Insights Blog

Can small innovating firms drive the energy technological transition? Today, the electricity sector is responsible for 40% of the world’s CO2 emissions, twice as much as the transport sector. This is mainly due to the fact that 70% of electricity is still mostly produced from burning highly carbon-intensive fossil-fuels, such as oil, coal and gas. Transforming our energy system will require speeding up the rate of innovation in renewable technologies, so that they can compete with fossil-fuel technologies. New research sheds light on the central role of small innovating firms specialized in renewable technologies in moving our energy systems away from fossil-fuels. 

Edward Barbier discusses his latest book, 'Nature and Wealth" drawing on historical and contemporary evidence and argues that these two threats are symptomatic of a growing structural imbalance in all economies, which is how nature is exploited to create wealth and how it is shared among the population.

Stephane Hallegatte will be presenting at a GGKP Webinar on 24 November from 3-4:30pm Geneva time, highlighting the new World Bank report "Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty".

Steven Stone, UNEP, discusses the recent PAGE Regional Green Economy Forum for Latin America that brought together over 50 participants from more than 10 countries in Central and South America.

Joy Kim, UNEP, discuses some of the findings from UNEP's synthesis report “Building Inclusive Green Economies in Africa: Experience and Lessons Learned 2010-2015” and subsequent discussions at a regional workshop “Inclusive Green Economies for poverty reduction and sustainable development in Africa,” in Cairo, Egypt in March 2015.

In part two of her blog, Suzi Tart (OECD), discusses how CO2 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have changed since 1990's.

Ryan Parmenter, OECD, discusses how innovative technologies to improve productivity and performance could be developed using a systems approach in order to enable the next industrial revolution for green growth.

Juliano Assunção and Joana Chiavari from the Climate Policy Initiative discuss a new study exploring paths to more efficient land use in Brazil.

Simon Hunkin, discusses the new project 'Innovation for Sustainable Development Network' (inno4SD.net) which seeks to bring together networks who are interested in innovation for sustainable development.

Suzi Tart, OECD, discusses the new report Climate Change Mitigation: Policies and Progress, which shows that current emissions trends are NOT in line with countries’ targets.