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Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)

The ‘Building a Low‐Carbon Indian Economy’ report, by the Confederation of Indian Industry, recognises that although India is undergoing a phase of rapid industrial development there are clear signs that ‘industry in India has adopted an approach that can help India leapfrog to a low‐carbon economy’. The report asserts that this can be done by adopting suitable policies to promote non‐carbon intensive fuels, renewables and state‐of‐the‐art technologies to promote energy efficiency.  

The strategy identifies 12 priority areas with the potential to mitigate India’s carbon emissions and put the country on the path to a low‐carbon economy. These are: Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, Cleaner Conventional Energy Technologies, Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Free and Open Markets, Green Buildings, The Aviation Sector, Water Efficiency, Agriculture, Afforestation, Research & Development and Financing.

The document concludes by providing specific actions to be undertaken by government, industry and civil society independently, that will put India on a path to a low‐carbon economy.
 

International Trade Centre (ITC)
United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment)
International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
Sustainability standards have emerged in the marketplace for food, textiles and a wide range of consumer goods and services, and their role continues to grow, particularly in emerging markets. This policy brief shows that sustainability standards provide new opportunities to participate in trade where they improve competitiveness of exporters.
 
The paper clarifies that sustainability standards provide consumers with information and assurance about the environmental impact of production and so help build value into certified goods and services. This has a key role to play in helping developing countries transition to a green economy. In addition, these standards are increasingly important in south-south trade, in light of growth of cross-border trade facilitated by regional economic communities.
 
On the other hand, many developing countries are concerned that these standards can be potential non-tariff barriers to trade.
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Reinvigorated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a global discussion and national activities on green economy transitions have regained momentum since 2008. The increase in interest is, among other things, due to the growing understanding of the similarity and interlinkages between many of the recent financial, economic, environmental and social crises.

The 2008 global financial crisis focused attention not only on the financial losses, and implications for economies, jobs and housing, but also raised questions as to the fundamental imbalance in our economies. The choice of capital allocation - investment in property, fossil fuels and financial assets, rather than in measures to encourage resource efficiency - has created destructive imbalances. A further common element to all these crises is the focus of decision making on short time horizons and trust in what has often proven to be an incomplete evidence base including a lack of proper accounting, for example as regards the cost of climate change and biodiversity.

Organisation :
World Bank Group

This report aims at providing the emerging lessons from a representative sample of case studies in 20 developing countries that could help policy makers to address implementation challenges, including overcoming political economy and affordability constraints. The sample has selected on the basis of a number of criteria, including the country's level of development (and consumption), developing country region, energy security and the fuel it subsidies (petroleum fuel, electricity, natural gas).

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

This paper fills a gap in the macroeconomic literature on renewable sources of energy. It offers a definition of green investment and analyzes the trends and determinants of this investment over the last decade for 35 advanced and emerging countries. We use a new multi-country historical dataset and find that green investment has become a key driver of the energy sector and that its rapid growth is now mostly driven by China. Our econometric results suggest that green investment is boosted by economic growth, a sound financial system conducive to low interest rates, and high fuel prices. We also find that some policy interventions, such as the introduction of carbon pricing schemes, or “feed-in-tariffs,” which require use of “green”energy, have a positive and significant impact on green investment. Other interventions, such as biofuel support, do not appear to be associated with higher green investment.