Oct 29, 2015 | Energy & Climate
Interview with Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an independent organization that provides grants for projects working towards sustainability. IIASA, the GEF, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) have recently partnered on a new project to explore integrated solutions for water, energy, and land.
Naoko Ishii ©Global Environment Facility
Q What is sustainable development and why is it important?
A As Brundtland put it, sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
If we do not achieve sustainable development, we will fail to provide even the barest essentials of life—food, water, and shelter—for the growing population. The extra two billion people that will inhabit the world in 2050 can only be accommodated if we are serious about sustainable development.
On a personal level I care about sustainable development because I care about the future, I care about young people, and I care about humanity. Achieving sustainable development is, in my opinion, the single most important issue we face today. Without it, all life on Earth is in jeopardy.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) was created on the eve of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio to assist in the protection of the global environment and promote sustainable development. The benefits of such an endeavor have only become clearer over time. It is no coincidence that in 2015 all nations of the world will adopt a set of sustainable development goals which place a strong emphasis on the “global commons,” and that in parallel we have a new global agreement on climate change within reach.
How do you see the world in 2050? What are your most optimistic and pessimistic visions?
I am an optimistic person so I will say that, by 2050, every government, every business, and every individual will take the environment into consideration in all their actions. By 2050, we will all be caring for the Earth, taking responsibility for the use of our planet’s resources, and building economies which will leave no one without dignity or necessary subsistence. We will live within safe planetary boundaries. Pessimism is not an option for me.
How can science help the world achieve sustainable development?
Science plays a critical role. We need it to monitor the state of our resources, the impacts of our activities, and the progress being made. Science can also help identify solutions. It can help encourage businesses to make smart decisions, for example, about saving money though energy efficiency, risk mitigation, and new revenue opportunities driven by innovation and new business models.
Sustainable development is a truly cross-cutting endeavor: it spans many sectors, from agriculture to economics, and transcends national boundaries. Science can play an important role by producing research that is integrated, cross-sectoral and international. In this way, synergies, co-benefits, and trade-offs can be explored in order to identify the smartest paths to achieving multiple sustainable development goals at the same time
“Sustainable development is a truly cross-cutting endeavor: it spans many sectors, from agriculture to economics, and transcends national boundaries.” ©The GEF
How do you see the role of Global Environment Facility in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals?
The GEF is uniquely placed to support the global commons—the planet’s finite environmental resources that provide the stable conditions required for a sustainable, prosperous future for all. Our new strategy—GEF2020—lays out an ambitious vision for the GEF, aimed at addressing the underlying drivers of environmental degradation and delivering integrated, holistic, solutions. We are building on more than 20 years of experience providing support to over 165 countries. By working with national governments, local communities, the private sector, civil society organizations and indigenous peoples, we help find and implement integrated solutions to global challenges.
What are the advantages of a cross-sectoral and cross-border approach to identifying paths to sustainable development?
Many environmental challenges and threats to sustainable development do not respect borders. Moreover, they are often interdependent, or share common drivers. For example, biodiversity loss and climate change is partly driven by unsustainable forest management, which is in turn connected to production of globally traded commodities like palm oil or soy. Problems like this require an integrated, cross-cutting approach.
Given the importance of cross-sectoral interventions, at the GEF we will be implementing a program of integrated approach pilot projects. We believe that these will help countries and the global community in tackling underlying drivers of environmental degradation. I am also very excited about a research program we have recently launched in partnership with IIASA and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, focusing on development and implementation of integrated solutions to tackle the water-food-energy nexus.
Note: This article gives the views of the interviewee, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Oct 14, 2015 | Systems Analysis
By Brian Fath, IIASA Advanced Systems Analysis Program and Towson University
Brian Fath. © Matthias Silveri | IIASA
The seminal book The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and colleagues was a first attempt to make a world model that integrated environment, economics, population, and industrial pollution. Without drastic changes to curb human population growth, consumption of non-renewable resources and industrial effluence, the model scenario projected a collapse of the world social-industrial system, because physically it is not possible to keep growing on a finite planet. This important message spurred many people in the environmental sciences, but was largely ignored, or worse ridiculed, by the dominant economic and political leaders. Perhaps their work was too pessimistic (although some could say realistic) and called for change for which society was not yet ready.
