Fairness considerations in global mitigation investments

Despite overwhelming evidence that the world needs to make rapid and substantial investments in climate mitigation in this decade to meet the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement, political and financial barriers continue to hinder mitigation efforts. Global mitigation investment pathways modeled in the sixth assessment report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reach global climate goals in a cost-effective manner. These are agnostic about who should finance these and how to fairly allocate costs and benefits of mitigation efforts. We apply equity considerations to global cost-effective mitigation investment needs and derive “fair-share” regional contributions, which describe the direction and magnitude of interregional financial flows that align with each consideration. We find that flows from North America and Europe to other regions would have to increase substantially relative to present levels to meet the Paris Agreement goals under most equity considerations

Summary for policymakers

The Working Group III contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGIII AR5) provides a comprehensive assessment of all relevant options for mitigating climate change through limiting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as activities that remove them from the atmosphere. It draws on scientific literature accepted for publication prior to 4 October 2013. The WGIII Summary for Policymakers was approved at the Twelfth Session of Working Group III, held in Berlin, Germany, from 7 to 11 April, 2014. During the session, the IPCC plenary also accepted the underlying scientific and technical assessment, which stands at 2000 pages, including more than 700 pages of references

Technical summary

The Working Group III (WGIII) contribution to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) assesses literature on the scientific, technological, environmental, economic and social aspects of mitigation of climate change. It builds upon the WGIII contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) and previous reports and incorporates subsequent new findings and research. Throughout, the focus is on the implications of its findings for policy, without being prescriptive about the particular policies that governments and other important participants in the policy process should adopt. In light of the IPCC's mandate, authors in WGIII were guided by several principles when assembling this assessment: (1) to be explicit about mitigation options, (2) to be explicit about their costs and about their risks and opportunities vis-a-vis other development priorities, (3) and to be explicit about the underlying criteria, concepts, and methods for evaluating alternative policies. This summary offers the main findings of the report

Renewable, ethical? Assessing the energy justice potential of renewable electricity

Energy justice is increasingly being used as a framework to conceptualize the impacts of energy decision making in more holistic ways and to consider the social implications in terms of existing ethical values. Similarly, renewable energy technologies are increasingly being promoted for their environmental and social benefits. However, little work has been done to systematically examine the extent to which, in what ways and in what contexts, renewable energy technologies can contribute to achieving energy justice. This paper assesses the potential of renewable electricity technologies to address energy justice in various global contexts via a systematic review of existing studies analyzed in terms of the principles and dimensions of energy justice. Based on publications including peer reviewed academic literature, books, and in some cases reports by government or international organizations, we assess renewable electricity technologies in both grid integrated and off-grid use contexts. We conduct our investigation through the rubric of the affirmative and prohibitive principles of energy justice and in terms of its temporal, geographic, socio-political, economic, and technological dimensions. Renewable electricity technology development has and continue to have different impacts in different social contexts, and by considering the different impacts explicitly across global contexts, including differences between rural and urban contexts, this paper contributes to identifying and understanding how, in what ways, and in what particular conditions and circumstances renewable electricity technologies may correspond with or work to promote energy justice