AFTER years of hype, renewable energy has gone mainstream in much of the United States and, increasingly, around the world.
But many communities that need small-scale renewable energy remain out in the cold — literally and figuratively.
In Alaska, for instance, the vast majority of the more than 200 small, isolated communities populated primarily by native Alaskans rely on dirty, expensive diesel fuel to generate their electricity and heat. As in other remote communities throughout the world that have no grid to fall back on, diesel generators now provide the only reliable option for these desperately poor towns to meet their essential energy needs.
These villages buy and burn several hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel per year in inefficient generators at costs that can approach $10 per gallon while spewing unhealthy fumes and soot. To ease their diesel dependence, some Alaskan villages have been able to secure financing to construct wind projects and small-scale, centralized electricity systems, known as micro grids.
The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has been working with the Department of the Interior and industry on the Remote Community Renewable Energy Partnership to make this happen. Drawing from the Department of Defense’s successful deployment of small renewable energy-based systems to support forward-stationed troops, the lab is developing design specifications for a modular renewable energy system that aims to produce much cleaner energy, at half of today’s costs. This would be accomplished by replacing 75 percent of diesel use for electricity and heat in the Arctic villages (relying primarily on wind power) and for electricity and cooling in the tropics (relying primarily on solar power).
On a parallel track, Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz recently announced a public-private collaboration called Beyond the Grid to leverage $1 billion in investments over five years to bring small-scale solutions to communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Both initiatives address the huge, debilitating energy deficit faced by millions around the world.
The economic and quality-of-life benefits that flow when cash-strapped communities have access to affordable and healthier clean energy are transformative. Just as the public-private partnership that developed and deployed cleaner-burning, efficient cook stoves has changed the lives of millions in Africa and Asia for the better, so also will these renewable energy systems.
Let’s not leave these ideas on the drawing board. The United States will take its turn next April as the chair of the eight-nation Arctic Council, a forum of the nations that border the Arctic. In setting the council’s agenda, the United States can make it a priority to bring practical and clean energy options to isolated northern communities.
Such an effort would put a humanitarian face on the country’s commitment to address climate change. We would directly help our most energy-needy citizens, while opening up a new global market for American businesses and showing the world what innovative clean energy technology can do for the human condition, and our planet.
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“Microgrids” fit into a larger context-sensitive approach to sustainable development.
For larger urban areas, traditional power grids make the most sense. In places with smaller populations, Microgrids could provide cleaner energy at a lower cost than burning diesel fuel. In less developed countries, where weak financial institutions and security concerns make even microgrids unattainable, individualized mobile power generating units may make the most sense.
Each type of grid can be supplied with various forms of renewable energy /fuel cells, storing excess energy in batteries to make them more reliable (in both large and smaller scale projects).
One way to counter the inability of governments to agree on a global climate change framework is to make low / zero emission energy sources competitive in open markets. On one side, countries must stop providing incentives to consume “traditional” high emission energy sources. On the other hand, we must continue to subsidize R & D and creative financing (such as feed-in tariffs, which enable people / companies to pay for renewable energy infrastructure by selling back excess energy to the grid) to promote green energy use, particularly in developing countries.
There are both moral (protecting the interests of the voiceless–the world’s most vulnerable groups and future generations) and economic (becoming a leader in a growth industry, and the associated job creation) reasons to be excited about renewable green energy.
Tackling two of the greatest global challenges of the 21st century; ending extreme poverty and promoting environmental sustainability; are not irreconcilable, but they are also far from inevitable. It requires, as President Obama has called it, an “all of the above” approach. Microgrids seem poised to play an important role in this approach.
The absence of a global climate change framework is no reason to eschew environmental protection. Every kilowatt of energy produced without GHG emissions is a step in the right direction; let’s not allow perfection to be the enemy of progress.
A number of longstanding impediments still stand in the way of a meaningful global climate change policy. There is the issue of who will shoulder the majority of the costs of a shift towards sustainable energy sources, countries who have the longest history of emissions / highest per capita emissions rates (developed countries such as the U.S.), or those who currently emit the most GHGs (such as China and India, with their heavy reliance on coal based electricity)?
Unhealthy smog in China and India have put more pressure on politicians to address national climate change agenda’s, but to this point have done little in terms of bridging a global climate change agenda.