My co-authors and I feel their message was interpreted incorrectly. The restrictions imposed by The Limits to Growth do not entail stagnation and strife but rather give us an opportunity for new priorities, greater equity, and greater well-being. Living within the limits can offer agreeable, pleasant, even thriving and wonderful living conditions.
Therefore we have written a book, which shows that following nature provides guidance and pathways to Flourishing within Limits to Growth.
People today are confronted with a number of very serious problems: poverty, increased inequalities among countries and people, refugees, regional conflicts and civil wars, global climate change, accelerating exploitation of the global non-renewable and renewable resources, rapid land use change and urbanization, and increased emissions of harmful chemicals into the environment. History has shown us that we cannot solve these problems using traditional methods based on short-sighted economic growth.
Additionally, we know from natural laws that continuous growth in a finite environment is not possible. How can we ensure sustainable development for society on Earth? It would be possible by imitating the system that understands how to sustain long-term development: to learn from nature and follow nature’s way. Nature shifts from quantitative biomass growth when the resources become limiting to qualitative development by increasing resource use efficiency, in terms of both improved network connectivity and information on process regulation and feedbacks. The two main ecosystem functions, flow of energy and transfer of nutrients, are accomplished by renewable energy and complete recycling of the needed elements. Nature also originated and perfected the use the 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
“The restrictions imposed by The Limits to Growth do not entail stagnation and strife but rather give us an opportunity for new priorities, greater equity, and greater well-being” Photo: Innsbruck, Austria ©Nikolai Sorokin | Dollar Photo Club
Our book employs a global model to experiment with applying these properties of nature in society. Using global statistics, the model considers how the development will change if:
- A revenue-neutral, resource-based Pigovian tax is increased significantly and along with commensurate tax reduction to enhance recycling and application of renewable energy
- We increase investment in education, innovation, and research significantly to raise the level of understanding by the population and to develop new progressive ideas to address our global problems.
- We increase pollution abatement considerably to reduce its negative impacts on our health, nature, and production.
- We increase aid from the developed to the developing countries to 0.8% of GNP, which would enhance the cooperation among countries, reduce poverty and population growth and thereby also the number of refugees. In this context, it is important that the aid is given as support to education, health care, and family planning and not at all as military aid.
The model calculations show that it is possible to obtain a win-win situation, where both industrialized and developing nations can achieve a better standard of living – the developing countries mostly quantitatively and the developed countries mostly qualitatively. The calculations are compared with scenarios based on “business as usual” practices. The business as usual scenario shows a major collapse around the year 2060, which is in accordance to the Limits to Growth results from 1972 and the follow-up-publications from the Club of Rome.
Furthermore, the book demonstrates calculations of ecological footprints and sustainability by assessing our consumption and loss of work energy due to our use of resources and destruction of nature. These calculations lead to the following conclusions:
- Maintain natural areas and the ecosystem services they provide.
- Improve agricultural production by increasing efficiencies and technologies.
- Shift our thoughts and actions from quantitative growth to qualitative development, for instance by using the three R’s.
- Shift to renewable energy.
- Leave today’s policy focused entirely on short-sighted economic considerations and start to discuss how we can improve environmental management, increase the level of education and research, and achieve greater equality in society.
- Develop and promote alternative measures of welfare and well-being.
- Reduce, rather than reward, financial speculations, exorbitant profits, and stock market gambling.
More information: Listen to an interview with Brian Fath on WCBN Radio.
References
Jørgensen SE, Fath BD, Nielsen SN, Pulselli F, Fiscus D, Bastianoni S. 2015. Flourishing Within Limits to Growth: Following nature’s way. Earthscan Publisher.
Meadows, DH, Meadows, DL, Randers J., Behrens, W.H. III, (1972) Limits to Growth, New York: New American Library.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Sep 25, 2015 | Sustainable Development
By Wolfgang Lutz, IIASA World Population Program Director and Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (Originally published on the World Economic Forum Agenda Blog.)
Wolfgang Lutz
Few people would dispute the importance of education in our lives and those of our children. For good reasons, in virtually all industrialized countries, education is compulsory for everybody for at least 10 years.
