I thoroughly enjoyed being part of Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week 2021 held virtually this week. I am always proud to see the Caribbean demonstrate strong leadership, technical expertise, and progressiveness in climate negotiation. We may be challenged by size, scale, access to finance, and our particularly climate-vulnerable economies, but Caribbean leaders are showing themselves to be serious about our own mitigation targets, and in lobbying for climate vulnerable communities the world over.
What was clear to me from Climate Week is that the Caribbean is going to COP 26 with some clear goals: to put the pressure on more ambitious NDC targets from larger emitters; to prioritize negotiations on adaptation, loss & damage; to secure commitments for blended forms of adaptation finance; and to support consensus on a carbon market mechanism; and to push from commitments to action.
Speaking of climate finance, while we know that renewables and storage are a big part of building economic and physical resilience for the islands, the question remains how to grow these markets faster? What actually works best and why? Our latest study, which also came out this week, uses a fixed effects method to understand correlation between energy policies implemented across the Caribbean and their impact on expanded RE capacity. I did this research with colleagues at UC Berkeley and RLI in Germany. I think this is an important study because the Caribbean is usually lumped into “Latin America & the Caribbean” on policy studies, so the nuance of how policy measures behave in our specific contexts can often be lost. Alongside other factors, this can limit our ability to optimize policy design, target public finance, and send efficient signals to the private sector.Â
To our knowledge, this study is the most rigorous statistical analysis on RE policy done for the Caribbean, and the most comprehensive and up-to-date database of RE policies currently active in the region. Our study finds that feed-in-tariffs and net-metering policy have actually been the most effective policy mechanisms in unlocking RE growth in the region thus far (see figure above). We share hypotheses and specific case studies in the paper. The full RE policy database is available (contact me if interested). I hope applied studies like this can be useful data and insight for our policy-makers, working hard to create a future where we do not just survive, but thrive in this changing climate as a Caribbean community.
Find our article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112340