Page 65 - Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Moreover, during this transition to renewable energies, comprehensive assessments of the potential
impacts of energy facilities throughout their life cycle (construction, operation and decommissioning)
and adequate monitoring are important. The UNECE Convention on Environmental Assessment in a
Transboundary Context (Espoo Convention) and its Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment
(Protocol on SEA) promote key tools for assessing and managing the impacts of infrastructure or
technologies (e.g. energy infrastructure) – for example, environmental impact assessments (EIA) for
individual energy development projects and strategic environmental assessments (SEA) for energy
policies, plans and legislation.

A practical approach is to pilot and implement frontier technologies at the city level and then scale
up to regional/provincial level and then to national level. This can only be achieved through public
private partnerships. Due to the economic dominance (partly through subsidization) and influence of
the global fossil fuel industries, the next generation of technologies in solar, wind and energy storage,
as well as other emerging clean technologies, may attract less private investment in the absence of
public and governmental support. A recent paper made the case for continued innovation in solar,
wind, and energy storage and recommended: ‘Well-designed policies would spread public funding
across a diverse range of technologies and phase out that support as technologies mature, ensuring
maximal return on public investments in innovation.’ 201

There is certainly an economic case to be made for the research, prototyping, development and
deployment of clean energy technologies. In his 2017 policy paper ‘The irreversible momentum of
clean energy’, former U.S. President Barack H. Obama made the case for the ‘decoupling’ of energy
sector emissions and economic growth by concluding: ‘We have long known, on the basis of a massive
scientific record, that the urgency of acting to mitigate climate change is real and cannot be ignored.
In recent years, we have also seen that the economic case for action – and against inaction – is just
as clear, the business case for clean energy is growing, and the trend toward a cleaner power sector
can be sustained regardless of near-term federal policies.’ Previous research has established the
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case for clean energy technologies on the basis of observed improved health outcomes through the
active mitigation of the existing environmental consequences of climate change. 203

Adoption of emerging clean energy technologies is already being made possible by innovation-driven
regional and international public and private partnerships. There is increasing interest in offshore

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