This report provides an assessment of how governments can generate inclusive economic growth in the short term, while making progress towards climate goals to secure sustainable long-term growth. It describes the development pathways required to meet the Paris Agreement objectives and underlines the value of well-aligned policy packages in mobilising investment and social support for the transition while enhancing growth. The report also sets out the structural, financial and political changes needed to enable the transition.

The perceived potential of clean energy to support employment in the post-crisis recovery context has led several OECD and emerging economies to design green industrial policies aimed at protecting domestic manufacturers, notably through local-content requirements (LCRs). These typically require solar or wind developers to source a specific share of jobs, components or costs locally. Such requirements have been designed or implemented in the solar- and wind-energy sectors in at least 21 countries, including 16 OECD countries and emerging economies, mostly since 2009.

Empirical evidence gathered in this report shows however that LCRs have actually hindered international investment across the solar PV and wind-energy value chains, by increasing the cost of inputs for downstream activities. This report also takes stock of other measures that can restrict international investment in solar PV and wind energy, such as trade remedies and technical barriers. This report provides policy makers with evidence-based analysis to guide their decisions in designing clean-energy support policies.

What are the channels for investment in sustainable energy infrastructure by institutional investors (e.g. pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds) and what factors influence investment decisions? What key policy levers and risk mitigants can governments use to facilitate these types of investments? What emerging channels (such as green bonds, YieldCos and direct project investment) hold significant promise for scaling up institutional investment?

This report develops a framework that classifies investments according to different types of financing instruments and investment funds, and highlights the risk mitigants and transaction enablers that intermediaries (such as public green investment banks and other public financial institutions) can use to mobilise institutionally held capital. This framework can also be used to identify where investments are or are not flowing, and focus attention on how governments can support the development of potentially promising investment channels and consider policy interventions that can make institutional investment in sustainable energy infrastructure more likely.

 

This Inventory is concerned with direct budgetary transfers and tax expenditures that relate to fossil fuels, regardless of their impact or of the purpose for which the measures were first put in place. It has been undertaken as an exercise in transparency, and to inform the international dialogue on fossil-fuel subsidy reform. For each of the 34 OECD countries covered, the Inventory provides a succinct summary of its energy economy, and of the budgetary and tax-related measures provided at the central-government level (and, in the case of federal countries, for selected sub-national units of government) relating to fossil-fuel production or consumption. The transfers associated with these measures are reported for recent years using the Producer Support Estimate (PSE) and Consumer Support Estimate (CSE) as organising frameworks. These frameworks have already been used extensively by the OECD, most notably in respect of agriculture. The Inventory covers a wide range of measures that provide a benefit or preference for a particular activity or a particular product, either in absolute terms or relative to other activities or products, against a specified baseline. Many measures listed in this inventory are relative preferences within a particular country’s tax system rather than absolute support that can be readily compared across countries, and for that reason no national totals are provided.