International Climate Finance & Policy

Stephanie Joyce, a 2015 Energy and Climate Media Fellow for Heinrich Böll North America, investigates how the tiny Danish island of Bornholm makes electricity demand meet supply in part one of her series.

Smart energy infrastructure and an entrepreneurial spirit will play an important role in driving energy transitions around the world. At the end of June, Cem Oezdemir, Co-Chairman of the German Green Party, travelled to San Francisco to witness how innovative solutions are driving low-carbon development in the Bay Area. We spoke with him about how California could serve as a model for German start-ups.

At its upcoming 10th meeting from July 6-9 in Songdo, the GCF Board – despite the looming pressure of the Paris political deadline – must take care to deliver good decisions, not hasty ones as it feverishly works to get policies and procedures into shape for the first approval of project proposals in the fall. This does neither allow for thorough discussion, nor for dissent among their midst. An analysis by Liane Schalatek.

The restructuring of the energy system in one of the world’s leading industrialized nations is undoubtedly a highly ambitious undertaking. There is no blueprint for this energy transition that would offer a simple step-by-step procedure to follow. There is one thing that the German energy transition certainly is not: an island of its own that isolates Germany’s energy economy. On the contrary, a quick overview of the world’s state of affairs with regard to energy shows that the global energy transition is now picking up speed.

How does Denmark plan to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 -- and how does it already get almost half of its electricity from renewables? Stephanie Joyce, a 2015 Energy and Climate Media Fellow for Heinrich Böll North America, has an answer in part three and the final installment of her series from Bornholm, Denmark.

The year 2015 could go down in history books as the landmark year for turning around the world’s “business-as-usual” economic and financial system in ways that could lead to a sustainable future.  Or, it could be a year of cascading multilateral failures, signaling a further decline of UN-led efforts for sustainable development. When world leaders meet from July 13-16, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the third UN Conference on Financing for Development (FfD-3), the stakes are high. Fear and hope should motivate the outcomes of the conference. 

Part two of a series by Stephanie Joyce, another 2015 Energy and Climate Media Fellow for Heinrich Böll North America, in Bornholm, Denmark - or as she puts it, "a real-life test lab for the grid of the future." Listen and read more at Inside Energy:

As conventional oil reserves decline, international oil companies are increasingly turning their attention towards unconventional oils. Armsfree Ajanaku travelled to Ondo state communities situated along the bitumen belt of Nigeria to try and understand the people’s perception about the bitumen under their feet and their aspiration for development. He describes his experience in an article published through our partner office in Nigeria.

Making mitigation finance more gender-responsive, requires addressing inherent biases toward large scale projects and a primary focus on the cost-effectiveness of emissions reductions over the realization of multiple, including non-carbon benefits in mitigation projects and programs, argues Liane Schalatek in a Bonn SBI 42 in-session workshop.