The report is a one stop shop for learning about key developments and prospects of existing and emerging carbon initiatives. There is a continued momentum for carbon pricing. As of 2017, over 40 national and 25 subnational jurisdictions representing almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions are putting a price on carbon. Over the past decade the number of jurisdictions with carbon pricing initiatives have doubled. On average, carbon pricing initiatives cover about half of the emissions in these jurisdictions, which translates to a total coverage of about 8 Gigatons of carbon dioxide or about 15% of global emissions (a fourfold increase over the past decade).
Finance provided and catalysed by multilateral development banks (MDBs) will help pay for implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement in many developing countries. Although MDBs already track and report on their climate finance, less is known about how investments across their entire energy supply portfolios relate to achieving sustainable development and climate-change objectives.
The importance and value of 2050 strategies that seek to cut greenhouse gas emissions while also ensuring well-being and prosperity have been acknowledged by policy makers, advocates, and businesses for many years. However, there is no formal multi-lateral or international guidance as to what such strategies should contain or how they should be developed. While this is an important deficit that should be corrected, it is somewhat mitigated by a strong body of independent papers.
This paper aims to be a starting point for policy makers who are seeking to either develop their country’s first 2050 decarbonisation plan, or to strengthen their existing plan. The literature reviewed for these guidelines ranges from legislative texts and governmental agency reports to the outputs of independent research projects. While national circumstances will require some differences between countries’ 2050 strategies, the consistency with which the various papers identify the essential building blocks of a strong 2050 strategy should be noted.
The world needs a decarbonised energy sector by the second half of the century. In many energy applications, the necessary technologies are available today, so the important next step is the development of enabling policy frameworks in place to scale up their deployment. There are however energy demands in end-use sectors that are responsible for a third of the emissions in the Reference Case in 2050 – the baseline of this study, where several technology options are emerging but are yet to reach their economic and technical viability.
This working paper aims to shed light on the conditions needed to nurture low-carbon technology innovation. By assessing current status and future needs for such technologies, it seeks to identify the elements of a flexible policy framework for innovation, broadly suitable to enable decarbonisation of the energy sector between now and 2050. The envisaged of cultivation of effective, case-specific innovation policies would do much to help countries meet international climate goals, such as those set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement.