia Tech, MA in Communication Studies (2003) from Wayne State University, and BA in Philosophy and Communication Studies (2001) from John Carroll University. Before joining Boston University in 2022, he was Professor of Energy Policy and Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex (2015-2021), Director of the Center on Innovation and Energy Demand at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester (2015-2019), University Distinguished Professor at Aarhus University (2013-2021), Associate Professor of Law at Vermont Law School (2011-2015), and Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore (2007-2011). His awards include the Professional Geographer Award from the American Association of Geographers (2022), Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2020), Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher (2019-2022), USERN Prize (2019), Distinguished Graduate Alumni Achievement Award from Virginia Tech (2019), and Dedication to Justice Award from the American Bar Association (2015). He served as Lead Author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2022), has led grants exceeding $28.2 million, and his research has been endorsed by U.S. President Bill Clinton, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, and Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom.