During his recent trip to China for BRICS 2050 Neil Hirst delivered a speech to the Beijing Energy Club on global energy governance reform.

Neil Hirst, senior Policy Fellow at the Grantham Institute recently attended the “BRICS 2050” conference in Beijing. The conference, organised by China’s Energy Research Institute, showcased China’s new 2050 pathways calculator to delegates from the emerging BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).

Based on DECC’s UK 2050 calculator, this tool allows policy makers and others to test different technological pathways towards a low-carbon economy in China by 2050. A prototype of the tool has been reviewed by the Grantham Institute, who (in partnership with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) recently undertook their own study into China’s energy technology options to 2050. A full copy of the report is available here: www.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange/publications/reports.

Building on this work, it is hoped that other BRICS countries will be encouraged to develop their own 2050 calculators in order to explore different strategies to decarbonise their rapidly growing economies. The Grantham Institute has recently completed an analysis (in partnership with University College London) on India’s energy technologies to 2050, a report on which will be published soon.

During his trip to China Mr Hirst delivered a speech to the Beijing Energy Club on global energy governance reform. In his speech Mr Hirst talked about the reforms that need to be made to multilateral agreements on energy policy.  The presentation was a reflection of the outputs from an international workshop on energy governance held at Chatham House, and co-sponsored by the Grantham Institute.  Mr Hirst discussed the need for global energy governance, the current structures in place to support this and possible reforms. He concluded that stronger and more inclusive institutions of global energy governance are needed to tackle the energy problems that we face today.

The full speech can be viewed here.