World Economic Forum: The Moment of Truth for Global Energy Transition is Here
The year 2020 was supposed to be a turning point in the global energy transition. The production and consumption of energy accounts for two-thirds of annual global anthropogenic emissions, making the energy transition central to delivering the promise of the Paris Agreement.
Countries were expected to take stock of their Nationally Determined Contributions to meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals and potentially strengthen their commitments to keeping global temperature increases to well below 2 degrees, with the ambition of reducing this figure to no more than 1.5 degrees. The year 2020 arrived with a sense of gathering momentum as the world entered its decade of delivery.
But over the course of the past few months, we have been up against a low-probability, high-impact catastrophe of global proportions. The speed, scale and intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic caught us off guard, necessitating the reallocation of resources and a collective conviction towards limiting the extent of the damage, and restoring normalcy to the economy and to society as soon as possible.