The opening day was a mix of data-driven reality about the challenge ahead and optimism that bigger, bolder gains are more imminent than ever. And, no doubt, attendees at the Forum – a mix of financiers, governments, business CEOs, civil society and community leaders – were the secret ingredient for making the transformative gains happen.

 

 

Rachel Kyte, Chief Executive Officer

and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All

 

Taking Stock on SDG7 Progress: If Rwanda and Bangladesh can achieve exponential growth in off-grid renewables in just a few years, why can’t other countries in Africa and Asia? If Portugal can achieve 100 percent renewable energy, why can’t other advanced economies? This was the reaction to the Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report released at the Forum’s opening session. While the data shows significant challenges in meeting 2030 goals, it also contained some bright spots on energy efficiency, energy access, and renewable energy.

 

 

Among the positive trends: the primary energy intensity of the global economy improved at a faster 2.8% pace in 2015; for the first time in all regions of the world, electricity access grew faster than population growth; in Bangladesh and Mongolia, energy access gains were nearly 10 percent. Far more sobering was the report’s clean cooking access figures as well as slow progress in many Sub-Saharan African countries on all of the SDG7 objectives.

 

 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a video message to Forum attendees

 

So what will it take to get more countries on the right track? Supportive government policies and regulatory frameworks are critical – a point echoed by a half-dozen government ministers speaking about their gains on energy access, energy efficiency and clean cooking.

 

Rwanda’s government has an integrated electrification strategy emphasizing grid- and off-grid solutions. Remote, rural populations far removed from electric grids are a central focus of their strategy. “We want to make sure we connect the entire population,” said the Hon. Germaine Kamayirese, Rwanda’s Minister of State for Energy, Water, and Sanitation.

An inside look at the #SEforALLforum with Rachel Kyte

Static progress on access to clean cooking fuels and technologies was the most sobering trend by far in the SDG7 progress report. The clean cooking access deficit is still stuck at about 3 billion, with gains from 2014 to 2016 negligible gains and only 59 percent of the global population with access to clean cooking. “If we keep up this pace, we’ll only reach 73 percent by 2030. That’s unacceptable,” said Dr. Maria Neira, Director of Public Health and the Environment, at the World Health Organization.

 

No doubt, new, more collaborative strategies are needed, country by country. And all cooking fuels – whether biomass pellets, ethanol or LPG – need to be on the table as a scalable solution. “We need lots of solutions. There is no silver bullet,” Kyte said.

 

A case in point is Cameroon, which is pursuing an ambitious national strategy based primarily on LPG cookstoves. It has doubled its clean cooking numbers since 2006 and about 20 percent of the population is now using LPG stoves; by 2030, it hopes to be at 50 percent. Ghana is also pushing a national strategy based on sustainable biomass and LPG.

 

The international funding community also needs to step up in supporting countries with the biggest clean cooking access gaps. “There’s a massive opportunity to create big markets for clean cooking fuels,” Kyte said.

 

“Funding needs to be incredibly patient,” added Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. “This market is not off-grid solar. It needs to have a sense of humility.”

 

Simply put, Rachel Kyte noted, investing in clean cooking is investing in “smarter energy.”

 

“What I’m hearing again and again today is that we’re not just talking about energy as electrons,” Kyte said he her wrap-up remarks. “We’re looking at the health care benefits that will be achieved when we deliver reliable affordable energy. Energy that will help save children’s lives because they’re breathing cleaner air.”

 

Leveraging Women’s Role: Gender diversity and women’s empowerment in the SDG7 movement came up time and time again.

 

A new report produced by SEforALL and ENERGIA, Levers of Change, provides powerful evidence of how women are often not given an equal chance to take advantage of sustainable energy opportunities, such as traditional and mobile money financing that would enable them to acquire home solar systems or clean cooking solutions.

 

At an interactive lunch on gender inclusive investing, Calvert Impact Capital highlighted two key opportunities for enhancing women’s role: first, because women are more apt to live in energy poverty then men, targeting them in investment strategies will have a bigger impact; second, Calvert found its investments perform better when it uses a gender lens.

