“High Growth，Low Carbon”： How“Summer Davos”is Taking Us Gree
Leaders from around the world will negotiate a new international climate deal in December in Copenhagen. They face a twofold challenge: first, to set international targets that signal clear political intent to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous levels of climate change; second, to set the world onto a pathway of low-carbon economic growth.
This high-growth, low-carbon challenge will not be easily resolved. The negotiations in December will be complex, but some things are crystal clear: for economic growth to recover, the world economy needs a new technological path. A development strategy based on high-carbon energy sources will not create durable, resilient economic growth; it perpetuates a world economic model that will ultimately choke itself on rising hydrocarbon prices and a hostile physical environment created by climate change. To ensure our future prosperity, we need a high-growth, but also low-carbon, economy.
How do we get there?
At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2009, in Dalian, People's Republic of China, business leaders and experts in finance, economics and sustainability issues from Asia and around the world will meet to discuss exactly this issue. This year's Meeting is designed to be a gathering of the world's leading entrepreneurs, fast-growing multinational businesses, new policy-makers and technology pioneers, all with a keen interest in building the new green economy - the public and private "green champions" of tomorrow. Across a range of sessions, debates and workshops, they will explore the financing, innovation and sustainability breakthroughs that will be required to make real the shift to a high-growth, low-carbon economic strategy. Business, experts, NGOs, academic and government officials will talk together and in depth about how to actually build the key pieces of the low-carbon economy, brick by brick - smart grids, clean coal, the scale-up of solar, wind and biofuels, energy efficiency, new information technology solutions, greening supply chains - and, underpinning all of this, how to link these bricks by drawing in investment for all of them from the private capital markets.
Importantly, these talks will focus not on why these things should take place, but instead on how - in very practical terms - to make them happen.
This year's Meeting in Dalian is able to have such a dynamic, focused and practical green agenda because business leaders around the world, especially the new champions of tomorrow, are increasingly convinced of the long-term growth potential of the low-carbon economy. The scale of new jobs, technologies, practices, services and products required to make the shift happen is actually vast. Work by the United Nations Environment Programme suggests that millions of new "green collar" jobs could be created in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Recent plans in India to greatly increase solar power capacity, in South Korea to implement smart grids and in China to focus on wind, energy efficiency, cleaner coal and greener cities indicate the future growth areas of the world economy. The high-growth, low-carbon path is a route to growth that involves the latest technologies, the newest financial innovations and a potential step change in investment into new, productive assets and infrastructure for emerging and developing economies. It is an agenda for prosperity.
But there is much practical work still to do, to turn the high-growth, low-carbon promise into a reality. Neither governments nor businesses can make this a reality on their own. To build the green economy, positive and long-term signals are required by governments. It is also necessary to invest in and inspire a new green wave of innovation, expertise and entrepreneurial talent. To accelerate the economic transformation, new ways of working across the public and private sectors are needed, fast.
This is why Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the G20 chair for 2009, invited the World Economic Forum to bring together over 140 multinational companies, investors, banks, international organizations, think tanks, NGOs and universities from all sectors and regions of the world economy to explore how to speed up and scale up low-carbon economic growth. This task force has been working on a detailed set of recommendations: Its first findings will be reported at the time of the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in late September.
This is important and practical work. Banks and investors in the task force are exploring new ideas of how international capital markets could mobilize the finance that developing countries will need to meet their clean energy needs. Technology and industrial specialists are looking at new models for large-scale public-private partnerships to develop, demonstrate and deploy the latest low-carbon and energy-efficiency technologies. Regulatory and economic policy specialists are looking at new ways to address intellectual property, carbon pricing and legal structures to help unleash a rapid diffusion of low-carbon technologies and investment, especially into emerging and developing economies. Other companies and think tank specialists are looking at the challenge of creating greater economic gain from lower emission land use practices, and the practical ways that economic growth and public investment can be stimulated from the necessary process of adapting to climate change.
The Meeting in Dalian will be the first time that the recommendations of the task force will be presented, discussed and debated. There will be sessions on how to get climate finance flowing, how to demonstrate and deploy clean coal technologies and how to scale up smart grids and investment in renewable energies. There will be specific workshops on investment, innovation and sustainability in the value chain. There will be debates about every key low-carbon recommendation the task force has thus far developed, involving international and government officials, including from China and other parts of Asia, as well as mayors and provincial government leaders.
The Meeting takes place at a crucial time: Less than three weeks before the G20 summit in Pittsburgh and less than three months before the negotiations in Copenhagen. As talks intensify on the need for sustained economic recovery and on the need for a new international climate deal, many more public-private discussions like those that will take place in Dalian will be needed. From a green economy perspective, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2009 promises to be an unprecedented gathering of minds. We look forward to it being the event where high-growth, low-carbon discussions become the mainstream economic growth agenda.
