The manufacture of clean energy goods and provision of clean energy services, vital to climate change mitigation efforts, increasingly takes place through globally dispersed supply chains. In these supply chains, parts and components often cross borders multiple times before feeding into a clean energy power plant that is set up with the help of foreign or domestic firms that provide services such as design, engineering and construction as well as operations and maintenance. Non-tariff measures such as standards have the potential to impact trade much more than tariffs and nowhere is this truer than for solar-photovoltaic (PV). Policymakers in the trade as well as energy spheres thus need to be aware of the type of standards that are being set along various segments of the value chain for solar-PV for both goods and services as well as the standards development organisations that are involved.
The Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA), initiated in 2014, is intended to reduce tariffs on a list of goods by the signatories, after which concessions will be extended to all WTO members based on the most-favoured-nation principle. While the main objective for reducing tariffs on environmental goods in an accelerated manner is environmental concerns, including the need to address climate change, it also makes good economic sense. Among the benefits are reduced consumer prices for environmental goods. Moreover, EGA tariff elimination can spur the uptake of energy efficient goods, in turn resulting in energy savings.
This paper looks into the case of possible consumer benefits of the EGA in the United States. The authors find that total household savings from the price effect of EGA tariffs cuts overall would amount to roughly $845 million per year, disproportionally benefitting lower-income households. Moreover, the paper estimates that an increased use of energy-efficient light bulbs could save 238 million kilowatt hours, which is equivalent to 124,000 tons of coal each year, or 120% of the greenhouse gas emissions from coal in the state of Maine.
Kazakhstan has taken a lead among Central Asian countries in mapping a path towards a green economy. While environmental degradation has often been discussed, only recently have environmental concerns begun to be addressed within the mainstream economy. In 2011 the Kazakhstan government asked IIED to help define its approach to ‘greening’ the economy. Focused initially on the Green Bridge Partnership Programme of investments, in a positive step the Kazakhstan government adopted its own Green Economy Concept, which provides the overall policy context. This report analyses progress to date and makes ten recommendations on the enabling conditions needed for Kazakhstan to achieve a substantial transition to a green economy.
The past decade has seen a rapid expansion in the development of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) to address key sustainability issues for commodity supply chains. Major growth in the production and sales of certified/verified agricultural products has been fuelled by increasingly ambitious private sector sourcing commitments, particularly among blue chip companies.
This Review provides a bird’s eye view of the global market trends of 10 commodities and the 16 most prevalent standards initiatives paving the way for more sustainable production and trade. The review looks at the governance, criteria coverage and implementation practices of standards initiatives that are active in the agriculture, forestry and biofuels sectors. The standards initiatives studied had certified/verified production with an estimated trade value of US$31.6 billion (2012).
This Review is a strategic planning tool for businesses, policy makers and stakeholders seeking to build more sustainable supply chains. The Review is a collaborative effort of IISD, IIED, FAST, ENTWINED and IDH.
This guide aims to encourage early dialogue and diagnosis in and by developing countries on what a green economy would mean for their country.
Green economy and green growth are hot topics. Definitions, evidence, debates and increasingly, policies, have tended to be dominated by powerful countries and international groups. Several intergovernmental organisations are making it a priority and are announcing policies and programmes; but they each have different approaches.
This proliferating work on the international scene provides rich material which can be highly influential in developing countries. However, there are risks of considerable bias if the concepts are not first explored by stakeholders in-country. As the 2012 Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development concluded, green economies should take very different forms according to a country’s diverse capital endowments and needs. As such, green economic policy and investments need to be tailored at both national and local levels.