A related issue is that the countries that are most susceptible to the negative impacts of climate change are small island states, which have a negligible influence on global policy matters. Organizations such as the UN’s Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and the Alliance Of Small Island States (AOSIS) attempt to overcome this issue by banding together to promote their mutual interests, but still face an uphill battle in compared to more influential global actors. Until the worlds most powerful nations start feeling strong adverse effects of climate change (which some would argue they already have), the needs of these smaller nations are likely to go unaddressed.
Perhaps the greatest impediment to global policy change is that the worlds most powerful nations house the most powerful energy companies, who have a vested interest in the status quo and hold immense political sway due to their roles as political donors and job providers.
When it comes to climate change, the burden of proof is on the “accuser”, a reality climate change deniers have used to their advantage; these companies have virtually limitless resources to challenge claims that climate change is a man made phenomenon, or that it is linked to their activities. To quote Nick Naylor in the satirical comedy “Thank You For Smoking”; “These guys realized quick if they were gonna claim cigarettes were not addictive they better have proof. This is the man they rely on, Erhardt Von Grupten Mundt. They found him in Germany. I won’t go into the details. He’s been testing the link between nicotine and lung cancer for thirty years, and hasn’t found any conclusive results. The man’s a genius, he could disprove gravity.” In other words, if you pay a scientist / economist / expert enough money, they can disprove / refute any claim.
While the costs of addressing climate change are quantifiable (difference in costs between competing energy sources, jobs / economics output lost, etc.), the benefits tend to be more abstract(ex: the costs of addressing climate change will be “greater in the future”, we can stave off natural disasters with untold economics costs, the effects on global food security, etc.). In a world of budget constraints and high unemployment, the quantifiable and immediate costs of addressing climate change tend to overpower the necessary reforms. Factoring in power asymmetries (those arguing for action are much “weaker” than those arguing against it), and the future of global climate policy becomes even bleaker.
In the long run, the Post-2015 Development Agenda is being developed alongside Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seem poised to be agreed upon in a Global Climate Treaty in 2015.
There are also immediate economic and geopolitical reasons to be optimistic about the future of renewable energy proliferation:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which pools the efforts of scientists around the globe, has begun releasing draft chapters from its latest assessment, and, for the most part, the reading is as grim as you might expect. We are still on the road to catastrophe without major policy changes.
But there is one piece of the assessment that is surprisingly, if conditionally, upbeat: Its take on the economics of mitigation. Even as the report calls for drastic action to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, it asserts that the economic impact of such drastic action would be surprisingly small. In fact, even under the most ambitious goals the assessment considers, the estimated reduction in economic growth would basically amount to a rounding error, around 0.06 percent per year.
What’s behind this economic optimism? To a large extent, it reflects a technological revolution many people don’t know about, the incredible recent decline in the cost of renewable energy, solar power in particular.
The climate change panel, in its usual deadpan prose, notes that “many RE [renewable energy] technologies have demonstrated substantial performance improvements and cost reductions” since it released its last assessment, back in 2007. The Department of Energy is willing to display a bit more open enthusiasm; it titled a report on clean energy released last year “Revolution Now.” That sounds like hyperbole, but you realize that it isn’t when you learn that the price of solar panels has fallen more than 75 percent just since 2008.
Thanks to this technological leap forward, the climate panel can talk about “decarbonizing” electricity generation as a realistic goal — and since coal-fired power plants are a very large part of the climate problem, that’s a big part of the solution right there.
It’s even possible that decarbonizing will take place without special encouragement, but we can’t and shouldn’t count on that. The point, instead, is that drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are now within fairly easy reach.
So is the climate threat solved? Well, it should be. The science is solid; the technology is there; the economics look far more favorable than anyone expected. All that stands in the way of saving the planet is a combination of ignorance, prejudice and vested interests. What could go wrong? Oh, wait.
SO the latest news is that President Vladimir Putin of Russia has threatened to turn off gas supplies to Ukraine if Kiev doesn’t pay its overdue bill, and, by the way, Ukraine’s pipelines are the transit route for 15 percent of gas consumption for Europe. If I’m actually rooting for Putin to go ahead and shut off the gas, does that make me a bad guy?
