Climate Action 2016-2017

ENSURING
SUSTAINABLE
ENERGY – FOR ALL
ENERGY
Rachel Kyte, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and Special Representative
of the UN Secretary-General, highlights the importance of universal sustainable
energy access and availability, with a focus on renewables and energy efficiency.
Last year, the world’s leaders signed up to
two critically important things. We need to
change the future direction of the global
economy in order to combat climate change.
And that transition must be just, leaving no one
behind. That is the joint commitment of the Paris
Agreement and the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs), and energy sits at the very heart of
it: energy that’s not only sustainable, allowing us
to keep the planet’s warming well below 2°C, but
available to everyone to power healthier, safer,
more productive lives.
The commitment to the Paris Agreement and
the SDGs means we need to manage a radical
energy transition that decouples our growth and
development from carbon. This is urgent – not
just because we are fast nearing the point where
the gateway to a ‘well-below 2°C’ climate future
could close forever.
ENERGY THE FIRST PRIORITY
Access to clean, affordable energy underpins
so many aspects of development that we need
to front-load results on SDG 7, the energy goal,
to give us any chance of meeting other goals
by 2030. SDG 7 calls for access to affordable,
"Paris calls for a
swift ramping up
of renewables in
the energy mix, and
investment in the smart
grids needed for reliable,
affordable, clean power
to be the norm."
reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all,
with targets closely aligned to SEforALL’s three
objectives: universal energy access; a doubling
of renewables in the global energy mix; and a
doubling in the pace of energy efficiency gains.
Delivering on this goal goes to the heart of
our ambition in Paris to create a new kind of
economy, one that lifts everybody up. Paris, too,
calls for a swift ramping up of renewables in the
energy mix, and investment in the smart grids
needed for reliable, affordable, clean power to be
the norm. It, too, shines a bright light on the need
for a revolution in efficiency, especially in the
largest energy consumers.
The extraordinary leadership in Paris and the
coming together of countries, businesses, city
leaders, civil society and others, all working to
translate scientific evidence into smart agreements,
means there can be no ‘business as usual’ for future
development. Not only how we generate, transmit,
distribute clean energy, but multiple other aspects
of the way we live – food, water, transport, how we
build cities – have to be designed with the ultimate
goal of net zero carbon in mind.
So how do we get there?
PROGRESS WITH EFFICIENCY, ACCESS AND
RENEWABLES
First, we need to adopt an ‘energy efficiency
first’ approach. Efficiency is the energy source
that is usually ignored. According to the
International Energy Agency’s World Energy
Outlook, energy efficiency could account
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