Jennifer Layke

Jennifer Layke

Diretora Global do Programa de Energia do World Resources Institute, Washington Global Director of the Energy Programme at the World Resources Institute, Washington

am humbled at this particular moment, to be at a crossroads that we hoped never to face, and yet, with climate change coming at us more dramatically and more quickly than many of us had feared, it is a moment for us to sit back and rethink our priorities, our models of growth and our economic development agenda. The science of climate change is ever more clear when we think about where we were two decades ago, a decade ago, and today. Our window of opportunity is narrowing very quickly. 2020 is a pivotal moment, and we never thought we would be here with an unprecedented collapse of our economies, an unprecedented global challenge to our health and our security, and looking now at how we build back, how we rethink our approach.

I’m going to talk very briefly about three interlinked priorities that we need to focus on to address climate change and the risks that we face due to climate transformation. Those are: 1) around technology; 2) around policies, markets and institutions; 3) and around the re-examination of equity and the services that we provide for people and most vulnerable populations around the world.

Technology is our good news story, as its costs and availability are transforming much more rapidly than we had predicted. Two decades ago, when I started my career working

Ion renewable energy in 2000, we were looking at single units of photovoltaic (PV) cells on corporate facilities and homes, and the costs were prohibitive. Today, PV technology has dramatically increased in its capacity to generate electricity, and the cost has made it so much more available for most of the world’s population. In fact, many reports now show that about two-thirds of the globe could use renewable energy as cost-effectively, or more cost-competitively, than fossil technologies. However, electricity is not the only part of the energy sector that needs to be transformed. Transportation is equally important. Both electricity and the transportation fuels are systems that have entrenched interests, they have clear manufacturing or use of fuels that are already locked in today, and the question is: how do we change our technology use to enable us to make those shifts more quickly? Transportation has been a new good news story. We see electric vehicle (EV) technologies coming to scale much more rapidly than the analysts had predicted. In the past three years, EV sales have outstripped all expectations in the developed world. Personal passenger EV cars are coming on board very quickly, and range anxiety — how far do you need to go before you can charge again — is also becoming less of an issue for most consumers. In the pandemic, we also have to face the questions associated with where and how we think about public transpor-

tation because having a clean vehicle is still going to put you in traffic. It may improve air quality, but it still reduces your overall productivity because of time lost due to travel and urbanisation — which we know is a trend and we must be able to move around our cities. In an era with Covid-19, health and safety concerns will also be part of that transportation system. That leads us to the questions associated with institutions, policies and markets.

I also want to note that technology change is not linear: it reads as an S-shaped curve. Firstly, there’s a pre-development phase, a comfort zone where one is looking at status quo as a norm; secondly, there is a take-off phase, an awareness, experimentation or an innovation period; followed by an acceleration phase in technology with the widespread adoption of a new system or a new technology; finally, there is either a stabilisation at that new level or a relapse. I would posit that we have not yet reached the phase where we have moved from all three stages to a new stabilisation phase, even in electricity,

because we have to manage the system change at that final phase. How do you ensure the new pathway is embraced by all? How do you ensure that the old regime has made a just and equitable transition to a new regime, preventing backsliding or a backlash? Systems Change Theory is an essential part of the political economy of the energy transition. In the policies and market space, we have to be aware of that Systems Change.

The Policy and market part is where we need to recognise that human systems don’t evolve as quickly as our technology systems. Our policymakers have to worry about what they perceive to be the increased risk because of the new system that we are asking them to adopt, whether that is around the variability of electricity, recognition of battery range and the replacements for the batteries. All of these are important parts of what the policy community needs to navigate and manage.

What we know today about the Covid-19 response, is that our policymakers have not fully embraced these new systems. If you look at the first round of Covid-19 investments made globally in our economy, about 168 billion dollars went towards fossil fuel, electricity, and power — reinforcing that old system — and not even half of that investment went to clean electricity and systems. Right now, we are in the midst of these two systems competing. We need to look for an opportunity to phase out of the subsidies and incentives that have maintained that old status quo and move into the new energy economies.

While looking at where and how the economy could be shifting, we looked at some of the job numbers. In the United States, for example, the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) examined the energy jobs and found that about 2.38 million jobs are in energy efficiency (that could be in construction or equipment) and that is dramatic, that is as many jobs as there are in the motor vehicle industries in the USA. This is not a small niche activ-

We (…) need to make sure we are not sending our last most inefficient technologies into the developing world but instead finding a mechanism to build a technology future in the right ways for countries to bring more people into a clean energy economy.

ity, as it is becoming more mainstream and integrated into our economy. However, it is under-recognised as a political constituency, and so the politics of clean energy are not yet matured.

I look at the building sector, and it has not yet reached its area of improvement that needs to be part of what the International Energy Agency (IEA) says is a global third of improvement for the change needed in the energy sector. We’re now at about 1%, to maybe 1.5%, improvement in energy efficiency and we need to be at 3% annually. That is a doubling of the rate of investment that we need in energy efficiency. It’s not a small number.

We know our construction sector could be deployed more successfully, especially in the developing world, where that lock-in effect has not yet occurred, and where energy efficiency could help us avoid the need for new fossil fuel or other types of power sector investments on the supply side.

Managing the demand curve is a huge and important strategy which our policymakers have not yet begun to invest in adequately. We need to improve efficiency, and we need to make investments improved by a factor of five. That is a tremendous amount of money that we have to be building into our economy. We need to do that equitably and look at the legacy of the old economies around extraction and production. If we are serious about changing that demand curve, our economic models need to shift, and we need to recognise those who have been left out.

In the solar home space, we have the merge of technology, and we have the opportunity to improve our equitable access to energy technologies. We have to look at the vulnerabilities that are particularly acute, and the heat vulnerability, which will increase with climate change, is one of those areas, just like Covid-19, that will hit our most vulnerable populations the hardest. Heat vulnerability can be mitigated via roofing, cool surfaces or green infrastructure. We also need to make sure we are not sending our last most inefficient technologies into the developing world but instead finding a mechanism to build a technology future in the right ways for countries to bring more people into a clean energy economy.