A global bibliometric review of climate change and energy policy research: insights for sustainable development and international collaboration

The intersection of climate change and energy policy plays a critical role in advancing global sustainability goals. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 3533 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2004 and 2023, aiming to map the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and global distribution of scholarship in this field. Following PRISMA guidelines, the dataset was refined through systematic screening, and bibliometric techniques, including keyword co-occurrence, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-authorship analysis, were applied using VOSviewer. Six major thematic clusters were identified, namely climate policy integration, renewable energy transition, sustainability and development, climate mitigation, international governance, and energy system planning. Research priorities have shifted from early work on energy and environment linkages toward implementation-oriented topics such as energy transition, decarbonization, carbon neutrality, and energy justice. Influential authors and journals anchor the field; however, fragmentation persists between techno-economic modeling and governance-oriented studies, and collaboration networks remain regionally siloed, with limited representation of climate-vulnerable regions. The findings of this study contribute theoretically by linking bibliometric patterns to socio-technical transition theory, multi-level governance frameworks, and debates on energy justice and provide policymakers and funding agencies with practical diagnostic tools to identify mature and underexplored areas of research.