Energy consumption is growing in developing countries at a great pace and improvements in energy efficiency (EE) could provide opportunity for economic growth while providing broader access to energy and related services even from limited energy resources. This report underlines that moving the developing world towards a low carbon economy requires a scaling up of financing for EE. It examines the current role of climate finance in funding EE projects and the potential to channel funds to relevant EE projects under the new Green Climate Fund. The report focuses primarily on public climate finance flows from North to South, probing the current use of funds from multilateral development banks, bilateral financial institutions and carbon markets for energy efficiency projects in developing countries. The report makes eight recommendations on the design of climate and sustainable energy finance programmes to ensure that EE projects are adequately funded by climate finance.
This summary was prepared by Eldis.
The New Growth Strategy aims to create demand and jobs through regulatory reform and fiscal measures. The Strategy focuses on key challenges, notably climate change and population ageing, which can be turned into sources of growth. Given Japan’s precarious fiscal position, it is essential to co-ordinate spending related to the Strategy with the medium-term fiscal plan, in part by increasing the emphasis on regulatory reform. Such measures should cover the entire economy, rather than being limited to the seven areas identified in the Strategy. Among those areas, effectively promoting green innovation will require market-based instruments to place a price on carbon, preferably through a mandatory and comprehensive emissions trading system, to promote private investment, accompanied by a range of other policies. Achieving deeper economic integration with Asia depends on reducing support for agriculture to facilitate more bilateral and regional trade agreements, while bringing down barriers to foreign direct investment and foreign workers. Policies to expand venture capital would help launch innovative firms.
This is the third review of Mexico's environmental performance. It analyses progress in achieving a range of national objectives and international commitments, and presents 29 recommendations on how performance could be improved. Progress towards a green, low carbon economy is part of the assessment.
Moving towards low-carbon, high-efficiency energy systems, mitigating climate change, securing energy supplies, and resolving the imbalance of payments caused by energy imports, are impending problems that nations worldwide are striving hard to resolve. This paper addresses three aspects of this problem:
- the role of markets, prices, and governments in this energy transformation
- identification of policy interventions that can become productive investments in the future
- the potential for low-carbon, high-efficiency energy to drive green growth
The paper notes that the policy choices for an energy system transformation largely relate to: