IEA Contribution to G20 Energy in 2019

At the request of the government of Japan under its G20 presidency, the IEA has produced a landmark report to analyse the current state of play for hydrogen and to offer guidance on its future development.

The Future of Hydrogen finds that clean hydrogen is currently enjoying unprecedented political and business momentum, with the number of policies and projects around the world expanding rapidly. It concludes that now is the time to scale up technologies and bring down costs to allow hydrogen to become widely used. The pragmatic and actionable recommendations to governments and industry that are provided will make it possible to take full advantage of this increasing momentum.

In the context of its G20 Presidency, the Japanese Government asked the IEA to identify technology and innovation needs to solve energy sector challenges, including key energy transitions technologies and their innovation gaps, as well as the role of public/private financing and international collaboration to overcome gaps and strengthen policies for technology and innovation development, demonstration and deployment.

Rigorous tracking of public and private sector investment on energy technology innovation is vital to better identify gaps and opportunities to enhance the efficiency of resource allocation. Measurement of progress in clean energy innovation needs to go beyond the flow of investment to also focus on performance indicators.

Technology Innovation to Accelerate Energy Transitions sets out around 100 “Innovation Gaps” and identifies specific, key innovation needs in each energy technology area that require additional efforts, including through global collaboration.

The IEA has helped to track trends and identify policies for securing investment in low carbon power generation - one of the key challenges for the decarbonisation of the energy sector, notably in organised power markets.

Based on insights from the IEA’s flagship publication, the World Energy Outlook 2018 and the recent World Energy Investment report 2019, the IEA produced a dedicated report with guidance to policy makers how to accelerate the decarbonisation of the power sector. Securing Investments in Low-Carbon Power Generation Sources sheds light on key priority actions to accelerate energy transitions in the context of G20.

In the context of its G20 Presidency, the Japanese Government asked the IEA to undertake preliminary analysis looking at the efficiencies of certain sectors of large industry, transport and cooling among G20 countries. The focus was on illustrating how greater data sharing could inform current efficiency levels and future enhancement potentials. The IEA mandate was not focused on country comparisons but on the support of enhanced cooperation & collaboration across the G20 to improve the data gathering process (e.g. to eliminate gaps, improve consistency, etc.). This is an essential prerequisite to help governments to better track policy choices & outcomes in energy efficiency.