This Ph. D. project investigates the relation between socioeconomic attitudes concerning the role of governments in markets, skill formation and corporate governance on the one hand, and energy transition on the other. The basic hypothesis is that institutional structures are an independent variable that governs the type of policies developed in a given nation. We expect to observe that nations dealing with requirements from climate policy will demonstrate different energy transition pathways if they manifest different types of political economy, even in a comparable resource situation. To investigate it we use Varieties of Capitalism as a lens applied in comparative case studies concerning the phase-out of coal-fired power and the development of wind turbine technology. The first publication explores how the difference between Liberal Market Economies on the one hand, and Coordinated Market Economies on the other, affects the phase-out of coal-fired power in European nations.