As the urgency of the climate crisis ramps up, the world’s 20 largest economies have largely stalled on policy support for decarbonisation efforts, while the US, the UK and the EU have gone backwards, according to a new BloombergNEF analysis.
The scrapping of low carbon programmes, slow progress on renewables buildout and political and industry opposition to net zero policies have all hobbled policy progress in the last year, the global research group announced on Monday.
The EU, its member states and the UK continue to top the latest BNEF G-20 Zero-Carbon Policy Scoreboard thanks to their incentives for low-carbon solutions and “increasingly stringent regulatory measures targeting emission-intensive technologies.”
But these leaders and the US saw their scores decrease by an average of 1% in the BNEF ranking last year.
The UK has dropped two percentage points, largely thanks to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to roll back on green goals to try and revive his ailing re-election campaign.
That analysis chimes with another released today by a UK think tank that found the UK is ‘going backwards’ on its energy security for similar reasons.
The EU decline is partly due to a decrease in the bloc’s carbon price, “which made it less effective at driving decarbonisation”.
EU lawmakers agreeing in December to allow member states to continue subsidising coal-fired power plants until at least the end of 2028 was another reason cited.
The US going backwards is perhaps more surprising given its passing of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which included $369bn in incentives to boost green energy.
BNEF however said that consumers and industry have “spent much of the last year waiting for the final rules” on policies to be issued and “these delays have prevented projects from making announcements and reaching final investment decisions.”
Permitting for renewables projects meanwhile remains a “complex and lengthy process,” often set at the state or city level resulting in a “patchwork” regulatory landscape.
The Group of 20 countries representing the world’s leading economies overall gained a “paltry 1% rise from last year’s assessment,” said BNEF.
“While performances continue to vary widely across the G20, the general lack of advancement is a red flag for wider climate action given that the group accounts for around 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.”
“Governments need to rapidly introduce more and better low-carbon policy support if the world is to reach net zero by mid-century and achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement,” it said.
“The top-ranked G20 members especially lost points for increasing uncertainty among consumers, industry and investors.”
“This was due to insufficient or delayed information on new policies and abruptly ending programs earlier than expected.”
All G20 markets need more support in “harder-to-abate” sectors where cleaner options are “limited or very costly,” said BNEF.
“The dividing line of economic wealth persists,” it said. “In general, developed economies have more and better low-carbon support than emerging markets” – with OECD countries scoring on average 57% in the BNEF analysis and non-OECD countries 37%.
Large emerging markets also need to make progress, it said, with the ‘BRICS’ countries – Brazil, Russia, India, mainland China and South Africa – having an average policy score of 42%.
Australia and South Africa achieved the biggest increases in their score, by 11% and 10%, respectively.