 

Banner photo credit to Kaia Rose / Connect4Climate

 

Renewable energy is making impressive gains in the electricity sector, although these are not being matched in transportation and heating – which together account for 80% of global energy consumption.  

 

While global trends are disappointing, recent national experiences around the world offer encouraging signs. There is mounting evidence that with the right approaches and policies, countries can make substantial progress in clean energy and energy access, and improve the lives of millions of people. 

 

Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report, launched at the Sustainable Energy for All Forum in Lisbon, is the most comprehensive look available at the world’s progress towards the global energy targets on access to electricity, clean cooking, renewable energy and energy efficiency.  

 

 

The following are some of the main findings of the report. Findings are based on official national-level data and measure global progress up to 2015 for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and 2016 for access to electricity and clean cooking. 

 

         One billion people – or 13% of the world’s population – still live without electricity. Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central and South Asia continue to be the areas of the world with the largest access deficits. Almost 87% of the world’s people without electricity live in rural areas. 

       ​  The number of people gaining access to power has been accelerating since 2010, but needs to ramp up further to achieve universal access to electricity by 2030. If current trends continue, an estimated 674 million people will still live without electricity in 2030.

       ​  Some of the strongest gains were made in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, which all increased their electricity access rate by 3% or more annually between 2010 and 2016. Over the same period, India provided electricity to 30 million people annually, more than any other country. Sub-Saharan Africa’s electrification deficit has begun to fall in absolute terms for the first time.

       ​  Tens of millions of people now have access to electricity through solar home systems or connected to mini-grids. However, these remain concentrated in about a dozen pioneering countries where penetration of solar electricity can reach as much as 5-15% of the population.

 

Clean Cooking 

       ​  Three billion people – or more than 40% of the world’s population – do not have access to clean cooking fuels and technologies. Household air pollution from burning biomass for cooking and heating is responsible for some 4 million deaths a year, with women and children at the greatest risk.  

       ​  Parts of Asia have seen access to clean cooking outpace growth in population. These positive outcomes were driven largely by widespread dissemination of LPG or piped natural gas. In India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Vietnam, the population with access to clean cooking technologies grew by more than 1% of their population annually. 

       ​  In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, population growth in recent years has outstripped the number of people gaining access to clean cooking technologies by a ratio of four to one. 

       ​  Clean cooking continues to lag the furthest behind of all the four energy targets, due to low consumer awareness, financing gaps, slow technological progress, and lack of infrastructure for fuel production and distribution. If the current trajectory continues, 2.3 billion people will continue to use traditional cooking methods in 2030. 

 

       ​  There is mounting evidence of the uncoupling of growth and energy use. Global gross domestic product (GDP) grew nearly twice as fast as primary energy supply in 2010-15. Economic growth outpaced growth in energy use in all regions, except for Western Asia, where GDP is heavily tied to energy-intensive industries, and in all income groups. However, progress continues to be slow in low income countries, where energy intensity is higher than the global average.

       ​  Globally, energy intensity – the ratio of energy used per unit of GDP – fell at an accelerating pace of 2.8% in 2015, the fastest decline since 2010.  This improved the average annual decline in energy intensity to 2.2 % for the period 2010-2015. However, performance still falls short of the 2.6% yearly decline needed to meet the SDG7 target of doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030.

       ​  Improvement in industrial energy intensity, at 2.7% per annum since 2010, was particularly encouraging, as this is the largest energy consuming sector overall. Progress in the transport sector was more modest, especially for freight transportation, and is a particular challenge for high-income countries. In low and middle-income countries, the energy intensity of the residential sector has been increasing since 2010.

       ​  Six of the 20 countries that represent 80 percent of the world’s total primary energy supply, including Japan and the US, reduced their annual primary energy supply in 2010-15 while continuing to grow GDP – indicating a peak in energy use. Among the large energy-intensive developing economies, China and Indonesia stood out with annual improvement exceeding 3 percent. 

 

       ​  As of 2015, the world obtained 17.5% of its total final energy consumption from renewable sources, of which 9.6% represents modern forms of renewable energy such as geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind. The remainder is traditional uses of biomass (such as fuelwood and charcoal). 

