Submitted by Sergey Kolesnikov on Tue, 07/02/2023 - 15:24
On February 2, 2023, C-EENRG Fellow Dr Clara Galeazzi and C-EENRG Director Prof. Laura Diaz Anadon were speakers in the webinar 'Did Renewable Energy Policies Help Decarbonization in Developing Countries', a part of the InfraXchange Seminar Series organised by the World Bank.
Since the end of the last century, countries around the world have enacted a plethora of power sector and renewable energy policies at different points in time, in different combinations, to advance one or several environmental, economic, security, or equity policy goals. These policies encompass instruments ranging from feed-in-tariffs for renewable energy generation to renewable energy targets and from biofuel blend mandates to carbon pricing mechanisms. More recently, these policies were also motivated by the growing challenge of mitigating climate change on a global scale. Yet, little is known about how successful these policies were in changing energy use in developing countries.
This webinar presented findings from a new study that offers the first comprehensive and systematic assessment of how energy policies, largely related to the deployment of renewable energy, shaped the decarbonisation of the energy mix 3 to 7 years after their implementation across over a hundred developing countries and four decades.
The event was introduced by Vivien Foster, the Chief Economist of the World Bank Infrastructure Vice Presidency. Co-author on the study, World Bank Senior Economist Jevgenijs Steinbuks, introduced the paper research questions. Professor Laura Diaz Anadon then discussed the motivation, context, and literature related to the study, and Clara Galeazzi discussed the paper's methodology and main findings. Elisa Portale, Senior Energy Specialist, then gave a brief presentation on the World Bank RISE (Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Development) indicators, which are housed within the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) and are used extensively in the paper.
The event concluded with a Q&A session. The study has been published as a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper available as an open access publication via the following reference:
Galeazzi,C., Steinbuks,J., & Anadón, L. D. (2023). Assessing the Impact of Renewable Energy Policies on Decarbonization in Developing Countries. Policy Research Working Paper, WPS10329. Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099802502282336539/IDU0ed74462202af9043e70ab2309774e83a9d93
