Research areas: Energy policy, renewable energy, international political economy, the rise and fall of the great powers

Espen Moe (b. 1972) is Professor of political science at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at NTNU. He obtained his doctorate in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has been a JSPS Fellow at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Sanda, Japan, and visiting professor at the Institut für soziale Ökologie at the Alpen-Adria Universität in Vienna and Beijing Normal University. He is also part of NTNU Sustainability, where he is the research leader of the research area climate mitigation and adaptation.

His academic work focuses on the underlying dynamics of the political economy, structural economic change and long-term economic growth and development, with a special focus on energy systems, primarily with respect to the prospects for an energy transition away from fossil fuels. He is the author of Governance, Growth and Global Leadership (Ashgate, 2007) and Renewable Energy Transformation or Fossil Fuel Backlash (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), as well as editor of The Political Economy of Renewable Energy and Energy Security (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and New Challenges and Solutions for Renewable Energy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), both with Paul Midford. He has published in journals such as Energy, Energy Policy and Energy Research & Social Science.