Let’s take a tour through our various projects, solutions and activities, our way of working, and our worldwide network. We invite you to look back at our impact in 2019. This Path Finder presents to you the highlights of our work. Enjoy reading!
Costa Rica is a global leader when it comes to ensuring energy production comes from renewable energy sources.
Food security is a key aspect of sustainable development. Civil society projects, organisations and initiatives working on urban food security are often the only or main provider of nutritious food to the urban most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.
The Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) initiative pledged to ensure universal access to modern energy services, double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030. Yet, it’s self-published progress reports states that the initiative has fallen short of its objectives.
This report summarises the initiatives often underlined structural shortcomings. Namely, a lack of integration into other UN frameworks, an excessive focus on centralization and profitability, a disproportionate emphasis on private finance, a lack of inclusion of diverse business models and a lack of representation and civil society involvement. The report then examines the SEforALL Action Agendas for eight African countries.
100% Renewable Energy for Costa Rica: Costa Rica is already a global leader when it comes to ensuring energy production comes from renewable energy sources. With a 98% share of renewables in its electricity matrix and solid achievements to prevent deforestation—around 25% of the country’s land area is in protected National Parks and other protected areas—Costa Rica is at the forefront of environmental sustainability, climate action and driving the renewable energy transition. Wanting to go even further, Costa Rica has adopted the National Decarbonization Plan in February 2019 to achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, in line with the objectives of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. This report, commissioned by the World Future Council and La Ruta del Clima/Costa Rica, and financed by the One Earth Foundation USA to provide input into Costa Rica’s ambitious plan to achieve 100% renewable energy.
As the Costa Rican President, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, noted during the launch of the Plan, “Decarbonization is the great challenge of our generation and Costa Rica must be among the first countries to achieve it, if not the first.” The biggest challenge will be to increase the share of renewables in energy consumption. More than 60% of energy consumption in the country is from petroleum derivatives. 64% of Costa Rica’s emissions come´from energy use, and more than two thirds of that is from transport. A critical part will thus be to
decarbonize the transport sector. The growing demand for personal vehicles, the majority of which run on petrol, is keeping a high share of fossil fuels in the country’s energy consumption. The Decarbonization Plan aims to have 70 percent of public transport powered by electricity in 2035—and the whole fleet by
2050.
This study aims to complement these efforts and show pathways to 100%RE in order to meet the
decarbonisation challenge.
Climate finance in the Global South differs in various ways from the conditions in the industrialised world. These differences result in several obstacles which could be identified as one reason why the annual global renewable energy investments stagnated at a level around $300 billion since 2011, while an estimated number in an area of $2.4trillion is necessary to meet the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Agreement.
The bulk of these $300bn Renewable Energy (RE)-investments happened in high-income countries and China while only a very small part was invested into renewables in the Global South. Only 0.1% of total clean energy investments accumulated in the 31 poorest countries between 2009 and 2018. The main barrier to more RE-investments in the Global South is not a lack of (green) investment capital, but rather a lack of bankable projects.
This policy brief provides an overall assessment of climate finance mechanisms in the context of domestic and international finance in the Global South. Furthermore, it will give a prospect on a possible new finance mechanism if at least a few relevant central banks from the industrialised world will engage in the global climate finance issue. Such an engagement could be the basis to facilitate the needed RE-investments to stop climate change at 1.5°C.
The Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) initiative pledged to ensure universal access to modern energy services, double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030. Yet, it’s self-published progress reports states that the initiative has fallen short of its objectives.
This report summarises the initiatives often underlined structural shortcomings. Namely, a lack of integration into other UN frameworks, an excessive focus on centralization and profitability, a disproportionate emphasis on private finance, a lack of inclusion of diverse business models and a lack of representation and civil society involvement. The report then examines the SEforALL Action Agendas for eight African countries.
In this brochure, we present the winning policies of our Future Policy Award 2019. In partnership with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with the support of the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, the International Labour Organization (ILO), Youth Policy Labs (YPL), the Michael Otto Foundation and the Jua Foundation. Its aim is to highlight policies that advance youth access to decent jobs, including green jobs, and enhance civic and political participation for sustainable development and peace. With more than 1.8 billion people between the ages of 15 and 35 worldwide – a quarter of the global population – we have the largest generation of young persons the world has ever known. Young people play a crucial role in advancing development, democracy and peace and in fulfilling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They are talented, knowledgeable and ambitious, and are making a difference every day in all fields of work and as leaders in their communities. Despite their drive and achievements, the contribution of young people to society is often not recognized, nor are they adequately invested or included in decision-making processes. At the same time, young people face high unemployment and discrimination, and often lack access to education. The climate crisis and environmental degradation will impact their future tremendously. Hence it is time that we step up our political action to empower youth. Championing and spreading effective, future-just policy solutions is the principal goal of the World Future Council. Together with renowned partners, each year, through our Future Policy Award, we highlight exemplary policies that create better living conditions for present and future generations by addressing a major global challenge.
Renewable energy remains at the top of the agendas of many policy makers worldwide. And that is for good reason – Technologies for renewable power generation, heating and cooling, and transport are affordable and most often the cheapest option.
