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Dr. Sarah Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK. Her research and teaching focus on the political economy of climate change and energy transition, finance, housing and industrial policy.
Dr. Knuth's academic papers and edited theme issues have been published in scholarly outlets such as Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning E, The Journal of Urban Affairs, Energy Research and Social Science, Urban Geography, City, Antipode and Environmental Research: Energy. She has contributed to books including Urban Climate Justice: Theory, Praxis, Resistance (University of Georgia Press, 2023), The International Encyclopedia of Geography (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2023), Land Fictions: The Commodification of Land in City and Country (Cornell University Press, 2021) and Environmental Governance in a Populist/Authoritarian Era (Routledge, 2020). Among other policy impact work, Dr. Knuth is a Fellow of the Climate & Community Institute, a progressive climate policy think tank developing cutting-edge research at the climate and inequality nexus, and has contributed policy reports for the British Academy on climate finance and just climate transitions in cities. |
Selected Book Chapters
Ch 3: Budgeting for climate justice? Contested futures of urban finance. Urban Climate Justice (2023) |
Ch 3: Fictions of safety: Defensive storylines in global property investment. Land Fictions (2021) |
Ch 29: Whatever happened to green collar jobs? Populism and clean energy transition. Environmental Governance in a Populist/Authoritarian Era (2020) |
Recent Policy Reports
Seize the Future: A bold, progressive climate agenda for 2024 and beyond. Climate & Community Institute (2024) The polycrisis is wreaking economic insecurity, mass death and genocide, climate disasters, and other kinds of instability on working people worldwide. Winning durable change requires a policy platform that tackles the root causes of the existential challenges of our moment.
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Shared Fates: A housing resilience policy vision for the home insurance crisis. Climate & Community Institute (2024) Every year, more people across the United States experience climate disasters, forcing them to leave their homes, lose their belongings, and be separated from jobs and family. Meanwhile, home insurance markets are in a mounting crisis–and leaving people across the country behind.
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We Choose Now: Gulf to Appalachia Climate Action Strategy. Taproot Earth and Climate & Community Institute (2023) Ending extractive economic relations will be critical to facilitating a just transition to a hotter, but post-fossil fueled world...Our approach to imagining a post-extractive economy in Pennsylvania centers two primary themes. First, we consider intersecting affordability crises facing Pennsylvania households. Second, we contend with the role of public finance in a just transition to a post-fossil fueled, warmer world.
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We Choose Now: Gulf to Appalachia Climate Action Strategy. Taproot Earth and Climate & Community Institute (2023) Oil and gas have deep, historical– and decimating– ties to Texas. Today the state is the largest producer of oil and gas in the United States...This policy playbook looks from port to plug to identify strategic spots in the full energy system to intervene for transformational change. The goal: end the era of fossil fuels and supplant it with a future of energy democracy and justice.
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Building Public Renewables in the United States. Climate & Community Institute and The Democracy Collaborative (2023) We propose a new Federal Public Power Program that would create a public option for renewable energy across the United States that can catalyze decarbonization and embed environmental justice in a new energy system. It offers an opportunity to counter the monopolized, fossil-fueled, and profit-driven status quo of today. In its place, a publicly owned and community-controlled system can emerge that grounds renewables in frameworks of rights and accessibility.
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Just Transitions in Cities and Regions: A Global Agenda. The British Academy (2022) Cities and urban areas are particularly relevant in achieving just transitions in response to climate change, as the critical sites of greenhouse gas emissions that drive global climate change and as areas that will feel many of the most severe impacts of climate change...[authors] review the literature on just transitions, energy and urbanisation, and provide a series of regional insights on transitions in practice. |
Just Disaster Response: Considering a Green New Deal approach to disaster in the wake of Hurricanes Ian and Fiona in 2022. Climate & Community Institute (2022) A Green New Deal approach to disaster response delivers justice for those most affected by disaster, good jobs to rebuild stronger communities, and decarbonization to limit warming and stop as much disaster as possible. In this memo, we outline some key ways that policy makers could advance a Green New Deal-style approach to disaster...redirecting existing disaster infrastructure away from harmful practices and building new infrastructure to remediate the experience of disaster.
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Climate Finance for Cities and Urban Governments. The British Academy (2021) The objective of this briefing is to characterise this urban climate investment challenge across multiple dimensions, survey financial pathways emerging today and consider future directions. This discussion supports a number of COP26 goals, particular its key commitment to mobilise finance. We note exemplary contributions being made on these questions by scholars in the humanities and social sciences, as well as key issues that require more understanding and publicly engaged scholarship.
