Nevada's new measure to strengthen its Clean Electricity Standard is the latest in a series of legislative moves to drive the transition to low-carbon energy in the United States. That makes it a good time to review the newest research and consider whether such standards are good policy.
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Advances in science and technology mean that we can better measure emissions. A "refinement" to the existing guidelines lays out how countries can better report to the IPCC, giving us a better picture than ever of what we need to do to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
The Paris Agreement told us "what to do": achieve a carbon-neutral and resilient world by mid-century. The guidelines for implementing the Agreement that were adopted at the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24), in Katowice, Poland, detailed "how" we might get there. Ideally, countries should just be able to roll up their sleeves, intensify their efforts, and turn the Paris Agreement into climate action on the ground. Yet this is easier said than done, and equipping countries with the proper tools and resources will be key to making that happen.
One key set of requirements in the...
This blog was originally posted on the World Bank's Sustainable Cities blog.
Heavy rain and severe flooding brought the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka, to its knees. In China’s Yangtze River Basin, rivers spilled their banks, inundating towns and villages. In Mobile Bay, Alabama, strong ocean waves carried away valuable coastline.
In each of these locations, disasters caused by natural hazards seemed beyond human control. But instead of focusing only on...
Under the Paris Agreement, countries' long-term climate strategies are meant to plan into the middle of the century. But we have limited ability to foresee future technology, business, lifestyle and political developments. How can policymakers deal with this uncertainty?
We don't know the future. We do know there would be huge benefits to shifting towards a low-carbon economy. Here are answers to seven of the most-asked questions about the economics of the NCE report.
Introduced in a basic form in the 1960s, bike-sharing services are now seemingly ubiquitous in many major cities. The propagation of “dockless” systems, shared bicycles that can be parked nearly anywhere, has led to unprecedented growth, increasing the number of publicly accessible bikes from 1.2 million worldwide in 2015 to more than 16 million in China alone...
The COP 24 climate negotiations in Katowice, Poland delivered mixed results. Finance was an important part of the package agreed upon. Some countries made new financial commitments, but overall pledges fell short of the scale needed to enable truly ambitious action in line with what the latest science is calling for. On a more positive note, negotiators agreed on post-2020 financing rules that improve transparency on both past and future funding, and establish important processes to deliver on the...
Development banks can align their investments in electricity grids with the Paris Agreement by incorporating a shadow carbon price and making sure their investments support long-term plans for decarbonizing the electricity sector.
Countries, stakeholders and expert institutions have been making submissions to the UNFCCC’s Talanoa Dialogue in preparation for December’s COP24 climate conference. Parties’ collective efforts in progress towards meeting the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement will be reviewed at the Conference, to inform further target-setting. To feed into the Dialogue, the Grantham Research Institute and the World Resources Institute have been taking stock of the quantified targets set by different Parties to the...