15 June 2012: The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has released a report titled “Energy for a Shared Development Agenda: Global Scenarios and Governance Implications,” which argues for the integration of energy access, income growth and environmental goals; and analyzes scenarios, barriers and opportunities, and transformations in governance that are needed to achieve this.

The report argues that the goal of sustainable energy for all implies that besides ensuring basic energy access, other policy goals should be integrated, such as income generation for the poor and environmental considerations.

The report presents three scenarios of energy systems change for the period 2009 to 2050, which include a business-as-usual scenario, a scenario in which only energy poverty is addressed, and one in which sustainable income growth is also included. The report finds that to meet energy needs for economic development while respecting environmental constraints, a massive transformation of socio-technical systems is needed, and provides case studies of barriers and opportunities of such change in basic energy access, low carbon energy supply, and energy efficiency.

The report also assesses the required transformations in governance at global, national and subnational levels to overcome these barriers, focusing on: the institutionalization of energy access and efficiency goals in the UN system; the coherence of policy goals, such as energy access, energy efficiency and renewable energy, with other political priorities; sequencing the use of policy instruments instead of using them as one-off trials; and the need for transparency in the ways climate finance and overseas development assistance (ODA) commitments contribute to investment in sustainable energy for all.

The study serves as a contribution to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) and was initiated in 2010 following a request by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). [SEI Press Release] [Publication: Energy for a Shared Development Agenda: Global Scenarios and Governance Implications]