Results are beginning to emerge from a two year low carbon growth country study program that spans Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa. The program has engendered in-country ownership of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategies and has provided two valuable outputs. The first, a process to establish low carbon pathways and the second, a growing and useful knowledge and dataset that can be used to help other countries identify low cost opportunities to reduce their GHG emissions. The dataset and experience is broad due to the varied scope and focus of each study that responds to national priorities and needs spanning multiple sectors and issues: land use change and forestry, renewable energy, energy efficiency, transport, policy implementation, financing, macro-economic modeling and capacity building.
On September 10, 2009 a workshop “Low Carbon Growth Country Studies: Emerging Lessons and Results” was jointly hosted by ESMAP, the Energy and Mining Sector Board, World Bank Institute and the World Bank’s Climate Change for Development Professionals program to share experiences and lessons from the work in these six countries. The workshop examined issues and challenges in scaling-up efforts; and discussed how this program could move forward. The Center for Clean Air Policy, Climate Works Foundation/ Project Catalyst and The UK Department for International Development (DFID) participated in the event, sharing their experience and views on the best ways to extract and share lessons from current activities and focus future efforts to a broader country audience. The workshop brought together about 120 World Bank staff.
The workshop was opened by Jamal Saghir, Sector Director, Energy, Transport and Water Department, the World Bank who said, “Low carbon growth country studies will help countries harness climate finance opportunities and obtain implementation support” but “We must not forget the nearly 1.6 billion people, without access to modern energy.” Saghir confirmed fresh commitments to increase investments in new renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE) by 30 percent per year over fiscal years 2008-12 adding to the $7.0 billion in new RE/ EE financing provided since 2005. He said the target for World Bank funded low-carbon projects is projected to reach 50% of all energy projects by 2012.
Looking ahead, ESMAP will continue to develop knowledge products drawing on the "tools", “results” and "lessons" generated from these pilot studies to transfer know-how to, and build capacity in, low- and middle-income countries. The six low carbon growth country studies will be published over the coming months.
Supporting Low Carbon Development: The case of six countries
Worldbank.org