LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative (LHI) Research Guide: Affordable, clean energy

At today’s rate of progress, the world is still not on track to achieve the SDG 7 goals by 2030. Advances have been impeded, particularly in the most vulnerable countries and those that were already lagging. From the outset of the pandemic, governments mobilized an unprecedented level of fiscal support to manage the impacts of the pandemic on citizens and the global economy. Appropriations of recovery funds in areas relevant to SDG 7 reached USD 710 billion, but 90 percent of that came in the advanced economies. Emerging markets and developing countries, with their much more limited fiscal leeway, mobilized far less. Increasing clean energy and access investments in these regions requires greater support from international actors.

The global energy crisis revealed the vulnerabilities and risks inherent to today’s fossil fuel-based energy system, while bringing the benefits of transitions – such as greater energy security, improved air quality, reduced emissions and less exposure to volatile fuel prices – into sharper relief. But even as clean energy technologies become increasingly cost-competitive, they still require a step-change in investment to overcome the inertia that favours incumbent fuels and technologies.
As living costs have increased around the world, important questions have emerged about how to pay for clean energy transitions, as well as how the costs and benefits will be shared. Low-income households, in particular, risk being locked out of transitions if they cannot afford the upfront costs.

The IEA’s new special report, Strategies for Affordable and Fair Clean Energy Transitions, explores these challenges and how they might be addressed. Its first-of-its-kind analysis provides a comprehensive evidence base for this discussion and a pragmatic look at policy approaches that can safeguard affordability and fairness as transitions advance.

In the emerging international scramble for so-called green energy, China is leading, with its control over many supplies of minerals essential for batteries, wind turbines and other technologies. China is also key to addressing climate change because its coal-powered economy creates more planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions than any other country. To counter China, the United States is rallying allies and friendly mineral-rich countries to forge alternative supply chains that can enable green energy industries to scale up. And, faced with Russian aggression in Ukraine, Europe is shedding energy ties to Moscow and expanding its domestic wind and solar power sources. Clean hydrogen may also create new energy powers — from Australia to Chile and Africa — as industrial demand for fossil-free energy surges. Competition extends into the Arctic, where retreating ice is spurring the hunt for green energy minerals. While the transition will take decades, the rules of the game are being set now — in Beijing and Washington.