The growth of renewable energy is one of the most significant developments in the global electricity market over the last two decades. Costs have reached a point where renewable energy is competitive in almost all countries. While wind energy generators or solar modules still tend to be procured from global manufacturers, a wide range of components such as blades, electrical components, or civil work can increasingly be procured and built locally.

Today, most low-income and lower-middle-income countries are net importers of wind and solar components. They tend, however, to impose lower tariffs on components sourced globally such as wind turbines or solar modules than components that are easier to source domestically. Depending on the context, the imposition of tariffs may stimulate the deployment of additional productive capacity, particularly for products that are suited to local production. A good example is the production of heavy or bulky components such as wind towers, for which minimizing transport distances provides a cost advantage. In these cases, however, there is a need to balance the likelihood of achieving competitive production with increased project cost and the economic value of local production.

These considerations have, in turn, implications for future initiatives at the regional or plurilateral level to liberalize environmental goods and services and the participation of developing countries.

All of our Ceres2030 research is together in one volume, published jointly with Nature Portfolio journals. This compilation of Ceres2030 full body of research encompasses the Summary Report as well as the economic modeling that shows how much it would cost to end hunger, increase incomes and protect the climate by 2030, while assessing the best way to spend money across dozens of agricultural interventions in different countries.

This paper is part of the Interntional Institute for Sustainable Development's (IISD's) efforts to support the adoption of wealth measurement in countries around the world. This paper provides a brief overview of recent efforts by international agencies and academic institutions to develop and apply comprehensive wealth measurement tools. Our review is limited to examples of comprehensive wealth measurement as applied to several countries, so it does not include work on specific capital estimates, applications to a small number of countries, or theoretical research/framework development.

Tracking the shift of government resources to fund clean energy instead of fossil fuels is important to ensure public money supports India’s goals for energy access, affordability, energy security, and sustainability. Mapping India's Energy Subsidies 2021 covers India’s subsidies to fossil fuels, electricity transmission and distribution, renewable energy, and electric vehicles between fiscal year (FY) 2014 and FY 2020.

We found that fossil fuels continue to receive far more subsidies than clean energy in India. This disparity became even more pronounced from FY 2019 to FY 2020, going from 7 times to 7.3 times the size of subsidies to renewables.

Key figures:

• Subsidies to electricity transmission and distribution make up the largest bucket at around INR 1.3 lakh crore (USD 18.2 billion) in FY 2020. While this amount stagnated between FY 2019 and FY 2020, it is likely to grow again as the economy recovers.
• Oil and gas subsidies increased by 16% from FY 2019 to FY 2020, reaching INR 55,347 crore (USD 7.8 billion).
• Subsidies to renewable energy fell nearly 45% from their peak in FY 2017, stagnating at around INR 8,000 crore in FY 2020.
• Electric vehicle subsidies have more than doubled since FY 2019, reaching INR 1,141 crore (USD 161 million) in FY 2020.
• In FY 2020, seven major Indian energy public sector undertakings (equivalent to state-owned enterprises) spent INR 22,261 crore (USD 3.1 billion) on fossil fuel projects—11 times as much as they invested in renewable energy projects.
• Total capital expenditure of energy public sector undertakings in India stood at INR 1.5 lakh crore (USD 22.4 billion) in FY 2020 and is expected to increase in the near term.

We also looked at how the government could support its “Make in India” initiative, asking what kind of policy support the domestic solar manufacturing industry needs. We found that:

• Domestic manufacturers require demand-side certainty to trigger expansion and integration.
• States must develop healthy manufacturing ecosystems.
• To improve competitiveness, the government needs to target fiscal incentives together with research and development.

The report is accompanied by an interactive online database to help browse the subsidy data in detail and includes detailed spreadsheets and annexes for policy-makers and researchers. The analysis is the latest update in the India's Energy Transition series from the International Institute for Sustainable Development's (IISD) Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). For previous iterations of this study, see:

• Mapping India's Energy Subsidies 2020: Fossil fuels, renewables and electric vehicles
• India's Energy Transition: Subsidies for Fossil Fuels and Renewable Energy, 2018 Update
• India's Energy Transition: Mapping subsidies to fossil fuels and clean energy in India

As climate ambition ramps up in Canada and around the world, one of the key challenges governments face is how to impose meaningful carbon prices on domestic industries when not all trading partners are similarly ambitious. In countries that are pursuing ambitious climate policies, there has been increasing interest in an instrument that could help enable that ambition: border carbon adjustment (BCA). BCA aims to ensure that imports face the same carbon price faced by domestic producers.

But BCA is devilishly complex, politically explosive, potentially illegal under trade rules, and would have to be adapted to Canada’s unique climate pricing regime. So Canadian policy-makers need to start thinking now about what such a regime might look like here.

This report surveys eight design elements and makes specific recommendations for the shape of a Canadian BCA. The report also explores how Canada should react to emerging BCA schemes in major trading partners such as the EU and United States, and how its own scheme might accommodate climate policies in those countries.