Because that is what I’m rooting for, and I’d be happy to subsidize Ukraine through the pain. Because such an oil shock, though disruptive in the short run, could have the same long-term impact as the 1973 Arab oil embargo — only more so. That 1973 embargo led to the first auto mileage standards in America and propelled the solar, wind and energy efficiency industries. A Putin embargo today would be even more valuable because it would happen at a time when the solar, wind, natural gas and energy efficiency industries are all poised to take off and scale. So Vladimir, do us all a favor, get crazy, shut off the oil and gas to Ukraine and, even better, to all of Europe.Embargo! You’ll have a great day, and the rest of the planet will have a great century.
“Clean energy is at an inflection point,” explains Hal Harvey, C.E.O. of Energy Innovation. “The price reductions in the last five years have been nothing less than spectacular: Solar cells, for example, have dropped in cost by more than 80 percent in the last five years. This trend is underway, if a bit less dramatically, for wind, batteries, solid state lighting, new window technologies, vehicle drive trains, grid management, and more. What this means is that clean energy is moving from boutique to mainstream, and that opens up a wealth of opportunities.”
We are closer to both irreversible dangers on climate and scale solutions on clean tech than people realize. Just a little leadership now by America — or a little scare by Putin — would make a big difference.
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To be sure, all of the impediments discussed in this article still remain; power asymmetries, a sluggish global economy, different views about who should pay the costs of “greening” the planet. However, no impediment can withstand a well informed and empowered public; the science, technology, economics and geopolitics of climate change have aligned, the time for change is now (I hate making blanket statements like this, but for the reasons discussed in this blog, I truly believe it in this instance).
All that remains is the political will to stand up to vested interests and the public support to finance the shrinking cost gap between traditional and renewable energy sources (which could be further closed with some form of carbon taxation–again an issue of political will).
When the issue at hand is the fate of our planets ecosystems, with costs that are both unpredictable and rising, how can we not rise to this challenge?
(Everyone is sick of hearing about this government shutdown anyways right??)
The potential of the waste-to-energy industry is a recurring topic here at NN. To quote a NYT article on the subject, “THERE is an indisputable elegance to the idea of transforming garbage into fuel, of turning icky, smelly detritus into something valuable.” It seems that energy producers and waste management companies agree, as there has been a strong push in the past decades to turn energy based waste / fuel into commercially viable alternative power source. Most articles I have reviewed so far have referred to the gasification of garbage in specially designed power plants. A new concept proposes to capture the methane released from garbage already in landfillsand turning it into energy/fuel:
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Clean Energy Fuels will announce on Thursday that it has started selling a fuel made of methane from landfills and other waste sources at its more than 40 filling stations in California. The company, which is backed by T. Boone Pickens, is developing a nationwide network of natural gas pumps and plans to introduce the fuel elsewhere as well.
The company expects to sell 15 million gallons of the fuel in California this year, more than double the amount of similar fuels the Environmental Protection Agency projected would be produced nationwide.
To many in the industry, the pace of the fuel’s development has been something of a surprise.
“Though California and others have been investing in the development of this fuel, I don’t think people were expecting there to be a significant public supply or access this soon — maybe not even this decade,” said Tim Carmichael, who leads the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, a trade group.
A big factor in methane’s rise is the surge in natural gas production from shale drilling, which had already nudged the transportation industry to begin shifting to vehicles that can run on the cleaner-burning fuel, making it easier to meet emissions standards.
Another reason is powerful government incentives, especially in California, that have imposed strict regulations intended to help reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Under the program, suppliers that reduce emissions during the production, transportation and use of the fuel are awarded tradable credits.
These and similar federal incentives are allowing Clean Energy to sell the fuel, which is called Redeem, at the same price as its conventional natural gas fuel even though it is more expensive to produce.
But because of its source, the fuel counts as renewable and takes less energy to extract and process, making it more attractive to companies seeking to burnish their green credentials
The fuel’s environmental benefits also include capturing the methane before it is released into the atmosphere. When the methane-derived fuel is burned, it is far less harmful to the atmosphere than petroleum fuels. But the methane that escapes directly from decomposing waste is more potent as a heat-trapping gas than carbon.