       ​  Based on current policies, the renewable share is expected to reach just 21% by 2030, with modern renewables growing to 15%, falling short of the substantial increase demanded by the SDG7 target. 

       ​  Rapidly falling costs have allowed solar and wind to compete with conventional power generation sources in multiple regions, driving the growth in the share of renewables in electricity to 22.8% in 2015. But electricity accounted for only 20% of total final energy consumption that year, highlighting the need to accelerate progress in transport and heating. 

       ​  The share of renewable energy in transport is rising quite rapidly, but from a very low base, amounting to only 2.8% in 2015. The use of renewable energy for heating purposes has barely increased in recent years and stood at 24.8% in 2015, of which one third was from modern uses. 

       ​  Since 2010, China’s progress in renewable energy alone accounted for nearly 30% of absolute growth in renewable energy consumption globally in 2015. Brazil was the only country among the top 20 largest energy consumers to substantially exceed the global average renewable share in all end uses: electricity, transport and heating. The UK’s share of renewable energy in total final energy consumption grew by 1% annually on average since 2010 – more than five times the global average.

 

Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report is a joint effort of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO).  

 

 

 

Dr Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA)

 

 

Adnan Z. Amin, IRENA Director-General

 

 

Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the Statistics Division of UN DESA

 

 

Riccardo Puliti, Senior Director for Energy and Extractives at the World Bank

 

 

Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, at the World Health Organization (WHO)

 

 

 

Rachel Kyte, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and CEO of Sustainable Energy for All.

 

It is the fourth edition of this report, formerly known as the Global Tracking Framework (GTF). Funding for the report was provided by the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP).

The global fashion industry came to COP23 to tell of its efforts to cut out the waste and greenhouse gas emissions in its production, supply and customer behavior which have played a significant part in the linked problems of climate change and sustainability.

Watch how the fashion industry supports the Paris Agreement

The event at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference left the human models at home to shine a spotlight instead on business models and environmentally sound practices that can ensure the transition towards a cleaner, sustainable future, including making fibers from orange juice production.

 

The fashion sector represents an annual global turnover of around 160 billion euros. It produces 60 million tonnes of garments a year, which could reach 100 million by 2030, and employs 60 million people around the world, mainly in developing countries.

 

 

Moderating the event, Costa Rican fashion designer Mitchell de La O outlined efforts to design and promote a new low carbon and sustainable system for fashion production and consumption.

Swedish brand Filippa K’s sustainability expert Elin Larsson shared insights on how resource intensive garment making is. The production of 1 kilo of cotton requires 3,000 liters of water and 1 kilo of chemicals, creating 16 kilos of CO2 and half a kilo of waste. In Sweden, on average each person throws away 13 kilos of garments a year, of which 8 kilos ends up as waste – yet at least 60% could be reusable.  

 

Vanessa Rothschild, the Sustainability Expert at the H&M Group, said the group’s strategy was to be 100% run on renewable energy by 2040 with an entirely circular production model, where the by-product of one industry serves the objective of another.

 

The panelists also discussed how industry players are developing and adopting new tools to lower the carbon footprint of the industry. For example, Filippa K has created a way to classify fiber for weaving according to a set sustainability degree (its biological/organic source, ability to be repaired and recycled or even being of a recycled nature already).

 

Orange Fiber’s innovation, developed in partnership with the Polytechnic University of Milan, uses by-products from citrus juice production to produce a sustainable textile. Enrica Arena, one of the two original entrepreneurs, works at the end of orange juice production to retrieve the waste of the chain, and extract from it the cellulose that helps to create the necessary textile fiber.

 

Filippa K said it was also essential to involve customers in campaigns. For example, Elin Larsson presented the “7 pieces is all you need” campaign, where 18 different looks were created from the same seven pieces to prevent over-consumption of their products.

 

Another campaign is to tell people there is no need to over-wash clothes, which quickly breaks down the fibers, as well as to remind them that clothes can be mended, instead of thrown away.