IEA Offers Sustainable Recovery Plan to Governments to Boost Economic Growth

IEA has outlined energy-focused policies and investments in a new Sustainable Recovery Plan to move the world towards a cleaner and more resilient future.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has, based on an analysis conducted in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), outlined energy-focused policies and investments in a new Sustainable Recovery Plan to move the world towards a cleaner and more resilient future. The recovery plan focuses on a series of actions that can be taken over the next three years to revitalise economies and boost employment while making energy systems cleaner and more resilient.

Set out in a Special Report on Sustainable Recovery from the IEA’s flagship World Energy Outlook series, the plan offers an energy sector roadmap for governments to spur economic growth, create millions of jobs and put global emissions into structural decline. By integrating energy policies into government responses to the economic shock caused by the Covid-19 crisis, the plan would also accelerate the deployment of modern, reliable and clean energy technologies and infrastructure.

In an analysis carried out in cooperation with the IMF, the report shows that the set of policy actions and targeted investments over the 2021-2023 period that are outlined in the Sustainable Recovery Plan can achieve a range of significant outcomes, notably:

• boost global economic growth by an average of 1.1 percentage points a year
• save or create roughly 9 million jobs a year
• reduce annual global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by a total of 4.5 billion tonnes by the end of the plan

In addition, the plan would deliver other improvements to human health and well-being, including driving a 5 percent reduction in air pollution emissions, bringing access to clean cooking solutions to around 420 million people in low-income countries, and enabling nearly 270 million people to gain access to electricity.

Achieving these results would require a global investment of about USD 1 trillion annually over the next three years, according to the report. This sum represents about 0.7 percent of today’s global GDP and includes both public spending and private finance that would be mobilised by government policies.

“Governments have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reboot their economies and bring a wave of new employment opportunities while accelerating the shift to a more resilient and cleaner energy future,” said Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director. “Policy makers are having to make hugely consequential decisions in a very short space of time as they draw up stimulus packages. Our Sustainable Recovery Plan provides them with rigorous analysis and clear advice on how to tackle today’s major economic, energy and climate challenges at the same time. The plan is not intended to tell governments what they must do. It seeks to show them what they can do.”

Based on detailed assessments of more than 30 specific energy policy measures, the Sustainable Recovery Plan considers cost-effective approaches, the circumstances of individual countries, existing pipelines of energy projects, and current market conditions. It spans six key sectors – electricity, transport, industry, buildings, fuels and emerging low-carbon technologies.

The plan is designed to avoid the kind of sharp rebound in carbon emissions that accompanied the economic recovery from the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and instead put them into structural decline. The IEA report highlights key aspects of today’s situation that make it a unique opportunity for government action. Compared with the 2008-2009 crisis, the costs of leading clean energy technologies such as wind and solar PV are far lower, and some emerging technologies like batteries and hydrogen are ready to scale up. Global carbon emissions flat-lined in 2019 and are set for a record decline this year. While this drop, which results from economic trauma, is nothing to celebrate, it provides a base from which to put emissions into structural decline.

“This report lays out the data and analysis showing that a cleaner, fairer and more secure energy future is within our reach. The Sustainable Recovery Plan would make 2019 the definitive peak in global emissions, putting them on a path towards achieving long-term climate goals,” Dr. Birol said. “The IEA is mobilising its analytical resources and global convening power to bring together a grand coalition that encompasses government ministers, top energy industry CEOs, major investors and other key players who are ready to pursue a sustainable recovery that will help steer the world onto a more resilient trajectory.”