In developing countries, however, 780 million women and men remain illiterate. Moreover, about 60 million children of school age are not at school.
Yet instead of making a concerted global effort to bring all children to school, less than 4% of official development assistance funds basic education. Over the past seven years, UNESCO and UNICEF report a decline in basic education.
Many think education is an aspect of social development that comes as a by-product of economic growth. This is wrong. Education is an absolutely necessary precondition of economic development.
Bill Clinton’s famous mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid!”, may be a useful slogan for an election campaign, but it is misleading in setting the priorities for sustainable development. It’s not primarily the economy, nor money, that makes the world go round and determines progress in human well-being. Much more important than the content of people’s wallets is the content in their heads. And what is in our heads is formed and enhanced by education which, in turn, helps fill the wallets, improves health, improves society and the quality of institutions, strengthens resilience at all levels and even makes people happier.
I could discuss the ample scientific statistical analysis to prove the transformative role of education in development. But more convincing may be historical success stories.
Finland was one of the poorest corners of Europe in the late 19th century. In 1868-1869 it suffered the last great famine in Europe not induced by political events. Almost half of the children died in this hopelessly underdeveloped and poorly educated economy based on subsistence agriculture.
After that tragedy, the Lutheran Church, supported by the government, launched a radical education campaign: young people could marry only after they passed a literacy test. The number of elementary school teachers increased by a factor of 10 over just three decades and by the beginning of the 20th century all young men and women in Finland had basic education. In 1906 Finland was the first country in Europe to grant women the right to vote and the subsequent economic development, based primarily on human capital, made Finland one of the world’s leaders in technology, innovation and, as a result, competitiveness.
In the early 1960s, Mauritius was a textbook case of a country stuck in the vicious circle of high-population growth, poverty and environmental destruction. Following the advice of scientists such as James Meade, the government launched a (strictly voluntary) family planning programme together with a huge push on female education. This led to rapid fertility decline plus economic growth, first through the textile industry based on semi-skilled female workers, then in upmarket tourism and more recently in banking and high-tech information technology. Mauritius is the only such success story in sub-Saharan Africa. The country managed to escape the vicious circle of poverty and underdevelopment through investment in human capital.
University students in Malaysia. © Nafise Motlaq / World Bank
Japan, Singapore, South Korea and finally China have similar stories but the timing is different. The Chinese experience shows that such success is not confined to remote and tiny island or city states. The highly elitist appreciation of education in Confucian tradition became transformative for the country once it was combined with the (originally) protestant approach of a broad-based education. Again, these countries built their stunning success stories primarily on improvements in human capital and without significant raw materials or international assistance. Economic growth followed the education expansion.
There is little doubt about the cause and effect between education and human well-being. Neurological research shows that every learning experience builds new synapses making our brains physiologically different for the rest of our lives. Education expands the personal planning horizon and leads to more rational decisions and less fatalism. It clearly empowers people to access more information, contextualize it and make conclusions that are more conducive to personal and societal well-being.
Well educated people are better at adopting good habits such as physical exercise, safe sex or quitting smoking. Education has many other effects on health from lowering child mortality to postponing disability and cognitive decline in old age, besides the commonly cited effects on income and employment. There is even the surprising finding that education makes people happier despite the fact of making them more aware of potential problems. Unsurprisingly, universal education reduces vulnerability to natural disasters and helps people adapt to climate change.
About a decade ago, I discussed some of this evidence with the Nobel laureate Gary Becker. He said: “Well, when I think about it, I cannot think of anything for which I rather would be less educated than more educated.”
Now we need to educate the economists and policy-makers to make it a much higher priority in the development agenda.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Sep 22, 2015 | Energy & Climate
By Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Deputy Director General, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria (Originally published on the World Economic Forum Agenda Blog.)
Nebojsa Nakicenovic
Goal 7 of the Sustainable Development Goals is ambitious: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. This must be accomplished without compromising Goal 13: climate. This is achievable.
In spite of ups-and-downs and outright shocks in the global economy, some quite recent, the economic success stories of the industrialized countries are role models for the countries that are still developing. This puts the entire global community in the dichotomous position of needing to fire up the engine of growth, without producing the greenhouse gases it has been emitting since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. What is the answer?