For this reason, many large-scale farms, wastewater treatment companies and garbage companies have developed systems to capture escaping methane — known as biogas — for both transportation and electricity, and several start-up companies are working on systems of their own. There are projects in Europe as well, where biogas for transport is more common.
Beyond the bottom line, customers are increasingly interested in how clean the fuel is, said Andrew J. Littlefair, the chief executive of Clean Energy, adding that Redeem can burn 90 percent cleaner than diesel. “We’re seeing from these heavy-duty trucking fleets, and these shippers that hire these trucking fleets, they’re really interested in sustainability,” he said. “It’s gotten to be a very important part of the sale.”
John Simourian, chief executive of Lily Transportation, which uses a nationwide network of trucks to move a range of products, including construction materials and groceries, said that only a small portion of his fleet ran on natural gas but that the company was shifting over.
Not only is the fuel less expensive, but it gives the company a competitive advantage with customers on price and environmental concerns. “It’s just a win all around,” he said.
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It is interesting to note all the different avenues being explored when it comes to turning waste into something valuable and environmentally friendly–and why not? According to Sharon E. Burke, the assistant secretary of defense for operational efficiency plans and programs“Waste is a problem, so if we could dispose of waste and create energy at the same time, that would be a silver bullet.” But you don’t need to be en expert to know that trash is a problem, especially in densely populated areas (such as major cities) which produce a lot of trash; it stinks, it takes up room, and it costs money to get rid of. It is safe to say that, with the current trash disposal system, we have a “surplus of trash”.
Now imagine a world where not only is trash not a liability, but there are actually companies biding for trash (both intra-industry and inter-industry; some want it for landfill methane extraction, others to gasify the garbage directly into energy)–a trash shortage! A stream of revenue could open up for large municipalities, instead of a large bill for waste management. It is true that eventually waste-to-trash will have to get off subsidies to become truly commercially viable. However, if as a society we are unwilling to reward waste-to-energy for it’s positive externalities (such as less emissions and less garbage around), we can still hold “dirty” energy producers accountable for their negative externalities via carbon tax / cap and trade. As waste-to-energy matures and becomes more efficient, and emissions prices stabilize due to a more complete global market, the industry should eventually be able to compete without subsidies. It would appear this world is not so unimaginable or far-off as one may think.
The G20 Leader’s summit was held in St. Petersburg, Russia over the past 2 days. While much has been made over the lack of an international consensus on Syria, less attention has been given to agreements made on global political economy decisions. Global leaders reinforced the importance of cooperation, transparency and trust on global issues such as renewable energy / climate change, sustainable economic development, financial regulation and tax avoidance.
Furthermore, the international community reaffirmed its commitment to the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda, with a human rights based approach to sustainable human development at it’s core. It also reaffirmed the idea that certain issues (ex tax avoidance, financial regulation) require global policy coordination to be effective, and recognized the G20’s unique ability–by representing 2/3 of the worlds population and 90% of economic output–to hold countries accountable for “cheating” on international agreements.
The resolution reaffirmed the importance of rule of law, transparency, and judicial independence for fostering trust between civil society and governments, and conversely how corruption can undermine both this trust and the trust between governments in global governance mechanisms. In recognition of the destructive power of corruption, the resolution reaffirms a global effort to combat corruption through education campaigns and empowering civil society to practice “social accountability” via ombudsman’s offices / NHRIs.
(It should be noted that grandiose rhetoric is often used in global policy summits. There is a difference between resolutions and implementing / financing programmes to operationalize those resolutions. However, at least on the sustainable economic development and global policy coherence fronts, important groundwork was laid down at the summit)
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G20 LEADERS’ DECLARATION Saint Petersburg Summit 5-6 September 2013 Preamble
5. We understand that sound and sustainable economic growth will be firmly based on increased and predictable investments, trust and transparency, as well as on effective regulation as part of the market policy and practice.
6. As Leaders of the world’s largest economies, we share responsibility for reinforcing the open and rules-based global economic system. We are committed to working cooperatively to address key global economic challenges:
Achieving a stronger recovery while ensuring fiscal sustainability. We have today agreed the St Petersburg Action Plan, which sets out our strategies to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth.
