Search Climate Insights Directory

The report argues that electrifying household energy use—specifically through electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, and electric appliances—is the most cost-effective path for Canada to reach net zero emissions. While electricity prices have remained more stable than volatile fossil fuel prices, the transition requires government intervention to overcome upfront costs and infrastructure gaps. Modelling suggests that by 2050, electricity could meet 73% to 91% of residential heating loads and over 96% of total vehicle kilometers travelled. To support this, the report recommends policies to increase consumer uptake and a massive build-out of clean electricity generation, which may need to double or triple by 2050.

The report identifies a significant gap in climate finance reaching South African local governments, noting that less than 10% of international public climate finance flows directly to them. Municipalities face technical capacity limitations, low creditworthiness, and rigid donor requirements, which prevent them from leveraging private debt or concessional loans. While frameworks like the Climate Change Act (2024) and the National Green Finance Taxonomy (2022) provide a basis for engagement, the report argues that a lack of bankable projects and misalignment between national policies and local capabilities stall progress. It recommends structured capacity-building, improved tracking of climate finance flows, and the development of cost-reflective tariff structures to improve municipal creditworthiness and attract private investment.

The report highlights a critical shortage of grid connection capacity in Türkiye, where 65% of unlicensed project applications (7.5 GW) were rejected between February 2024 and April 2025 due to regional constraints. Globally, 1.65 TW of wind, solar, and hydroelectric capacity is awaiting connection approval as of July 2024. The document identifies high investment costs, inflation, exchange rate fluctuations, and cautious technical planning assumptions as primary drivers of these bottlenecks. It also notes procedural delays in Europe, where wind farm connection permits can take up to 9 years, and suggests that improving data transparency and tightening application criteria—as seen in France, Greece, and Romania—could accelerate the energy transition.

The document identifies seven key intervention areas in the clean-energy sector: electricity generation, transmission and distribution, on-grid access, off-grid access, clean cooking, knowledge sharing, and policy reform. While utility-scale renewable generation has grown significantly, transmission bottlenecks and affordability constraints for end-users remain critical hurdles. The brief argues that while energy access is a necessary enabler for economic growth, it does not guarantee it, necessitating user-focused designs and long-term policy reforms to ensure sustainable impacts.

The report argues that utility-enabled distributed energy resources (DERs) can address Nigeria's power sector bottlenecks, such as high ATC&C losses and supply deficits. It identifies a market opportunity exceeding 20 GW over the next decade, which could reduce carbon pollution by 33 million tons per year and lower customer energy costs by up to 25%.

The 2024 Indian States’ Electricity Transition (SET) report identifies Gujarat and Karnataka as consistent top performers in decarbonising their power sectors and preparing their market ecosystems. While some states like Delhi and Odisha show high readiness or strong market enablers, they struggle with actual decarbonisation. Conversely, states such as Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh exhibit structural challenges and slow progress across all dimensions. The report recommends strengthening state-level regulatory frameworks and developing specific subnational transition plans to address these uneven disparities.

Canada needs to add over 10 gigawatts of new zero-emission electricity annually until 2050 to reach net zero. The author argues that current inclusive permitting processes are too slow and complex. They propose a two-track system: one for major or unproven projects and a second, expedited track for proven technologies like wind, solar, and lithium-ion batteries. This fast-track process would rely on binding, objective 'yes/no' criteria focusing on local government support, avoidance of key ecological features, and the mitigation of uncompensated off-site impacts. The paper concludes that all five orders of government (federal, provincial, territorial, municipal, and Indigenous) have the legal authority to implement these reforms, and recommends that municipal and Indigenous governments lead the project decisions for fast-track approvals.

The Institute for Economic Justice describes the 2023 National Budget as an 'anti-poor budget' that redistributes wealth from the poorest 80% to the richest 20%. The analysis highlights a R162 billion real decrease in non-interest expenditure over the medium term, with significant cuts to health, basic education, and social protection. It specifically criticizes the failure to protect the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant from inflation and its removal from the budget for 2024/25 and 2025/26. The document also critiques the conditional debt relief for Eskom, arguing that restrictions on new capacity investment favor private sector profit over energy affordability, and condemns subsidies for rooftop solar as benefiting only the wealthy.

The author contends that energy poverty in South Africa persists because the government defines 'access' solely as a physical grid connection, ignoring the critical barriers of affordability and reliability. While electricity is essential for small-scale economic activity, education, and health, the current cost-recovery model and an inadequate Free Basic Electricity policy trap low-income households in poverty. The document calls for a national policy shift to establish clear affordability benchmarks to prevent electricity infrastructure from becoming stranded assets and to unlock broader development goals.