The report Advancing the Climate Resilience of Canadian Infrastructure: A review of literature to inform the way forward is intended to inform and create awareness of an integrated, whole-of-society approach to making infrastructure across Canada resilient to a changing climate. Written for infrastructure owners, designers, builders, operators, investors, policy-makers, and stakeholders, it provides a snapshot of the range of action taking place in Canada and internationally to increase the climate resilience of infrastructure.

The report compiles available information on the impacts and risks of climate change for Canada’s infrastructure from a regional perspective and for six types of built infrastructure. Illustrative examples of current technical solutions to addressing these risks are presented. In addition, it summarizes the range of natural infrastructure solutions that are available to enhance the resilience of communities to climate change. To better understand actions being taken to improve the climate resilience of Canadian infrastructure, the report synthesizes a range of current policies, guidelines, and financing being implemented federally and internationally to inform and incentivize climate-resilient infrastructure.

How do you negotiate online? In early 2020, officials and governments found themselves facing this question as the coronavirus pandemic led to in-person negotiations being paused indefinitely. For the first time, large global talks hosted by multilateral organizations moved online. Virtual negotiations were a necessity given the circumstances. The move online was framed as a short-term substitute to keep these processes moving during the pandemic. Yet, virtual negotiations may endure long past the pandemic, given the climate emergency and longer-term trends toward more virtual meetings and heavier reliance on digital technologies.

Whether they are temporary or permanent, it is important to examine the opportunities, challenges, and consequences of virtual negotiations—such as what these mean for informal interactions, coalition building, participation and inclusiveness, costs, and climate impact.

This report explores these issues, based on an analysis of a survey of officials participating in two negotiations in investment that made the move to virtual sessions: the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III on investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) reform and the Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) on investment facilitation, held among a group of members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The authors conclude their analysis with thoughts for the future, reviewing how survey respondents hope to see negotiations evolve, along with the authors' own suggestions for how virtual negotiations could be improved.

In this SAVi assessment, an asset performance of the Kakono HPP is evaluated by (1) integrating environmental and socio-economic costs and co-benefits (externalities) into the assessment, (2) evaluating the performance impacts of different climate scenarios, and (3) comparing it to the performance of two hypothetical energy generation alternatives.

We examined support by provincial and federal governments in Canada to three major pipeline projects, none of which has been completed to date. We found at least eight different types of financial support measures provided for Trans Mountain, two for Keystone XL, and two for Coastal GasLink. Cumulatively, Canadian governments have provided over CAD 23 billion in government support since 2018. Of this, over CAD 11 billion is in loans, and at least CAD 10 billion is loan guarantees or liabilities. Over CAD 10 billion in government support to pipelines was provided after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Government support for pipelines has been made at least partly on the assumption that the projects will provide economic benefits to Canadians, even as the oil and gas sector faces challenges due to shifting investments and as the International Energy Agency has illustrated that new government investments in fossil fuel production are incompatible with a net-zero economy. Yet project finance is increasingly being provided by the government, even at a time of increased international calls for phasing out public finance for fossil fuels. Government support to pipelines places public money at financial risk for current and future generations. Support for oil and gas export infrastructure, such as pipelines, undermines Canada’s commitments under the G7 and G20 to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

Using the Global Subsidies Initiative – Integrated Fiscal Model (GSI-IF model), this report models the impact of fossil fuel subsidy reform (FFSR) on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions for the following 32 countries: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, the United States, Venezuela, Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Zambia. In total, these 32 countries accounted for 77% of global carbon dioxide emissions, 72% of global GDP, and 72% of the global population in 2019.

The GSI-IF model uses semi-continuous simulations to forecast energy demand and corresponding GHG emissions. It considers the gradual removal of all fossil fuel subsidies to consumers until 2030, a gradual introduction of a 10% fossil energy tax until 2030, and the investment of 30% of both subsidy savings and tax revenues to energy efficiency and renewable energy from 2021, respectively 2026, onwards.

The research finds a simple country average in GHG emission reductions of about 6% by 2030 compared to business as usual, while the data shows that FFSR can reduce as much as 35% of emissions in the countries modelled. Adding emission reductions from the fossil energy tax as well as the investments of parts of the subsidy savings and tax revenues into sustainable energy would almost double the average GHG emission reductions to 11.8% by 2030. Cumulative fiscal savings from FFSR alone by 2030 total close to USD 3 trillion across the countries analyzed, with total cumulative GHG emissions abated from FFSR of 5.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030—equivalent to the annual emissions of about 1,000 coal-fired power plants or 3.8 billion cars. For every tonne of CO2e removed through FFSR alone, governments save about USD 546.47 on average. When considering the resources reallocated via the subsidy swap, governments can increase their emission reductions and still save USD 164 for every tonne of CO2e removed.