Unemployment and underemployment, particularly among young people. We are united in the resolve to achieve better quality and more productive jobs. Coordinated and integrated public policies (macroeconomic, financial, fiscal, education, skills development, innovation, employment and social protection) are key to reach this goal. We today committed to continue our efforts to support inclusive labour markets, with the exchange of country-specific plans or sets of actions, developed as appropriate according to our different constitutional circumstances.
(In line with the principle of self-determination)
Free and rules-based trade fosters economic opportunities. We stress the crucial importance of strong multilateral trading system and call on all the WTO members to show the necessary flexibility and reach a successful outcome in this year’s multilateral trade negotiations. We extend our commitment to refrain from protectionist measures and aim at enhancing transparency in trade, including in regional trade agreements.
Cross-border tax evasion and avoidance undermine our public finances and our people’s trust in the fairness of the tax system. Today, we endorsed plans to address these problems and committed to take steps to change our rules to tackle tax avoidance, harmful practices, and aggressive tax planning.
We have agreed and are implementing a broad range of financial reforms to address the major fault lines that caused the crisis. We are building more resilient financial institutions, making substantial progress towards ending too-big-to-fail, increasing transparency and market integrity, filling regulatory gaps and addressing the risks from shadow banking. We will pursue our work to build a safe, reliable financial system responsive to the needs of our citizens.
G20 countries have a responsibility to ensure that all people have an opportunity to gain from strong, sustainable and balanced growth. We endorse the St Petersburg Development Outlook to focus our efforts on concrete steps to improve food security, financial inclusion, infrastructure, human resource development and domestic resource mobilization.
(The universality of human rights based development)
Corruption impedes sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction, threatening financial stability and economy as a whole. We will hold ourselves to our commitment to implement the G20 Anti-Corruption Action Plan, combating domestic and foreign bribery, tackling corruption in high-risk sectors, strengthening international cooperation and promoting public integrity and transparency in the fight against corruption. Recognizing the need for sustained and concerted efforts we endorse the St Petersburg Strategic Framework.
We share a common interest in developing cleaner, more efficient and reliable energy supplies, as well as more transparent physical and financial commodity markets. We commit to enhance energy cooperation, to make energy market data more accurate and available and to take steps to support the development of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies to enhance the efficiency of markets and shift towards a more sustainable energy future. We underscore our commitment to work together to address climate change and environment protection, which is a global problem that requires a global solution.
We will continue to develop comprehensive growth strategies to achieve stronger, more sustainable and balanced growth in the context of fiscal sustainability.
7. Too many of our citizens have yet to participate in the economic global recovery that is underway. The G20 must strive not only for strong, sustainable and balanced growth but also for a more inclusive pattern of growth that will better mobilize the talents of our entire populations.
(“no-person-left-behind” human rights based approach (HRBA) to development, inclusive growth to reduce inequalities of opportunity / break power asymmetries)
Global Economy and G20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth 10. We consider the main challenges to the global economy to be:
Weak growth and persistently high unemployment, particularly among youth, and the need for more inclusive growth in many economies;
Financial market fragmentation in Europe and the decisive implementation of banking union;
Slower growth in some emerging market economies, reflecting in some cases the effect of volatile capital flows, tighter financial conditions and commodity price volatility, as well as domestic structural challenges;
Insufficient levels of private investment in many countries, in part due to continuing market uncertainties, as well as internal rigidities;
High public debt and its sustainability in some countries that need to be addressed while properly supporting the recovery in the near-term, especially in countries with the highest actual and projected debt to GDP levels;
Volatility of capital flows as growth strengthens and there are expectations of eventual monetary policy recalibration in advanced economies;
An incomplete rebalancing of global demand; and
Continued uncertainties about fiscal policy deliberations.
15. We reiterate that excess volatility of financial flows and disorderly movements in exchange rates can have adverse implications for economic and financial stability, as observed recently in some emerging markets. Generally stronger policy frameworks in these countries allow them to better deal with these challenges. Sound macroeconomic policies, structural reforms and strong prudential frameworks will help address an increase in volatility. We will continue to monitor financial market conditions carefully.
16. We commit to cooperate to ensure that policies implemented to support domestic growth also support global growth and financial stability and to manage their spillovers on other countries.
