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Low carbon growth country studies: getting started experience from six countries

4pm, July 21st, 2015

This paper combines country-specific studies of six emerging economies, assessing their development goals and priorities, in conjunction with greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation opportunities, and examine the additional costs and benefits of lower carbon growth.

Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa are proactively seeking to identify opportunities and related financial, technical, and policy requirements to move towards a low carbon growth path. With the help of the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), the governments of these countries have initiated country-specific studies.

Mitigation actions today are expected to reduce future expenditure on adaptation. These actions can help attract international concessional funding to co-finance programs in energy, industry, transport, and natural resource management, which have carbon reduction implications.

Together, the experiences from these six developing countries demonstrate the benefit of a structured engagement across a country’s economy on growth and GHG mitigation. The result is a framework for policy, planning, and decision making that can:

  • Support strategic, sustainable, and cost-effective low carbon growth
  • Limit climate impacts and associated management costs
  • Help harness climate finance opportunities and implementation support
  • Increase national competitiveness in the face of a green revolution
  • Build dialogue, local capacity, and know how

Collectively, these studies identify some broad messages (i.e., the need for renewable energy and energy efficiency support) and some surprises (i.e., low cost transport options and untapped co-generation investments), generating a wealth of knowledge that provides a global public good. The goal is to use this knowledge to create low carbon pathways and to identify GHG reduction investments beyond these countries.

Read Low carbon growth country studies: getting started experience from six countries.

Institutions Involved

  • ESMAP and Carbon Finance Assist
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