November 2014: Noting the remarkable growth in new and expanded multilateral initiatives focused on developing and deploying low-carbon energy technologies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has created a basic analytical framework for systematically mapping these initiatives and their component parts. It lays out the framework and applies it to an indicative list of such initiatives in its report ‘Mapping Multilateral Collaboration on Low-Carbon Energy Technologies.’

The report aims at filling a gap in the current body of work examining the international climate change and energy architecture, little of which attempts to comprehensively map government-led collaborative initiatives and their interactions. The authors outline works that do exist, such as a 2008 paper on technology-focused agreements and a 2013 study on intergovernmental “climate clubs.”

They then explain that their framework for mapping multilateral initiatives examines five elements: mandate and institutional basis; membership; technology focus; scope of activities; and interactions with other initiatives. They apply this framework to 28 entities, including some with cross-cutting technology focuses, some that are sector- or technology-specific, others that have a wider mandate but have an initiative on low-carbon energy technology within their organization.

For example, the authors analyze the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative, Group of Twenty (G20), Organization of American States (OAS), Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) and the IEA itself. [IEA Publication Webpage] [Publication: Mapping Multilateral Collaboration on Low-Carbon Energy Technologies]