(Accountability for extra-territorial human rights obligations)
Growth through Quality Jobs
26. Policy reforms to support higher employment and facilitate job creation and better matching of skills with job opportunities are central in our growth strategies. We commit to take a broad-ranged action, tailored to national circumstances, to promote more and better jobs:
Invest in our people’s skills, quality education and life-long learning programs to give them skill portability and better prospects, to facilitate mobility and enhance employability.
(Human capital investment for sustainable human development)
29. Promoting youth employment is a global priority. We are committed to quality apprenticeship and vocational training programmes, finding innovative ways to encourage firms to hire youth for example by, where appropriate, reducing non-wage labour costs, moving towards early intervention measures and effective job-search assistance for different groups of youth, and motivating youth entrepreneurship and business start-ups. Tailored strategies including youth guarantee approaches, developing school and university curricula that support entrepreneurship, and facilitating exchange of best practices among the G20 countries and the social partners are crucial in this respect.
(Recognizing youth as a critical stage of personal and professional development, and adequate investment reflecting this recognition)
Growth through Quality Jobs 81. Supporting strong, sustainable, inclusive and resilient growth and narrowing the development gap remain critical to our overall objective for jobs and growth. In this regard, we welcome the progress within the forum achieved this year, in particular on:
Food Security: Support to the Secure Nutrition Knowledge Platform, exchange of best practices through the seminar on “Food Security through Social Safety Nets and Risk Management”, and convening the second G20 Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists, along with its ongoing work to identify global research priorities and targets and support results-based agricultural research in 2014.
Infrastructure: Completion of the Assessment of Project Preparation Facilities (PPFs) for Infrastructure in Africa; a toolkit on Urban Mass Transportation Infrastructure Projects in Medium and Large Cities by the World Bank and the ADB; and a public-private partnerships (PPP) sourcebook by the World Bank, IDB and ADB, and progress in implementing the recommendations of the High Level Panel on Infrastructure.
(PPP for physical and human capital investments. Both governments and businesses rely on productive societies for growth.)
Financial Inclusion: Enhanced coherence with the G20 finance track through the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) to pursue efforts to strengthen financial inclusion including work to further reducing the global average cost of transferring remittances to 5% including through innovative result-based mechanisms, to enhance financial literacy and consumer protection for the poor and to foster access to finance for investment, for SMEs for growth, job creation and poverty reduction; and together with the IFC launching the Women Finance Hub.
Human Resource Development: Launch of a global public-private knowledge sharing platform on skills for employment and the development of national actions plans on skills for employment in LICs and of a database on skills indicators.
Inclusive Green Growth: Further development, dissemination and implementation of the non-prescriptive, voluntary toolkit of policy options for inclusive green growth in the context of sustainable development, including a workshop with developing countries, and initiation of the G20 Dialogue Platform on Inclusive Green Investments for sustainable development and poverty eradication.
Domestic Resource Mobilization: Continued work on strengthening tax administrations in developing countries, particularly LIC’s, through both bilateral and multilateral programs, such as the work of the OECD and G20 members on BEPS, automatic exchange of information, the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes and “Tax Inspectors without Borders” and the expansion of the work of the World Bank Group and the IMF to support developing countries’ ability to raise domestic resources.
83. We welcome the Saint Petersburg Accountability Report on G20 Development Commitments, which sets out the progress achieved since we adopted the 2010 Seoul Multi-Year Action Plan on Development (MYAP) (Annex). This report demonstrates that many of our development commitments have now been implemented and identifies lessons learned and it highlights the successes achieved. The Accountability Report underlines the importance of continued monitoring and identifies areas where we must continue to work and opportunities to strengthen and streamline the G20 development agenda.
84. In this spirit, we endorse the Saint Petersburg Development Outlook, which states our core priorities, new initiatives and ongoing commitments (Annex). Building on the foundation of the 2010 Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth, the Outlook frames the approach to our future work. We ask the Development Working Group to focus on concrete actions under the core priorities of food security, financial inclusion and remittances, infrastructure, human resource development and domestic resource mobilization, and to deliver specific outcomes at the Brisbane summit. We commit to improve working practices for more effective outcomes by:
concentrating on fewer key areas where action and reform remain most critical to ensure inclusive and sustainable growth in developing countries;
enhancing policy coordination across different G20 work streams in order to ensure greater impact on developing countries;
implementing a forward accountability process to improve monitoring and coordination, and ensure greater transparency of our work;
continuing to expand engagement and partnerships with stakeholders, including non-G20 countries (especially LICs), international organizations, the private sector and civil society; ensuring flexible approaches to respond to new priorities and circumstances
(Post-2015 development agenda consultations—human rights (political and social empowerment) for inclusive global and national agenda setting)
85. We welcome the substantial progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) since 2000 and the success in galvanizing global action to reach specific targets globally, as well as in individual countries, particularly in eradicating extreme poverty and promoting development. However, the prospects for achieving all of the MDGs differ sharply across and within countries and regions. We remain committed to accelerating progress towards achieving the MDGs, particularly through the implementation of our development agenda and our focus on promoting strong, sustainable, inclusive and resilient growth.
