The research team, led by PIK researcher Guanna Pan, constructed a dataset that tracks four distinct channels through which climate policy affects a country’s economic position. First, ambitious mitigation reduces global demand for oil, gas and coal, potentially stripping fossil fuel exporters of future revenue streams. Second, cutting emissions limits the climate-related damage that heating would otherwise inflict on national economies, from agricultural losses to infrastructure destruction. Third, the transition opens new economic opportunities in solar and wind energy development, rewarding countries with abundant renewable resources. Fourth, climate policy raises the value of a nation’s capacity to absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, whether through natural sinks such as forests or through managed stewardship of natural areas. By combining these four ledgers, the researchers could estimate, country by country, how gains and losses from decarbonisation could unfold by the end of this century, depending on the level of ambition in climate policy.

The headline numbers are striking. Countries that are highly vulnerable to the phase-out of oil, gas and coal account for just 6 percent of global economic output. At the other end of the ledger, the study identifies groups of countries that would benefit disproportionately from rapid climate action, including those in Africa whose vast solar energy potential positions them as natural winners of the renewable energy transition. Perhaps most surprising, the economic interests of the United States, Europe and China, often portrayed as divergent in climate negotiations, are affected by climate policy in remarkably similar ways.

To make sense of this complex landscape, the research team clustered the 169 countries into five groups whose members share similar economic opportunities and risks under climate policy, and therefore potentially shared geopolitical interests. The smallest and most exposed cluster comprises 19 fossil fuel-dependent countries that would potentially oppose ambitious mitigation measures, since decarbonisation directly devalues their core national assets. By contrast, 51 countries in the Global South have a strong interest in a rapid climate transition, because without one they would face particularly severe climate damages to their economies. A third cluster of 13 countries with high potential for renewable energy, the majority of them in Africa, would naturally favour swift action, as would a fourth cluster of 17 countries with high carbon sequestration capacity, whose forests and natural areas gain value as the world prices in carbon removal.

Yet the arithmetic of political weight tells a more complicated story. The three clusters of countries that especially stand to benefit from climate protection account for only 13 percent of global economic output combined, while the fossil fuel-dependent group represents just 6 percent. The remaining 81 percent of global economic output belongs to the fifth and largest cluster: 69 economies with moderate impacts, a group that includes the European Union, China and the United States. For these countries, the absolute economic benefits of climate policy are considerable in many cases, particularly because of avoided climate damage to their large economies. Calculated as a percentage of national output, however, their relative gains are not as large as in the three clusters of strong winners. This distinction between absolute and relative benefit matters for the politics of climate negotiation, since it shapes how urgently each bloc perceives its own stake in the outcome.

According to Pan, the analysis allows researchers to map how countries could gain or lose from different aspects of decarbonisation by the end of this century, depending on how ambitious climate policy turns out to be. The team explored the geopolitical tensions that may arise when some countries anticipate losses, but the study also shows how national interests can foster international cooperation, and how such cooperation can be further strengthened through targeted incentives. In other words, the same dataset that reveals potential fault lines also points to the bargaining space where deals can be struck.

The study’s central recommendation is that where interests diverge, climate cooperation should be strengthened through package deals. Concessions on climate protection for hesitant countries could be linked with promises regarding trade or research and development, or losses could simply be offset through financial transfers. This approach reflects a long-standing insight from negotiation theory: when parties value different assets unevenly, structured exchanges can leave everyone better off than a standoff. The clustering framework gives negotiators a concrete starting point for identifying which countries might be brought to the table by which combinations of trade access, technology cooperation or compensation.

The findings arrive at a moment when opposition to committed climate policy is resurgent in several major economies. Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of PIK and a co-author of the study, argues that the debate has been framed too narrowly. In his view, it is important to recognise that climate policy does not merely devalue certain assets, namely those of fossil fuel suppliers. The study demonstrates, he says, quite precisely how new assets are simultaneously being built up. Overall, climate policy revalues the capital stock of economies in a new and sustainable way, thereby safeguarding long-term prosperity. This reframing shifts the question from whether climate policy destroys wealth to how it redistributes and creates it across borders and decades.

For humanity as a whole, the research team notes, there is a collective interest in climate action, since avoided damages accrue globally. But the study insists that the differences in gains and losses between countries need to be fully understood rather than glossed over. The five-cluster map provides the necessary guidance, showing that the politics of decarbonisation are not a simple binary of winners and losers but a mosaic of overlapping and sometimes conflicting asset positions. The 19 fossil fuel-dependent states may resist, but they carry little collective economic weight; the strong winners of the Global South, Africa’s solar powers and the carbon sequestration countries may push for speed, but they too represent a minority of output. The decisive middle, the 69 moderate-impact economies holding 81 percent of global output, holds the balance, and its members’ considerable absolute benefits from avoided climate damage suggest that enlightened self-interest, reinforced by well-designed package deals, could carry the transition.

As a piece of quantitative geopolitics, the study marks a step change in how the economic stakes of climate mitigation can be visualised and negotiated. By quantifying national assets across fossil revenues, avoided damages, renewable opportunities and carbon storage capacity for 169 countries, it turns abstract debates about ambition into concrete maps of interest. Whether those maps become the blueprint for cooperation or merely a sharper picture of division will depend on whether the international system can convert shared data into shared deals before the century’s warming trajectory is locked in.

Subject of Research: New world map reveals which countries win and lose most from climate policy

Article Title: A world map of climate policy: Who stands to gain most?

Article References: A world map of climate policy: Who stands to gain most?. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: climate policy, geopolitics, decarbonisation, Potsdam Institute, Nature Sustainability, fossil fuels, renewable energy, carbon sequestration, package deals, Global South, world, climate