Very few questions in the complex area of energy and climate change can have a simplistic answer, but I am going to attempt one here: decarbonization, namely, drastic reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic activity.
Back in 1993, I wrote this:
“The possibility of less carbon-intensive and even carbon-free energy as major sources of energy during the next century is consistent with the long-term dynamic transformation and structural change of the energy system.”
My view in 2015 is the same; however, the scientific community 22 years later has a much better understanding of “the decarbonization challenge” and how it can be addressed. I will sketch out a 10-step approach to the removal of carbon from the global economy, but first I’d like to paint in a bit of the background.
Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change. The largest source is our use of fossil fuels to drive development. Carbon dioxide emissions have increased exponentially since 1850 at about 2% per year, while decarbonization of the global economy is only around 0.3% per year.
The 2012 Global Energy Assessment, in which IIASA played a leading role, puts the current decarbonization rate at approximately six times too low to offset the increase in global energy use of about 2% per year. To meet the goal of the 2009 climate agreement (the Copenhagen Accord), namely, “the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius” to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, global net emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will need to approach zero by the second half of this century, implying deep, deep decarbonization rates.
“Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change. The largest source is our use of fossil fuels to drive development.” © Kokhanchikov | Dollar Photo Club
But we need deep decarbonization while energy needs are increasing to meet the demand of the developing world, including the three billion without access today to sustainable energy. All scenarios in the academic literature that lead to further economic development in the world, universal access to sustainable energy, and the stabilization of climate change to less than 2 degrees Celsius, anticipate deep and urgent decarbonization. Here’s my 10-point plan for doing that.
- Change attitudes
Attitudes to energy use are based on many factors, from cultural norms to overall infrastructure design. We need much greater political will to affect a change in attitudes: it is critical that policy interventions should communicate to citizens the ethical notion of improved well-being and health now and for future generations of a zero-carbon economy. .
- Transform governance
The transformation needed this century is more fundamental than previous transformations, like the replacement of coal by oil, because of the significantly shorter time needed to achieve it. Thus, government policies are essential, and are needed particularly in changing buildings codes, fuel efficiency standards for transportation, mandates for the introduction of renewables, and carbon pricing.
- Improve energy efficiency
More efficient provision of energy services, or doing more with less, and radical improvements in energy efficiency, especially in end use, will reduce the amount of primary energy required and represents a cost-effective, near-term option for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, as well as having multiple benefits in different areas of life.
- Ramp up renewable use
We can show that the share of renewable non-fossil energy from solar, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal sources in global primary energy could increase from the current 17% to between 30% and 75%. In some regions it could exceed 90% by 2050, provided that public attitudes change and efficiency increases.
- Reduce global energy intensity
The energy intensity in the industrial sector in different countries is steadily declining due to improvements in energy efficiency and a change in the structure of the industrial output. Far greater reductions are feasible by combining these improvements with adoption of the best-achievable technology.
- Use known technologies
Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), now being piloted, is a pathway that leads to decarbonization with continued use of fossil energy. It requires: reducing costs, supporting scale-up, assuring carbon storage integrity and environmental capability, and securing approval of storage sites. Nuclear energy could make a significant contribution in some parts of the world, or it could be phased out as, for instance, in Germany.
- Improve buildings
Retrofitting buildings can reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 50–90%; new buildings can be designed and built using close to zero energy for heating and cooling. Passive energy houses and those that produce energy onsite are another great opportunity to achieve vigorous decarbonization. In conjunction with compatible lifestyles oriented toward rational energy use, efficient buildings are an important decarbonization option.
- Cut transport carbon
A major transformation of transportation is possible over the next 30–40 years and will require improving vehicle designs, infrastructure, fuels and behavior. Electrically powered transportation reduces final energy use by more than a factor of three over gasoline-powered vehicles. A shift toward collective mobility is an essential option. This also implies behavioral changes and new business models like car-sharing, and self-driving cars to replace individual mobility.
- Clean industrial processes
Overall, global industry efficiency is only 30%. Improved energy efficiency in industry results in significant energy productivity gains and, in turn, improved productivity boosts employment and corporate competitiveness. A shift toward low to zero emission energy sources in industry is another important and much-needed change. For example, with an aggressive renewables strategy, near-zero growth in GHG emissions in the industrial sector would be possible. Finally, decarbonization would also involve changes of industrial processes, for example, from high to low temperatures.
