Energytransition: Prioritizing Pragmatism

The energy transition is entering a new phase driven by economic pragmatism. Maintaining momentum will likely require significant collaboration and new financing mechanisms.

Energy transition is an important climate imperative. As the source of about 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the energy sector holds the key to responding to the world's climate challenge.¹ Given the criticality of this sector as an economic engine, the transition needs to be looked at from the lens of supply security, affordability and sustainability.

Economic viability has always underpinned investments in sustainable technology. Just look at the uptake of solar and wind, for example. It wasn't until the cost of these technologies became comparative to traditional fossil fuel generation in the late 2010s that uptake really took off. That sparked a frenzy of capacity installation — Vietnam, for example, installed some 16.6 GW of solar between 2018 and 2020 alone² — driven