Inside a SOAS Study Tour: Meeting the people shaping climate policy in Brussels and Paris

As part of her MSc in Global Energy and Climate Policy, Nancy took part in a Study Tour, travelling to Brussels and Paris and meeting the people and institutions shaping energy and climate policy at the highest levels.

Over five days in June, our cohort met representatives from institutions including the Directorate General for Climate Action, the International Energy Agency, the OECD Environment Directorate, the Alliance for Renewable Electrification, Fern Europe, and the Network for Greening the Financial System at Banque de France, among others.

The Study Tour offered a genuine space for dialogue

I'll be honest about my expectations going in. As someone travelling to Brussels and Paris for the very first time, I was excited the way you are when somewhere new suddenly, unexpectedly becomes real. I expected the meetings to be formal, perhaps a little distant, with officials delivering polished institutional lines, but what I found was something quite different. There was genuine space for dialogue. 

We could ask whatever we wanted, and they answered every question thoughtfully and without deflection.

When they didn't have an immediate answer, they didn't brush past it; they simply invited us to follow up over email or LinkedIn. That openness, from people operating at the highest levels of climate and energy policy, was something I hadn't quite prepared myself for.

What I learnt about the challenge of climate action

What I learned across those five days is difficult to compress into a paragraph, but one thread ran through almost every meeting: the challenge of climate action is no longer primarily about deciding what needs to be done. It is about figuring out how to navigate competing economic, political, social and geopolitical realities simultaneously.

Climate change isn't one problem. It is hundreds of interconnected problems happening at the same time, and the people working on them are operating at the intersection of all of them.

I met and was motivated by SOAS alumni 

One thing I didn't anticipate was how many SOAS alumni we would encounter along the way, people who once sat in the same classrooms as us, studied under the same professors, and are now leading research divisions, shaping energy policy, and building institutions that matter. That was quietly one of the most motivating things about the entire trip. The distance between where I am now and where I want to be felt, for the first time, genuinely navigable.

My favourite part, though, had nothing to do with any official meeting. It was sitting down to shared meals with my professor and the rest of our cohort, processing everything we'd just heard, arguing about ideas, laughing about the day. Those moments reminded me why the classroom still matters and what it means to learn alongside people who are genuinely trying to figure things out together.

I learnt what it takes to move from intention to action

This trip has sharpened something in me. I came in thinking climate policy was primarily about setting ambitious targets. I'm leaving with a much more textured understanding of what it actually takes to move from intention to action, and a deeper appreciation for the people doing that work every single day, often in the face of contradictions that have no clear answers.