- Stranded assets and ‘derisking’ renewables.
The flow of investment needs to be changed away from fossil fuels and toward efficiency, renewables, decarbonization of fossil energy sources, and especially efficient end-use in buildings, transport, and industry. Sustainable energy futures require relatively high up-front investments with the benefit of low long-term costs. They are attractive in the long run, but the up-front investments need derisking and other forms of support, such as feed-in tariffs.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Jun 3, 2015 | Energy & Climate
By Nebojsa Nakicenovic, IIASA Deputy Director General/Deputy Chief Executive Officer (originally published in UNA-UK’s report: Climate 2020: Facing the Future)
Zero net global greenhouse gas emissions must become a reality before the end of the century if humankind is to stave off the worst effects of climate change. How can this be achieved?
This is a big year for embarking on transformational change towards a sustainable future for planet Earth. Three major global events are taking place, on financing and investments in Addis Ababa, sustainable development in New York and climate mitigation in Paris.
Energy futures are a major challenge on the way forward. In September the UN General Assembly in New York will focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which emphasise an enabling environment and economy for human development.
According to Kandeh Yumkella, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), the proposed SDG 7 on energy (‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’) is “the golden thread that links poverty eradication, equitable economic growth and a healthy environment”.
SE4All calls for universal access to energy services, doubling the rate of energy intensity improvement and doubling the share of renewable energy, all by 2030. These goals are based on the Global Energy Assessment (GEA), coordinated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the result of five years’ work by 500 experts worldwide.
The Paris climate meeting in December aims for a major climate agreement. What will it take? Photo Credit: Moyan Brenn via Flickr
The world is also going to have to introduce a workable, implementable scheme to stave off the possibility of runaway climate change, one with the objective of keeping the average global surface temperature increase to within 2°C over the pre-industrial average. It’s doable, but requires a high level of ambition to achieve immediate and vigorous emissions reductions.
The UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015 is aiming for – and will hopefully get – a climate agreement based on the 2°C limit that will be legally binding on every nation. To come near to achieving this target will require addressing energy systems, which is central to greenhouse gas emissions mitigation – 80 per cent of global energy is derived from fossil fuels. Limiting emissions will involve a major transformation of energy systems toward full decarbonization.
Stabilization scenarios
But we need to move urgently. IIASA research has shown that to meet the 2°C target and avoid dangerous climate change, emissions will need to peak by 2020. By 2050, they will have to be reduced by 30 to 70 per cent compared to today’s levels, and then they will need to go down to zero well before the end of the century.
The reason is that the amount of carbon that can be emitted in the future is limited if we are to restrict climate change to any given level. For example, to meet the 2°C target, humanity has a total carbon budget of some thousand billion tons of carbon dioxide.
This budget needs to be allocated along possible emissions pathways, which explains the need for achieving a peak as soon as possible followed by a decline to zero emissions. Should the emissions peak be late or decline rate too slow, humanity is likely to exceed the cumulative carbon budget. If this occurs, negative emissions would be required: namely, carbon removal from the atmosphere, so that excess emissions are offset rendering stabilization at 2°C possible despite an emissions overshoot.
The question is how could this be done. In stabilization scenarios, the negative emissions are achieved, for instance, by combining combustion of sustainable sources of biomass with carbon capture and storage (CCS). Both technologies are difficult from the current perspective and would require further development and vigorous deployment to reduce the costs and improve their performance.
CCS will presumably be developed anyway to decarbonize fossil fuels in those parts of the world where a transformation toward renewable, and possibly also nuclear, energy is delayed.
So we can decarbonize fossil fuels or switch to a higher percentage of carbon-free energy sources, such as many forms of renewable energy, to reduce and eventually eliminate emissions. What else can we do? GEA findings show that emissions could be reduced by up to half by efficiency improvements in energy, especially in end-use. This means looking at reducing emissions from areas such as transport, buildings, heating and cooling, urbanisation and electric appliances. It means changing mindsets, getting people and policymakers engaged in the emissions-reduction process.
