In February-March-April Green-Win project hosted its final conference in Barcelona, organised bioenergy workshop in Bali and published seven Policy Briefs. This and more you will find in the newsletter #6. Enjoy your reading.
Stay up-to date with our progresses: come and visit our website here and our twitter account!
Final GREEN-WIN Conference. Summary, photos, videos and more
15 May 2018 | Gonzalo Gamboa, Dr. J. David Tàbara
On 13-14 March 2018, partners of the Green-win project met stakeholders from around the world at Casa Convalescència of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) for the final conference of the project on Actions for climate: Narratives, win-win solutions and climate finance. Read more
Concluding the Bioenergy Workshop series in Bali
26 April 2018 | by Eléna Delanne
The 3rd International Bioenergy and Electrification Workshop on Sustainability and Resilienceof Bioenergy for Climate Change is the last of a series of annual bio-energy workshops, that took place from 2016 to 2018. These workshops are aimed to accelerate bioenergy development and promote climate change mitigation and adaptation pathways in Indonesia. Read more
Pilot Projects Offer Innovative Solutions for Service Delivery
20 February 2018 | Lauren Hermanus
Adequate access to basic services including energy, water and sanitation is critical to building resilience in marginalised communities faced with challenges related to climate change, conflict and poverty. However, public infrastructure - including water supply systems, sewers, electrical grids and other large-scale physical structures and networks that make cities, towns and neighbourhoods function - often excludes these communities, particularly those in rural areas or informal settlements in developing countries. This lack of basic services leaves marginalised communities disproportionately exposed to health and environmental risks, with limited opportunities for socio-economic development. Read more
On 7 February 2018, GREEN-WIN participated in the Decarbonisation Project Networking Workshop, which was organised by EC DG Research and Innovation (RTD) and the Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME). The goal of the workshop was to bring together EU-funded climate mitigation projects with the objective to stimulate peer-to-peer and science-to-policy discussions on how to get the most out of EU-funded projects for the benefit of the society and policy-making. Read more
02 February 2018 | Dr. Michael Grubb, Dr. Nadia Ameli
Two years since the negotiation of the Paris Agreement, the global community faces significant challenges in mobilizing the investment required to meet the goals established. There is no shortage of capital available globally – the financial sector encompasses more than EUR 100 trillion of assets globally – but several factors inhibit the expansion of private finance in low-carbon investment. Yet there are potential macro-economic gains from doing so.
In the GREEN-WIN project we have investigated the conditions which might attract such levels of finance, and whether and how this could lead to net economic gains on timescales to make this politically attractive. Read more
Publication
Positive Tipping Points in a Rapidly Warming World
March 2018 | Publisher(s): Autonomous University of Barcelona | Author(s): J David Tabara, Niki Frantzeskaki, Katharina Holscher
Tipping points fundamentally and irreversibly change the structure and intrinsic functioning of a given system of reference. Most research in sustainability science and integrated assessment has focused on examining the catastrophic, abrupt nature of tipping points in biophysical systems or the implications of the realization of such crises or of crossing such negative thresholds for policy and action.
Technology Diffusion and Climate Policy: A network approach and its application to wind energy
March 2018 | Publisher(s): Paris School of Economics | Author(s): Solmaria Halleck Vega, Antoine Mandel
The role of technology transfer in the mitigation of climate change has been strongly emphasized in the recent policy debate. This paper, Technology Diffusion and Climate Policy: A network approach and its application to wind energy, offers a network-based perspective on the issue. First, the authors propose a methodology to infer from technology adoption data the network of diffusion and apply it to a detailed dataset on wind energy technologies installed globally since the 1980s. The authors then perform a statistical analysis of the network. It highlights a relatively inefficient organization, characterized in particular by the weakness of South-South links, which leads to relatively long lags in the diffusion process. Against this background, the authors characterize optimal transfer/seeding strategies for an agent that aims to introduce a new technology in a developing country in view of further diffusion. Our results suggest in particular that CDM projects have been too concentrated in large emerging economies and that developed countries should put a stronger weight on the positive externalities in terms of technology transfer of cooperating with less prominent developing countries.
The Changing Value of the ‘Green’ Label on the US Municipal Bond Market
January 2018 | Publisher(s): Nature Climate Change | Author(s): Antoine Mandel, Andreas Karpf
Green bonds are seen as a key instrument to unlock climate finance. While their volume has grown steadily in recent years, the impact of the ‘green’ label on the bond market is poorly understood. The paper The Changing Value of the ‘Green’ Label on the US Municipal Bond Marketinvestigates the differences between the yield term structures of green and conventional bonds in the US municipal bond market. We show that, although returns on conventional bonds are on average higher than for green bonds, the differences can largely be explained by the fundamental properties of the bonds. Historically, green bonds have been penalized on the municipal market, being traded at lower prices and higher yields than expected by their credit profiles. In recent years, however, the credit quality of municipal green bonds has increased and the premium turned positive. Green bonds are thus becoming an increasingly attractive investment, with scope to bridge the climate finance gap for mitigation and adaptation.
Mobilising Private Finance for Coastal Adaptation: a Literature Review
March 2018 | Publisher(s): Global Climate Forum | Author(s): Alexander Bisaro, Jochen Hinkel
The role of private finance in meeting adaptation infrastructure investment needs has been widely emphasised in climate policy debates. This new paper Mobilising private finance for coastal adaptation: a literature review in WIREs Climate Change reviews the scientific literature on the issue. The paper thus provides a perspective from the current literature on the questions of what promotes private investment in coastal adaptation and how can public actors’ interest in adaptation be aligned with private investor interests. In particular, the paper reviews the literatures on coastal adaptation finance and on financial arrangements involving both public actors and private investors, finding that private provisioning, public–private Partnerships (PPP), and public debt arrangements are promising. The authors then survey empirical examples, finding that private provisioning attracts investment when returns are high, for example, in urban real estate, and that PPPs attract dredging and construction companies’ investment, particularly for adaptation measures with a large share of operational costs, for example, beach nourishment. The authors somewhat surprisingly find little evidence of institutional investment through public debt instruments. They suggest a number of policy instruments, for example, concessional loans, tax incentives, and standards, to address this gap and enhance private coastal adaptation investment. The paper’s results are also relevant for other sectors that involve long-term infrastructure adaptation measures.