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A New Era of Public Power: A Vision for New York Power Authority in Pursuit of Climate Justice. Climate & Community Institute and The Democracy Collaborative (2021) By prioritizing equity and environmental justice, NYPA will re-create a New York that is not only more livable, but also more sustainable looking forward into the future. NYPA plays a monumental role in simultaneously mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis in New York State, while serving as a model for public power authorities in other states that might also follow NYPA’s bold example.
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Academic Journal Articles
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Knuth, S., Cox, S., Hofmann, S.Z., Morris, J.H., Taylor, Z., and McElvain, B. (2024). Interrupted rhythms and uncertain futures: Mortgage finance and the (spatio-) temporalities of climate breakdown. Journal of Urban Affairs, OnlineFirst.
Ventrella, J., & Knuth, S. (2024). Transitioning the grid for climate change: Power transmission futures and grid justice. Environmental Research: Energy. OnlineFirst. Taylor, Z. and Knuth, S. (2024). Financing “climate-proof” housing? The premises and pitfalls of PACE finance in Florida. Journal of Urban Affairs, OnlineFirst. Wagner, J., Kear, M., Knuth, S., Zavareh Hofmann, S., & Taylor, Z. J. (2024). Grappling with real property supremacy in US urban climate finance. City. OnlineFirst. van Veelen, B. and Knuth, S. (2024). An urban ‘age of timber’? Tensions and contradictions in the low-carbon imaginary of the bioeconomic city. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, OnlineFirst. Knuth, S. (2023). Rentiers of the low-carbon economy? Renewable energy's extractive fiscal geographies. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(6), 1548-1564. Wei Zheng, H., Bouzarovski, S., Knuth, S., Panteli, M., Schindler, S., Ward, K., & Williams, J. (2023). Interrogating China’s global urban presence. Geopolitics, 28(1), 310-332. Knuth, S., Behrsin, I., Levenda, A., & McCarthy, J. (2022). New political ecologies of renewable energy. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5(3), 997-1013. Turley, B., Cantor, A., Berry, K., Knuth, S., Mulvaney, D., & Vineyard, N. (2022). Emergent landscapes of renewable energy storage: Considering just transitions in the Western United States. Energy Research & Social Science, 90, 102583. Behrsin, I., Knuth, S., & Levenda, A. (2022). Thirty states of renewability: Controversial energies and the politics of incumbent industry. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5(2), 762-786. Knuth, S. (2020). ‘All that is solid…’ Climate change and the lifetime of cities. City, 24(1-2), 65-75. |
Knuth, S., Stehlin, J., & Millington, N. (2020). Rethinking climate futures through urban fabrics: (De)growth, densification, and the politics of scale. Urban Geography, 41(10), 1335-1343
Payne, W., Knuth, S., & Mahmoudi, D. (2020). Urban real estate technologies: Genealogies, frontiers, & critiques. Urban Geography 41, 1033-1036. Knuth, S., Potts, S., & Goldstein, J. E. (2019). In value’s shadows: devaluation as accumulation frontier. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 51(2), 461–466. Knuth, S. (2019). Cities and planetary repair: The problem with climate retrofitting. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 51(2), 487-504. Knuth, S. (2019). Whatever happened to green collar jobs? Populism and clean energy transition. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109(2), 634-643. Cantor, A., & Knuth, S. (2019). Speculations on the postnatural: Restoration, accumulation, and sacrifice at the Salton Sea. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 51(2), 527-544. Knuth, S. (2018). ‘Breakthroughs’ for a green economy? Financialization and clean energy transition. Energy Research & Social Science, 41, 220-229. Knuth, S. (2017). Green devaluation: Disruption, divestment, and decommodification for a green economy. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 28(1), 98-117. Knuth, S. (2016). Seeing green in San Francisco: City as resource frontier. Antipode, 48(3), 626-644. Knuth, S., & Potts, S. (2016). Legal geographies of finance. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 48(3), 458-464. Knuth, S. E. (2015). Global finance and the land grab: Mapping twenty-first century strategies. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue Canadienne D'études du Développement, 36(2), 163-178. Knuth, S. E. (2010). Addressing place in climate change mitigation: Reducing emissions in a suburban landscape. Applied Geography, 30(4), 518-531. Knuth, S., Nagle, B., Steuer, C., & Yarnal, B. (2007). Universities and climate change mitigation: Advancing grassroots climate policy in the US. Local Environment, 12(5), 485-504. |
Recent Grant-Funded Projects
Global Coal Transitions Research Network
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The Urban Climate Finance Research Network
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Selected Recent Media & Interviews
How can we decarbonise our homes?
Video produced with Time for Geography (2024) Winner: Geographical Association Publishers’ Highly Commended Award 2024 |
Blog series contribution: The insurance crisis is a housing crisis. Climate & Community Institute (2024)
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Renewable energy: US tax credits for wind and solar mostly benefit big banks. The Conversation (2022)
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