Not all emissions come from sources that are judged to be a sign of development. In many developing countries, cooking over smoky fires burning traditional biomass (or coal) causes small particle pollution that adversely affects the health of women and children. IIASA research is analyzing how to introduce clean modern energy for cooking to millions of people and to cut indoor and outdoor pollution from these sources.
Improving air quality in cities with ground-level ozone, or smog (which results from chemical reactions between polluting compounds in the presence of sunlight), has clear synergies for human health, reducing cardiac, pulmonary and other diseases. It can increase human capital, too. One line of IIASA research shows that implementing a stringent climate policy could reduce globally aggregated lives lost due to indoor and regional air pollution by up to four million.
Sectoral interdependencies with respect to emissions are increasing. For example, reducing carbon and particle emissions to keep climate change in check has enormous implications for the food and water supply. Staggering amounts of water are needed to grow food but are also needed for sustaining energy systems. The productivity of land areas depends on climate and soil conditions. California is entering its fourth year of severe drought, raising concerns for agriculture and wildlife. Unsustainable water use in the state is draining aquifers containing ancient water that will take centuries to replenish.
All water systems – not simply those in traditionally arid or developing areas – are vulnerable to the changing climate. Reducing water use immediately reduces demand for electricity, as well as the fuels required to generate electricity. Water is needed to grow crops for biofuels, but fuel transport costs can be reduced by co-locating biofuel cultivation close to the communities that use them – another IIASA research result. Water can also produce plenty of hydroelectricity. Renewable energy technologies can be utilised to provide heat and electricity needs for water desalination. Water and energy use have almost boundless synergies and have to be analysed from an integrated perspective, which is why at IIASA examining the energy-water nexus is such a priority.
Complex problems
Stringent emission-reduction policies can also help to bolster the energy security goals of individual countries and regions. Such policies promote energy efficiency, the diversification of the energy supply mix and the increased utilisation of domestically available renewable energy sources. The result would be energy systems that are more resilient and simultaneously have a higher degree of sovereignty, especially compared to those so reliant on imports of fossil energy commodities, such as North America, Europe, Japan and, increasingly, China.
The international community has also woken up to the significance of climate-relevant emissions from deforestation and land degradation. The UN’s REDD+ initiative (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) is one of the more promising areas of agreement in global climate negotiations. Felling a tree always releases carbon, stored over its lifetime in its roots, leaves and branches. Large-scale deforestation therefore is a major contributor to carbon emissions. Nitrogen emissions from agriculture, wastewater management and industrial processes are also produced by human activities and need to be mitigated.
Felling a tree always releases carbon, stored over its lifetime in its roots, leaves and branches. Large-scale deforestation therefore is a major contributor to carbon emissions. Photo Credit: Curt Carnemark / World Bank
These are complex problems and huge investments are needed to solve the energy challenges society faces today. The ostensibly single aim of reducing emissions will, in fact, require a multiple paradigm shift affecting every domain simultaneously. There are many golden threads, and they are very entangled.
To fund the transformation to sustainable energy services for all, including the three billion ‘left behind’ without access and living at or below the poverty line, the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa in July will need to dig very deep into its collective pockets. To transform the global energy system, the volume of investment will have to almost double over the next three to five decades, from about $1.3 trillion to some $2.5 trillion.
The money is available. Insurance and pension funds control $50 trillion. Governments can help catalyse other kinds of private investment by providing research and development and early deployment, and by helping to de-risk investment. The cost savings of these climate policy synergies are potentially enormous: $100-600 billion annually by 2030 in reduced pollution control and energy security expenditures (0.1-0.7 % of GDP) could be achieved by combining climate mitigation with combating air pollution rather than pursuing the two goals independently.
For emission reductions to be successful, these practical and financial considerations will need to be supported by a new ethical awareness that will temper our relationship with each other and our planet. Sustainability in every aspect of human life means a shift to equity and inclusion.
With the fast-growing population and the need for universal development, the requirement to control emissions is extremely urgent. The golden thread described by Yumkella with respect to the energy sustainable development goal encompasses the notions of both opportunity and fragility, but it binds us all.
Read the full publication: Climate 2020: Facing the future (PDF).
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