December 2009: The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), Division for Sustainable Development (DSD), has prepared a technical note titled “A Global Green New Deal for Climate, Energy, and Development.”

This publication elaborates on the strategy first presented in the Department’s “World Economic and Social Survey 2009: Promoting Development, Saving the Planet.”

The sub-title for this technical note is “A big push strategy to drive down the cost of renewable energy, ramp up deployment in developing countries, end energy poverty, contribute to economic recovery and growth, generate employment in all countries and help avoid dangerous climate change.” Among its key messages are: energy is the key to economic development and renewable energy is the key to a future without dangerous climate change, but renewable energy is too expensive today; although the price of renewable energy is falling, it will not fall fast enough on its own to help the world win the race against time with dangerous climate change; public policies can help produce the necessary decline in the global price of renewable energy and make it universally affordable in one to two decades; the key mechanism is a rapid increase in installed capacity; and a “big push” in both public and private investment to scale up renewable energy will lead to rapid cost reduction, technology improvement, and learning by doing.[The Technical Note]