The nexus between nationally determined contributions and technology needs assessments: a global analysis

Abstract

The role of technology in combatting climate change through mitigation and adaptation to its inevitable impacts have been acknowledged and highlighted by the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the developing world, this has received particular attention through the Technology Needs Assessment (TNA) process.As Parties put forward their national pledges to combat climate change, the scarcity of resources makes it important to assess (i) whether national processes designed to tackle climate change are working together and (ii) whether existing national processes should be terminated with the initiation of new ones. This study presents an assessment of the existing TNA process and its linkages to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), soon to enter implementation. The conclusions stem from an assessment of the TNAs completed to date, as well as 71 NDCs from developing countries at various stages of the TNA process. The analyses show that further developing the TNAs could play a vital role in filling gaps in the existing NDCs, specifically those relating to identifying appropriate technologies, their required enabling framework conditions and preparing implementation plans for their transfer and diffusion. Key Policy Insights:(1) The full potential of the TNAs has still to be rolled out in many countries.(2) Developing countries can better maximize the potential of their TNAs by (a) further developing them to explicitly analyse what is needed to implement existing NDCs and support their future strengthening so that their outlined targets can be achieved, and (b) better aligning focus, scope and up-to-dateness of the TNAs to be more consistent with the priority sectors included in the NDCs.(3) The request of developing countries for international assistance, through technology transfer, will be better guided by the completion of the TNA process.(4) Policies for implementing and strengthening the NDCs will benefit from the results of completed, ongoing and future TNA processes.

Policy goals, partisanship and paradigmatic change in energy policy – analyzing parliamentary discourse in Germany over 30 years

“…To foster opportunity-seeking, international finance institutions, such as the Green Climate Fund or the World Bank, should base their selection of policies or projects to support not only on the criteria of emission reductions and abatement cost but also on the creation of a local low-carbon industry. Similarly, in technology needs assessments (Charlery & Traerup, 2019), the UN Technology Mechanism should highlight where, in low-carbon industry value chains, countries can realize economic opportunities. Also, large parts of the climate consulting industry seems to be very much focused on climate benefits and co-benefits for the local environment and security of supply.…”

The risk of carbon leakage in global climate agreements

“…NDCs are increasingly being used to analyze countries' positions or the role of certain issue areas in the climate negotiations (cf. Pauw et al 2016;Charlery and Traerup 2019). Manual coding was used as this allows a reflective iterative process between the data material and coding (cf.…”

Technology needs assessment for climate change adaptation: Experiences of Mauritius and Seychelles

“…The limited financial resources limit the sectoral scope of the TNA. This relatively small budget does not position the TNA project favorably in terms of time commitment within the larger portfolio of projects in the public institution or ministry managing the TNA; • The process is heavily dependent on national consultants thereby constraining the scope for institutional strengthening and updating existing TAPs; and (Charlery and Traerup 2019). Without going into the merits or otherwise of these diverging views, the synthetic approach used here is to assess the effectiveness of the TNA process from both perspectives.…”