The pace of governed energy transitions: agency, international dynamics and the global Paris agreement accelerating decarbonisation processes?

The recent debate on the temporal dynamics of energy transitions is crucial since one of the main reasons for embarking on transitions away from fossil fuels is tackling climate change. Long-drawn out transitions, taking decades or even centuries as we have seen historically, are unlikely to help achieve climate change mitigation targets. Therefore, the pace of energy transitions and whether they can be sped up is a key academic and policy question. Our argument is that while history is important in order to understand the dynamics of transitions, the pace of historic transitions is only partly a good guide to the future. We agree with Sovacool’s [1] argument that quicker transitions have happened in the past and may therefore also be possible in the future globally. The key reason for our optimism is that historic energy transitions have not been consciously governed, whereas today a wide variety of actors is engaged in active attempts to govern the transition towards low carbon energy systems. In addition, international innovation dynamics can work in favour of speeding up the global low-carbon transition. Finally, the 2015 Paris agreement demonstrates a global commitment to move towards a low carbon economy for the first time, thereby signalling the required political will to foster quick transitions and to overcome resistance, such as from incumbents with sunk infrastructure investments

ClimateScope 2012

Climatescope 2012 is a report and index that assesses the investment climate for climate-related investment in Latin America and the Caribbean. It profiles 26 countries in the region and evaluates their ability to attract capital for low-carbon energy sources while building a greener economy. To assign each country an overall score, Climatescope examines four overarching and interrelated parameters described below. These parameters are supported by a series of 30 indicators based on data captured by Bloomberg New Energy Finance through first-hand research, consultation of publicly available sources and discussions with experts. Together, these indicators and their corresponding parameters form a holistic picture of a particular country's climate for climate-related investment. To Access this resource consult the "Related URL" field below.

On the role of solar photovoltaics in global energy transition scenarios

The global energy system has to be transformed towards high levels of sustainability in order to comply with the COP21 agreement. Solar photovoltaic (PV) offers excellent characteristics to play a major role in this energy transition. The key objective of this work is to investigate the role of PV in the global energy transition based on respective scenarios and a newly introduced energy transition model developed by the authors. A progressive group of energy transition scenarios present results of a fast growth of installed PV capacities and a high energy supply share of solar energy to the total primary energy demand in the world in the decades to come. These progressive energy transition scenarios can be confirmed. For the very first time, a full hourly modelling for an entire year is performed for the world, subdivided in 145 sub-regions, which is required to reflect the intermittent character of the future energy system. The model derives total installed solar PV capacity requirements of 7.1-9.1 TWp for the electricity sector (as of the year 2015) and 27.4 TWp for the entire energy system in the mid-term. The long-term capacity is expected to be 42 TWp and, because of the ongoing cost reduction of PV and battery technologies, this value is found to be the lower limit for the installed capacities. Solar PV electricity is expected to be the largest, least cost and most relevant source of energy in the mid-term to long-term for the global energy supply