Developing countries that rely on traditional energy sources face a daunting challenge to power their electricity, industrial and agricultural activities. Central to this challenge is the lack of access to adequate financial resources for facilitating energy transitions and achieving climate objectives in these countries. The climate finance issue was emphasized during the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), resulting in the formation of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). This initiative emerged following a commitment of $8.5 billion by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union to assist South Africa in phasing out coal. JETP functions as a collaborative financing mechanism aimed at aiding coal-dependent countries in transitioning to renewable energy sources while concurrently fostering clean energy employment opportunities and sustainable practices.
Green industrial policy consists of a series of policy tools aimed at promoting the development of specific green industries. They can stimulate enterprises to invest in green technologies through measures such as research and development subsidies and tax incentives, and guide the whole society to reduce environmental negative externality behaviors.
Air pollution disproportionately impacts South Asia with pollution-related deaths reaching 2 million annually and a concerning 21% rise in per capita death rates over the last decade. Despite promising results from private investments like air purifiers, their widespread adoption in South Asia remains hindered by financial constraints and other factors, underscoring the urgent need for targeted research and policy interventions to combat air pollution's devastating impact on public health and productivity in the region.
Since economic development and natural resource endowments differ across countries, government expenditures in energy technological innovations should reflect country energy potential and align with sustainable development goals. In addition to global public energy RD&D spending patterns identified from the Climate Policy Lab’s updated database, country-level analysis yields further insights.
The Climate Policy Lab recently updated an expansive dataset that reports global public expenditures on the research, development and demonstration of energy efficiency, fossil fuels, renewable energy sources, nuclear, hydrogen and fuel cells, power and storage technologies, other cross-cutting technologies and research and unallocated budgets from 2000 to 2022. Kate Chi examines the data’s patterns.
Cities around the world are confronting the increasing frequency and severity of disasters due to climate change, and it is the urban poor who are most affected. Globally, urban informal settlements (so-called “slum areas”) are expanding rapidly, in part because of rural to urban migration. The environmental and public health challenges these settlements face are exacerbated by climate impacts like flooding and extreme heat. In an article in the Journal of Climate Resilience and Climate Justice, we explore environmental problems in informal settlements in two African cities: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Kampala, Uganda.
One year ago, President Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA is widely acknowledged as the biggest climate legislation in U.S. history ($392 billion). It serves a dual purpose: to halve U.S. emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels, and to stimulate the economy and national competitiveness. The IRA is an important step in the right direction but only one of many to be taken.
The central objective set by the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°, compared to pre-industrial levels, also required countries to create plans for action, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). The United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report notes that current NDCs are highly insufficient and make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5° while making it harder to limit warming to below 2° after 2030. The results of the next global stocktake will help governments understand the emissions gap in achieving the Paris Agreement goals and facilitate more ambitious NDCs in the next round of climate change deliberations.
Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa, has one of the fastest growing economies on the continent. But the country’s rapid urbanization rate is fed by refugee migration and informal settlements that are highly vulnerable to the physical risks of climate change. Addis Ababa, the capital city, is home to some of the highest numbers of informal and slum settlements in the world. This makes Ethiopia an important country for research, particularly in relation to climate-related migration patterns.
Loss and damage negotiations took center stage and its advocates left COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh with a win in November 2022: for the first time, negotiators agreed to establish a fund for loss and damage from climate impacts. In a recent article for the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, we explore the enabling conditions that influenced this development and highlight key elements of the COP27 decision that will influence the structure of future loss and damage funding arrangements.
The United Nations General Assembly resolution requesting “ an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the obligations of States in respect of climate change” is, in some ways, a surprising document. The main surprise is that it exists at all – international environmental law experts have noted that inviting a court into the politically-driven legally-averse realm of climate negotiations would represent a “paradigm shift,” or expressed doubts about whether such an invitation would result in an outcome helpful to vulnerable states or the world. Nevertheless, amid increasing frustrations with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, the possibility of such a referral kept coming up. The question has now been formally asked.
The Horn of Africa has been plagued by severe drought for six consecutive seasons, along with conflicts, floods, and other extreme weather events, posing considerable threats to the region. Projections indicate that droughts in this area will become more widespread, intense, and prolonged, potentially exacerbating the fragile socioeconomic structures of communities. A century ago, Ethiopia would experience droughts every 10 or 15 years, but now they occur every 5 years, with increased severity, frequency, and duration, pushing the region’s ecosystem to its limits.
Predoctoral fellow Hengrui Liu discusses Climate Policy Lab’s newest policy brief which covers China's recent advancements in climate policy development, climate mitigation and adaptation progress, an updated climate change adaptation strategy, a more ambitious NDC, and new targets in the 14th Five-Year Plan.
As Mission Innovation (MI) prepares for its Annual Gathering later this month, the Climate Policy Lab has launched a new, expansive global dataset on RD&D expenditures. The data appear as an interactive visualization of annual public investments in energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) across 39 countries since 2000. This visualization is the culmination of a major effort to provide a global picture of energy RD&D investments based on the review of local documents. We aim to improve the accessibility of these important RD&D data so that everyone can better understand how much countries spend in this critical area of technological innovation.
Last month’s summit between top Chinese and Saudi leadership reinforced that crude oil is the main component of their trade relationship going forward even as China looks to decrease its reliance on fossil fuels by the next decade as it increasingly turns towards green hydrogen as an alternative energy replacement fuel.
In the final hours of global climate talks at Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, 80 developed and developing nations backed a call for the final agreement to include language affirming the wind down of fossil fuel use. The suggested text was opposed by major oil and gas producers, notably Saudi Arabia, which argued that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a viable emissions reduction solution that can eliminate emissions from continued oil and gas production and consumption. Saudi Arabia took the occasion of the twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties (COP27) to unveil its plans to host the world’s largest CCS hub, led by its state-owned oil and gas firm Saudi Aramco, in what it termed “the circular carbon economy.”
Carbon pricing is considered a key policy instrument to steer developing economies towards a lower carbon transition, but implementation can be politically arduous, slowing adoption in many locations, delegates to Climate Policy Lab’s Climate Policy Summer Academy suggest.
Designing market mechanisms to deploy financial tools like carbon taxes, energy subsidies, or cap and trade mechanisms is among the top challenges facing developing countries as they seek to promote carbon mitigation, delegates to The Climate Policy Lab Climate Policy Summer Academy concluded during meetings of the Academy’s inaugural session this past June.
Internal combustion engine (ICE) car bans are in the news, raising questions about their effectiveness as a policy tool. For automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), ICE bans are a strong policy signal that car companies must take action. While policies that promote alternative fuels like biofuels, electricity, and hydrogen can create a competitive market for low carbon fuels, ICE bans are technology-forcing, which theoretically can provide a more decisive market signal.
The recent IPCC report warns that severe climate impacts are in store if the world fails to halve greenhouse gas emissions this decade. Currently, climate change is impacting every corner of the world. Africa remains very vulnerable and exposed to these impacts despite accounting for less than 4% of global greenhouse emissions.
With Egypt set to host the next Conference of the Parties (COP 27), there are high hopes that climate issues close to the heart of African nations and other countries unduly impacted can be advanced.
