Quantifying Assets for the Geopolitics of Climate Change Mitigation

How do climate change mitigation efforts redistribute economic assets in the low-carbon transition? We present a comprehensive quantification of climate-related assets at the national level and across four dimensions: fossil fuel production value, climate change damages, renewable energy potential, and land carbon sequestration capacity. We combine integrated assessment models, climate projections, economic damage functions, and biosphere datasets to assess asset changes under multiple mitigation scenarios. Using k-means clustering, we group countries into five clusters based on their economic, energy, and environmental stakes, revealing disparities in economic losses and mitigation benefits. A similarity analysis identifies structural commonalities across countries based on our four assets, even when political alignment or governance differ. Notably, the USA, the EU, and China fall into the moderate-impact cluster, concentrating economic power in countries without the strongest asset-based incentives for decarbonization. Our framework provides input for integrating institutional, political, and socio-economic factors in future analyses of opportunities and challenges for global climate cooperation.