The GGKP's Seventh Annual Conference took place on 21-22 October 2019 in conjunction with the Global Green Growth Institute’s Global Green Growth Week 2019 (GGGW2019) on the theme of “Achieving Global Energy Transformation” in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
José Pineda presented his paper “The Inclusive Green Energy Index of Progress” in Session B.1: Policy and Planning Approaches for the Green Energy Transition. Pineda is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. He is also a Senior Consultant working on modeling and indicators with the Resources and Markets Branch of the Economy Division at UN Environment, as well as a Senior Consultant at DevTech Systems, where he is part of a team developing the macroeconomic framework for Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Plan.
1) Briefly describe the topic and conclusion of your research.
Our research aims to evaluate progress in achieving the key dimensions of Sustainable Development Goal 7, which ensures “access to affordable, sustainable and modern energy for all”. The key aspects of the Inclusive Green Energy Index of Progress are to: focus on the change of the corresponding variables, rather than on their levels; exhibit a decomposability feature that permits integrating several dimensions in a simple way, allowing for the inclusion of “goods” and “bads”; and evaluate how progress is made relative to some reference values (targets and thresholds) that can differ between countries. The index calculates progress for 157 countries using three indicators: capturing inclusiveness, greenness and efficiency regarding energy use. The results show that progress is, on average, positive across the world, but lower for Middle East and North African and sub-Saharan African countries; and it is negative for most of the countries that exhibit low levels of human development, as measured by the Human Development Index.
2) What are the key policy messages/implications?
It is important to have a measurement framework that supports the monitoring and evaluation process of the SDGs. Critical to this measurement is the idea of change – since we are measuring progress towards achieving the SDGs – as well as the use of country-specific reference values (targets and critical thresholds) that take into account a country’s specific context.
3) If applicable, briefly elaborate on the policy framework and financing mechanism.
We follow the framework developed by UN Environment and the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) with the aim of facilitating the use of indicators for the green economy policymaking process. This framework is intended to help countries have a consolidated measure that tracks social progress, economic growth and environmental protection in a unified way, and which pays attention to planetary boundaries that ought not to be crossed. This measurement framework not only helps to measure progress, but also provides information about policy priorities, which are critical for resource allocation.
4) Are there any challenges you would like to underline from this research?
The key challenge from this research is the establishment of critical thresholds and policy targets for each of the indicators incorporated. The international community and individual countries have made progress in making explicit specific targets for some indicators, but more needs to be done in this area. Our approach is this area has been pragmatic by using the existing scientific literature, international agreements and an empirical approach to derive such policy targets and critical thresholds.
5) What are the opportunities for collaboration around this issue?
This research has already benefited from collaboration within PAGE, not only by their comments and suggestions but also through specific proposals that aim to integrate some of the methodologies applied in this research with those of UNIDO’s work related to the stochastic frontier methodology. Our work also has important channels of communications with the work done by other important organizations that cooperate within the Green Growth Knowledge Platform, such as the Global Green Growth Institute. Collaboration could enrich our research, as well as improve the application of our framework by enhancing the set of indicators that can be used and the determination of the policy targets and critical thresholds.
6) Which session are you interested in attending at GGKP7 and why?
In general, I am interested in attending all the keynote and high-level panels to learn from the global experts’ insights in this area. In terms of the parallel sessions, I am interested in attending: Pathways to the Green Energy Transition (Parallel Session A.1) and Policy and Planning Approaches for the Green Energy Transition (Parallel Session C.1), given that our research could directly support such discussions and it could also bring some collaborative opportunities.