Energy transition and Renewables

Pursuing efforts to decarbonize economies and increase energy systems’ resilience is crucial to stay within global warming limits and fight the consequences of climate change, which are becoming increasingly acute. The transition to a net-zero economy will be commodityintensive and require significant quantities of critical minerals, defined as metals and nonmetals essential to high-tech sectors. As the shift to cleaner technologies progresses, supply of critical minerals for the en ...

Emerging market and developing economies (EMDE) face a common set of external shocks: rising energy and food prices; tightening in global financial conditions caused by the prospect of sharper interest rate hikes and anticipation of "quantitative tightening"; and return of restrictions on mobility in China, on account of the Covid zero policy, leading to slumping in growth and weakening one of the primary growth drivers for the other EMDE. However, the impacts of those common shocks ...

The 2021 German federal election brought about a historic reshuffle of the political parties’ hierarchy in Europe’s biggest economy. The Social Democratic Party are back in control of the Chancellery for the first time since 2005, as part of a three-party coalition at the federal level with the Greens and the Liberals, a first in Germany’s post-war history. Now, the federal government has turned its gaze towards its founding mission: more progress. The first 100 days of the three-pa ...

Known for being a climate change hotspot, Morocco is at the forefront of a climate disaster. Consequences are already being felt, whether in the form of increasing temperature or a downward trend in precipitations, which directly threaten the water security and, by extension, the social-ecological systems of the country. The systems by which food, energy, and water are produced, distributed, and consumed heavily depend on one another. Their implicit feedbacks and links are not linea ...

Si les liens existant entre l’exportation de matières premières et l’industrialisation sont étudiés depuis longtemps, l’entrée résolue de l’économie mondiale dans l’ère de la transition environnementale et numérique leur offre une dimension toute particulière. L’évidence de la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique par la décarbonation de notre monde ne saurait, en effet, faire oublier toute la complexité de la stratégie à adopter pour y parvenir. Il s’agit, pour l ...

Energy markets have experienced significant disruptions since the outbreak of COVID-19. In late 2021, soaring natural gas prices triggered a new crisis, leading to risks of energy supply shortages worldwide and propelling the issue of energy security to the forefront. Africa will not be spared the repercussions of this crisis, which could further increase energy inequality, which is in turn linked to other forms of inequality. Indeed, in a context of persistent inflation, the lack o ...

As part of the lengthy fight against climate change, the European Union (EU) has introduced a Border Carbon Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), among its "Fit for 55" package, intended to deliver the EU's intermediate target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. This proposal is deemed "bold, complicated, even controversial." If implemented, it will undoubtedly disrupt trade relations between the EU and its main partners and transform energy dynamics i ...

Addressing the increasing demands for water, energy, and food requires a coherent methodology to ensure that  societies have access to them and that conflict over them is avoided. For example, agriculture and food production  require water and energy; energy production also requires water and, in some instances, agricultural products.  Water distribution and treatment can be very energy intensive. Therefore, the benefits of approaching the Water- Energy-Food (WEF) nexus in an integr ...

 Accelerating the transition toward low or net-zero carbon emissions is necessary to keep global warming at theoretically safe levels. That will likely bring price shocks associated with rising metal prices, energy costs, and carbon taxes – what has been called “greenflation”. Greening the economy will also require public spending and redistributive policies. ...

Si le recours aux énergies renouvelables ne peut que croître, doit-on symétriquement considérer que le gaz naturel est, à l’instar du pétrole et du charbon, une énergie du passé ? Cette question simple en apparence, appelant une réponse tranchée et nécessairement positive au regard de l’impératif climatique, de la nécessité de décarboner nos économies, mais également des engagements politiques pris dans ce sens par de nombreuses nations. Le bien-fondé environnemental de ce raisonnem ...