Low-carbon innovation for industrial sectors in developing countries

Low-carbon innovation in industrial sectors in developing countries presents economic opportunities that can help realise sustainable development pathways. Under business-as-usual, industries being established in developing countries are likely to move along carbon-intensive or inefficient pathways, increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the short term and the likelihood of establishing high-carbon lock-in over the longer term. However, there is a wealth of evidence from industrialisation experiences around the world demonstrating the kinds of strategies that make it possible to take advantage of low-carbon opportunities to instead create climate-compatible development pathways. This policy brief aims to illuminate potential pathways and policy actions for low-carbon innovation in emerging industry sectors in developing countries. It focusses, firstly, on the low-carbon and energy efficiency gains that are possible in energy-intensive manufacturing. Secondly, the brief explores opportunities for developing countries to insert themselves into global low-carbon value chains by developing manufacturing capacity in energy-supply technologies. The brief ends with policy recommendations that could be enacted at both the national and international levels, making use of existing institutions as well as learning from the literature on past industrialisation experiences

Recycling the Plastic Package

Examines the problems and progress in the field of plastics recycling. Statistics on plastic packaging disposal; Advances in plastic recycling; The initial start; The next stage, packaging production; Aid from manufacturers; The wide variety of resins; Design modifications; A recycling innovation that works; Separating different plastics; Resin recovery systems; Chemical processes; Government policies needed. INSET: Red herrings

Convergence or divergence? Wind power innovation paths in Europe and Asia

Wind power is increasingly vital for meeting energy challenges and mitigating global climate change and is therefore an important part of renewable energy portfolios in many countries. Given the key and evolving roles of European and Asian countries in driving this sector, this article focuses on two sets of key questions: first, do wind power innovation paths differ between Europe and Asia? If so, how do they differ? Second, do innovation paths reflect different initial conditions in Europe and Asia? Can we expect divergence in the future? We find that although national paths are shaped by a range of national characteristics and therefore differ along key dimensions, the increasing roles of cross-national firm interactions amplify tendencies towards global convergence. These patterns of divergence and convergence can potentially enhance the contribution of wind power to the low-carbon transition but also have implications for the competitive dynamics of the wind power industry

Systematizing the approach to air quality measurement and analysis in low and middle income countries

Peer reviewe

Collaborative research and development (R&D) for climate technology transfer and uptake in developing countries: Towards a needs driven approach

While international cooperation to facilitate the transfer and uptake of climate technologies in developing countries is an ongoing part of climate policy conversations, international collaborative R&D has received comparatively little attention. Collaborative R&D, however, could be a potentially important contributor to facilitating the transfer and uptake of climate technologies in developing countries. But the complexities of international collaborative R&D options and their distributional consequences have been given little attention to date. This paper develops a systematic approach to informing future empirical research and policy analysis on this topic. Building on insights from relevant literature and analysis of empirical data based on a sample of existing international climate technology R&D initiatives, three contributions are made. First, the paper analyses the coverage of existing collaborative R&D efforts in relation to climate technologies, highlighting some important concerns, such as a lack of coverage of lower-income countries or adaptation technologies. Second, it provides a starting point for further systematic research and policy thinking via the development of a taxonomic approach for analysing collaborative designs. Finally, it matches characteristics of R&D collaborations against developing countries’ climate technology needs to provide policymakers with guidance on how to Configure R&D collaborations to meet these needs

Sustainable development and equity

International audienc

Ethical choices behind quantifications of fair contributions under the Paris Agreement

The Parties to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement agreed to act on the basis of equity to protect the climate system. Equitable effort sharing is an irreducibly normative matter, yet some influential studies have sought to create quantitative indicators of equitable effort that claim to be value-neutral (despite evident biases). Many of these studies fail to clarify the ethical principles underlying their indicators, some mislabel approaches that favour wealthy nations as ‘equity approaches’ and some combine contradictory indicators into composites we call derivative benchmarks. This Perspective reviews influential climate effort-sharing assessments and presents guidelines for developing and adjudicating policy-relevant (but not ethically neutral) equity research