The document outlines the need for financial, operational, and policy reforms within India's power distribution companies (discoms) to overcome losses and enable the transition to a clean energy future.

The Electrical Grids and Storage Criteria provide a framework for certifying bonds that finance the construction, upgrade, and operation of electricity transmission, distribution, and storage infrastructure. To be certified, assets must meet specific mitigation benchmarks—such as supporting renewable energy integration or operating within a decarbonising system—and satisfy a comprehensive adaptation and resilience checklist. The criteria cover a wide range of assets, from high-voltage transmission lines to battery storage facilities, and include detailed methodological notes for determining system eligibility based on grid emission factors or added generation capacity.

The document identifies a critical gap in South Africa's 'just transition' framework, which the author describes as 'reactive' because it primarily addresses future losses in the coal sector. The paper proposes a 'proactive' approach termed 'just distribution,' focusing on the electricity distribution landscape. It argues that the current system—characterized by complex governance shared between Eskom and local municipalities—undermines poverty reduction goals. The author introduces a preliminary 'energy-society model' to map how drivers like local government fiscal models and governance gaps lead to adverse socioeconomic outcomes, such as energy poverty and the forced use of polluting substitutes, which are often more significant than the expected impacts of the low-carbon transition itself.

The policy brief examines a pilot project in Mokoloki, Nigeria, where a privately owned solar minigrid shares existing distribution infrastructure with a utility to provide reliable power to 'undergrid' customers. It proposes that India, which faces similar challenges with high technical and commercial losses (up to 40%) and unreliable rural supply, could adopt this model to enhance last-mile service and financial viability for distribution companies.

The report evaluates a pilot energy efficiency auction proposed by ANEEL for Boa Vista, Roraima. It identifies five primary risks: the 'winner's curse' due to the closed-envelope bidding format, measurement and verification (M&V) failures, underutilization of EE potential due to treatment group restrictions, lack of incentive for energy distributors to promote rational energy use, and limited external validity for national replication. The authors suggest adopting open second-price auctions and synthetic control methods for M&V to mitigate these risks.

The document examines Indonesia's energy landscape between 2015 and 2020, highlighting the financial strain on state-owned enterprises PT Pertamina and PT PLN due to fuel subsidies and the COVID-19 pandemic. It details the impact of the pandemic on coal exports and electricity demand, while discussing regulatory shifts in renewable energy and the government's efforts to reform LPG subsidies. The briefing also notes contradictions between the goal of retiring fossil fuel plants and new regulations that incentivize the coal industry.

The document details recent Indian government interventions in the energy sector, including a reduction in fuel excise duties to counter high oil prices and the launch of significant funding for solar power and electric vehicles. It also addresses the financial distress of electricity distribution companies (DISCOMs) and the legal rulings regarding stressed coal-fired power plants.

The report introduces 'undergrid minigrids' as a solution for communities in sub-Saharan Africa that are within distribution company territories but remain underserved due to unreliable or nonexistent power. It outlines a five-step implementation pathway—awareness, business model development, pilot projects, market scaling, and benefit evaluation—to improve economics and reliability for customers, distribution companies, and developers, with a primary focus on Nigeria.

Nigeria faces a severe energy crisis with 60-70% of its population lacking regular electricity access and an average output of 5,000 MW against an installed capacity of 12,522 MW. The report identifies critical bottlenecks including a non-cost-reflective tariff regime, a N1 trillion revenue shortfall as of December 2016, and significant gas flaring despite the country ranking 9th globally in natural gas reserves. While hydropower provided approximately 32% of supply in 2015, other renewables like solar and wind remain underdeveloped. The author recommends the total deregulation of the gas sector, universal metering to close a gap of 4.09 million customers, and the implementation of the renewable energy masterplan to achieve a 10% renewable energy contribution by 2025.

The report finds that while Rajasthan has successfully increased its generation capacity and improved reliability, its distribution companies (discoms) face a severe financial crisis. Discoms are unable to recover operating costs through tariffs, leading to mounting debt and a heavy reliance on state government fiscal transfers. Although renewable energy capacity has grown rapidly, investment gaps in transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure hinder the integration of these sources and the achievement of comprehensive rural electrification.

The report identifies that current investor-owned utility and independent power producer models are ill-suited for the low-carbon transition, potentially raising renewable energy costs by up to 20%. It proposes a systemic evolution across five segments: generation (matching financing to risk profiles), transmission (improving renewable integration), market operation (valuing flexibility), distribution (adapting to distributed generation), and customer management (integrating demand response and electric vehicles). The document highlights the emergence of new financing models like YieldCos as a way to provide secure cash flows and lower costs.