Constructing climate capitalism: corporate power and the global climate policy‐planning network

In this article, I analyse the corporate hegemonic structures of power underlying the project of climate capitalism. I present climate capitalism as an emerging regime of accumulation founded on carbon markets and the ecological modernization of production, which could replace the prevalent carboniferous capitalist regime and provide a deeply needed reduction of carbon emissions. I map out the network of corporate‐funded climate and environmental policy groups participating in climate capitalist knowledge production and mobilization to provide a critical appraisal of the possibility of such a transition. The positioning of these policy groups allows them to play a crucial role as intermediaries between regional and sectoral corporate interests and they provide a crucial link between energy and financial firms. However, energy–finance linkages are sparse, and a small number of individual capitalists carry a relatively thin network from the fossil fuel and nuclear sectors. These findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that a strong climate capitalist coalition is emerging.