Policies to accelerate clean energy technology innovation in emerging and developing economies

This government policy dialogue is an in-person side event at the Global Clean Energy Action Forum in Pittsburgh. It will focus on countries’ clean energy innovation priorities, data, and policy approaches. It will foster a discussion on how emerging market and developing economies could benefit from Mission Innovation insights and share their own learnings to accelerate clean-energy innovation in developing countries and globally.

The sessions are organised around three areas related to the effectiveness of international cooperation on clean energy technologies: (1) exchange of national policy experiences; (2) methods to measure energy innovation progress for evidence-based policy-making; and (3) effective models for two-way knowledge exchange between advanced, emerging market and developing economies.

The world´s energy and climate future increasingly hinges on whether emerging and developing economies are able to successfully transition to clean energy systems as clean energy deployment needs to expand everywhere in the world. These countries have strong incentives to participate actively in clean energy innovation, such as to foster innovation-led growth, where clean energy is set to be a major area of investment and clean jobs; to develop technologies that suit local conditions and needs; to create local value changes; and, not least, to ensure best minds around the world cooperate to address our shared challenges. However, many needed technologies – from transport to smart grids – do not yet appear in product offerings in these countries, sometimes because technologies have not been adapted to all contexts.

Stronger energy innovation ecosystems in all countries can ensure that the right problems get tackled, technologies are easily adopted and climate policy is supported for its impacts on prosperity. Today, clean energy innovation priorities, needs, and approaches of emerging and developing economies are not well known, limiting opportunities for effective and rapid international innovation cooperation.

Better innovation data is central to helping governments and companies track progress, evaluate policies and prioritise technology support. However, where it is available today, data often suffer from a lack of comparability, timeliness and context. Mission Innovation’s Insights Module has the potential to be a unique resource to communicate and encourage improvements in innovation metrics for the energy transition.

Among other presentations, the event will inform the audience of the insights from a set of unique new national case studies coordinated by the IEA and the Indian Institute of Technology and executed by national expert teams. It will also hear the experience of experts across the three topics from Australia, Brazil, India, Germany, Morocco, Nigeria and the European Commission.

Araceli Fernandez, Head of Innovation and Technology Unit, IEA, will provide opening remarks and join as a panellist.

The IEA organisation of this event has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952363

• International Energy Agency
• Mission Innovation Secretariat
• Government of India
• International Renewable Energy Agency
• European Commission Joint Research Centre
• Indian Institute of Technology School of Public Policy

The IEA’s role as the organiser of this event is facilitated through IEA’s Clean Energy Transitions in Emerging Economies programme, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952363.