86. We support the ongoing efforts in the UN for the elaboration of the post-2015 development agenda. We commit to participate actively in this process and engage in the discussion on the direction of the new framework and its key principles and ideas and effectively contribute to the timely conclusion of the process. The final outcome will be determined through an intergovernmental process in which we will all participate, but much preparatory work is still underway. We welcome the contribution of the report prepared by the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which sets out some illustrative goals We also welcome the ongoing work of the UN General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals and Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing. We stress the crucial importance of collective action, including international development cooperation, based on the principles outlined in the Millennium Declaration, the 2012 Rio+20 outcome document “The Future We Want”, the Istanbul Declaration and Programme of Action of the Fourth UN Conference on Least Developed Countries and the outcomes of other relevant UN Conferences and Summits in the economic, social and environmental fields.
87. We call for an agreement on an integrated post-2015 development agenda with concise, implementable and measurable goals taking into account different national realities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities, focused both on the eradication of extreme poverty, promoting development and on balancing the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainable development. We commit to ensure that G20 activities beyond 2015 are coherent with the new development framework.
Sustainable Energy Policy and Resilience of Global Commodity Markets
95. Sizable investment, including from private sources, will be needed in the G20 and other economies in energy infrastructure in the years ahead to support global growth and development. It is our common interest to assess existing obstacles and identify opportunities to facilitate more investment into more smart and low-carbon energy infrastructure, particularly in clean and sustainable electricity infrastructure where feasible. In this regard we encourage a closer engagement of private sector and multilateral development banks with the G20 Energy Sustainability Working Group (ESWG) and call for a dialogue to be launched on its basis in 2014 that will bring interested public sector, market players and international organizations together to discuss the factors hindering energy investment, including in clean and energy efficient technologies and to scope possible measures needed to promote sustainable, affordable, efficient and secure energy supply.
Intensifying Fight Against Corruption
103. Corruption is a severe impediment to sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction and can threaten financial stability and the economy as a whole. Corruption is corrosive, destroying public trust, distorting the allocation of resources and undermining the rule of law. To provide a better understanding of the factors constraining the economic potential of countries affected by corruption, we make available the Issues Paper on Anti-Corruption and Economic Growth and encourage the OECD, in collaboration with the World Bank to continue work in this area.
104. As a group of the world’s largest economies, the G20 has the potential to create unstoppable momentum towards a global culture of intolerance towards corruption. We will redouble our efforts to achieve this goal, in particular by enhancing transparency and closing implementation and enforcement gaps.
108. We renew our commitment to ensure the independence of the judiciary, as well as to share best practices and enforce legislation to protect whistleblowers, ensure the effectiveness of anti-corruption authorities free from any undue influence, and promote the integrity of public officials.
109. We also place a high value on implementing and raising awareness regarding effective anti-corruption education programs to build and reinforce a culture of intolerance towards corruption.
(The importance of “social accountability” and access to information in combating corruption, claiming human rights / holding violators accountable)
112. We recognize that a culture of intolerance towards corruption will only be achieved if we work in partnership with business and civil society. We commit to maintain and build on the enhanced dialogue between the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group and the B20 and C20, and have taken note of the recommendations of these two groups. In particular, we welcome the business community’s initiatives to enhance anti-corruption collective actions and to develop institutional arrangements to promote anti-corruption compliance in the private sector.
(Consultative policy setting agenda, PPPs for shared programme financing, accountability / oversight, and technical assistance in realization of different stakeholders comparative advantages and common goals)
Normative Narratives 