Resource information
The World Bank Group's clean energy
for development investment framework action plan has
outlined some of the key activities it intends to undertake
in the area of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and
helping client countries adapt to changes in climate. One of
these activities focuses on an analysis of the role of
low-carbon energy technologies in climate change mitigation.
This report provides an initial analysis of this issue. The
second chapter describes the urgency of developing new
low-carbon energy technologies based on a review of some of
the most authoritative recent reports on climate change.
Strong evidence demonstrates the need for new and improved
energy technologies, but, as is described in the third
chapter, current research, development, and deployment
(RD&D) efforts worldwide appear too limited and
slow-paced to generate new energy technologies rapidly
enough to respond to the climate change crisis. Moreover,
significant barriers are limiting incentives to invest in
energy RD&D and may reduce the effectiveness of such
investments. These barriers are discussed in the fourth
chapter. In light of these barriers and the very limited
success of past attempts to overcome them, fifth chapter
then analyzes four case studies where related barriers have
been successfully overcome and public goods have been
generated in non-energy sectors. These case studies are
purposefully drawn from non-energy sectors to introduce new
thinking to the energy sector and develop lessons learned to
inform the development of novel and creative energy
innovation vehicles. The sixth chapter draws lessons from
these case studies that speak to creative ways to approach
RD&D. The seventh and the final chapter summarizes
findings and makes suggestion for follow-on work.
