Metrics for the sustainable development goals: renewable energy and transportation

Abstract

The private sector is interested in contributing to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); however, they lack credible objective metrics to measure progress, which hinders making a case for financial investing toward the SDGs. A set of science-based metrics could allow corporations and interested investors to meaningfully align their actions with the SDGs in locations around the world where they can make the greatest positive impact. Using existing data on country-level electricity generation and land transportation, we develop a set of simple-to-implement and user-friendly metrics to evaluate the benefits that investments in renewable electricity generation and improvements in land transportation can make toward reducing CO 2 and air pollutant emissions and the health impacts of air pollution. We then apply these metrics to a set of renewable electricity companies and find meaningful differences in their progress toward the SDGs on health, energy, and climate. We found that under half of the renewable energy companies in our dataset disclose country-level data on where equipment is being sold, and that there is substantial variability in the CO 2 reductions and health benefits of renewable energy based on where these companies have installed capacity. There was not a close statistical relationship between country CO 2 emissions rates and country health impact rates, indicating that these metrics cannot serve as good proxies for one another. Future improvements to this methodology should be to implement explicit tracking of air pollution from sources to the locations where it has eventual health impacts, updating the underlying dataset, and improving the degree of detail in emissions inventories. Application of this methodology across the renewable energy sector is limited by the availability of country-level data on where a company has renewable energy capacity installed. The methodology developed here can serve as a basis for better measurement of progress toward climate, energy, and healthrelated SDGs in financial investing and other applications.

An analytical framework to assess SDG targets within the context of WEFE nexus in the Mediterranean region

“…This also confirms the general belief that SDGs 6 and 7 have the highest number of potential synergies ( Buonocore et al., 2019 ; Fader et al., 2018 ). Therefore, achieving SDG water and energy targets will allow achieving other targets, and thus a more sustainable WEFE nexus.…”

“…This can be explained by the fact that SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) is fundamentally linked to all other SDGs ( Buonocore et al., 2019 ). As matter of fact, the use of clean energy helps in addressing climate change and ensure healthy lives (SDGs 3 and 13), as well as in preserving life in water and on land (SDGs 6, 14, and 15) providing clean water and sanitation ( Fuso Nerini et al., 2018 ; McCollum et al., 2018 ).…”

Improving state support schemes for the sustainable development of renewable energy in Ukraine

“…Available and clean energy). The "Sustainable Development Goals" (SDGs, also known as the Global Goals) are critical areas for the development of the countries approved at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development (Buonocore et al 2019). They replaced the Millennium Development Goals, which expired at the end of 2015.…”

Impact of Renewable Energy Utilization and Artificial Intelligence in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

“…2) by weighting the appropriateness of the evidence provided in every reference to evaluate an affinity (the interlinking) with respect to the targets assessed (in percentage), as explained in the Methods section at the end of this study. 11,20 . However, RE utilization with environmental impact has limited negative effect, especially in marine renewable sources 21,22 .…”

“…The RE utilization and AI-based RE have a role in the future of sustainability either for long-or short-term. Based on the literature, the potential effects of RE and AI-based RE show positive effects on sustainable development while the RE utilization may have some negative impacts 8,11,12 . Some recent studies focused on linking the relationship between the achievement of the 7th goal (affordable and clean energy) of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and RE 3,13 .…”