Building green: the International Energy Agency says its recovery plan could create nine million ... [+]
The International Energy Agency has outlined a $3 trillion plan to restart the global economy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, saying that governments have a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to create jobs while decarbonizing infrastructure.
Released today, the IEA says its three-year roadmap for clean energy and efficiency investment would create nine million jobs every year and additional economic growth of 1.1% annually. The agency claims its plan will eliminate 4.5 billion tonnes (5 billion U.S. tons) of greenhouse gas emissions by 2023.
Including macroeconomic analysis from the International Monetary Fund, the plan is likely to attract the attention of policy makers facing an unprecedented economic challenge: earlier this month, the OECD policy forum forecast the most severe global peacetime recession in a century as a result of the pandemic.
But the world also faces an even larger, potentially more deadly challenge in the form of man-made climate change. And while restrictions caused by COVID-19 worldwide caused a temporary drop in greenhouse gas emissions, recent research has shown that, as lockdowns are loosened, those emissions are already rebounding.
“Global carbon emissions flat-lined in 2019 and are set for a record decline this year,” IEA noted with the release of the report. “While this drop, which results from economic trauma, is nothing to celebrate, it provides a base from which to put emissions into structural decline.”
The report assesses six sectors of the economy—electricity, transport, buildings, industry, fuels and innovation—to home in on over 30 measures it says would generate the most value in terms of economic recovery and decarbonization. These include retrofitting buildings for better efficiency, accelerating renewable energy projects like solar PV farms, expanding rail infrastructure, and reforming fossil fuel subsidies.
Of crucial concern for treasuries, the IEA report presents the abatement cost for each measure analyzed, which is a measure of the financial cost or savings associated with reducing emissions by 1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Many energy efficiency measures, the report notes, have a negative abatement cost, which means they can save consumers and industry money while reducing emissions.
Among the other benefits accrued, the IEA says its plan would result in a 5% reduction in air pollution globally, give 420 million people in developing countries access to “clean cooking solutions” such as biogas and electricity, and provide electricity access to an additional 270 million people.
In remarks accompanying the report, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said governments should take the opportunity to invest in sustainable solutions, or risk baking-in economic and environmental failure.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol says governments have a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to put ... [+]
“As they design economic recovery plans, policymakers are having to make enormously consequential decisions in a very short space of time,” Birol said. “These decisions will shape economic and energy infrastructure for decades to come and will almost certainly determine whether the world has a chance of meeting its long-term energy and climate goals.”
The remarks correspond closely with those of climate advocates and veterans such as Christiana Figueres, the climate diplomat who last month explained that the recovery from coronavirus had the potential to make or break the fight to reduce global emissions.
Indeed, the IEA is not the only agency to have presented a green recovery plan: in April, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) unveiled a comprehensive, longer-term roadmap for reconfiguring the economy in the wake of coronavirus. And this month, management consultants McKinsey unveiled a strategy it says governments could use as a framework for deploying stimulus packages in a sustainable way. Such measures are supported by the available science: research by the University of Oxford indicates that investing in green infrastructure will not only lead to robust economic recovery but also to long-term positive outcomes for societies worldwide.
For its part, the IEA, a Paris-based organization which for many years was chiefly concerned with the supply of crude oil, has in recent years become something of an evangelist for sustainability. Last month the agency claimed that the European Green Deal would prove to be the “motor for the recovery” of the EU.
Introducing today’s report, Birol was unequivocal about the significance of the current moment. “Governments have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reboot their economies and bring a wave of new employment opportunities while accelerating the shift to a more resilient and cleaner energy future,” he said.
“Policy makers are having to make hugely consequential decisions in a very short space of time as they draw up stimulus packages. Our sustainable recovery plan provides them with rigorous analysis and clear advice on how to tackle today’s major economic, energy and climate challenges at the same time.”
