5 Ways that City-focused Climate Funds Drive Building Energy Efficiency

Great article on reducing emissions in major hubs.

We will be cutting back on how often we post new blogs,but we appreciate our many followers and readers.  Thank you.

5 Ways that City-focused Climate Funds Drive Building Energy Efficiency

September 6, 2017  |  By

• Lisa Khanna
• Jeff Waller

For the first time in history, half of the world’s population lives in cities. Cities hold economic weight, inspire a sense of belonging and loyalty (just ask a Red Sox fan), and are hubs for innovation and investment. And increasingly, cities are focusing on what can be done at the local level to promote clean, healthy, and prosperous communities and stepping up to the plate with commitments like America’s Pledge to meet Paris climate goals in the absence of a firm federal commitment. Through these bold acts, cities are making possible more ambitious action at the state and national level.

City-focused climate funds, which finance projects in a city that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase resiliency, can provide positive environmental, economic, and health impacts. Such funds, including New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation (NYCEEC), The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) in Toronto, the London Green Fund (LGF), and Sustainable Melbourne Fund (SMF), have been able to create a substantial impact relative to the monies they have deployed by focusing on delivering value beyond access to capital alone. Other cities are joining the trend: in 2018, the City of Boston plans to launch Renew Boston Trust, which aims to use a market-based, self-funding model to increase energy efficiency investments and climate resiliency in its commercial and municipal buildings, nonprofit institutions, and multi-family properties.

Typically, these entities are revolving funds designed to be self-sufficient: interest and principal repayments are used to deploy new loans. Initial funding sources for these entities vary from government funds to utility incentives to private capital. Depending on the city, these climate funds have varying relationships to local government, from a unit of the municipality to full independence. These funds tend to target market-level returns, although some may be willing to make below market investments or provide more flexible terms in pursuit of GHG reduction goals. With slight modifications to address city-specific needs, existing city climate funds can scale to many other cities in the United States and around the world.

While city climate funds can provide financing for a range of clean tech and efficiency projects, we focus here on efficiency financing for large and mid-sized commercial buildings given the considerable role that buildings play in a city’s overall emissions. Indeed, while buildings contribute to roughly 40 percent of overall U.S. emissions, in big cities like New York and Chicago they can contribute up to 70 percent. Although construction of green buildings, which we define as those that go meaningfully beyond existing building codes to meet specific environmental goals, is becoming increasingly popular, the existing building stock faces barriers to implementing meaningful energy efficiency measures. Fortunately, well-structured city-specific funds can help overcome those barriers.

Barriers to Energy Efficiency Investment and Financing

The barriers to investing in building energy performance are well known and documented across multiple studies and industry stakeholder surveys. While certain barriers are more prominent in certain cities based on market demographics and realities, the challenges faced in driving increased investment in energy efficiency are largely consistent irrespective of location. These include:

Access to capital: Building owners may encounter a lack of financing options or high-cost financing that does not reflect the risk profile of energy efficiency projects; this can be particularly acute for small borrowers and small projects.

Insufficient payback or return: Projects may not meet a building owner’s (or lender’s) return thresholds, due to high upfront costs and/or long payback periods, as well as uncertainty of returns.

Landlord-tenant split incentives: Roughly half of all commercial buildings are leased. Building owners are unlikely to invest in efficiency if its tenants stand to capture all the benefits (in terms of lower utility bills).

Performance (savings) uncertainty: Building owners and financiers may not have sufficient confidence in the forecasted energy savings.

Uncertainty of re-sale value: Owners lack assurance that the real estate market will appropriately value efficiency investments. This is particularly true if the investment payback period is longer than the owner expects to hold the building. Therefore, owners may not invest in efficiency unless the financing instrument can be easily transferred to a subsequent owner upon sale.

Lack of technical expertise: Both building owners and financiers may not have the necessary technical understanding of energy efficiency measures to make informed investment and lending decisions.

Fragmented, small borrowers: The market for buildings is quite fragmented. Owners of small building portfolios may not have the right banking relationships to help finance energy efficiency projects, and financiers looking for scale may not have interest in financing those small projects.

Standardization: These projects often lack the type of standardization that banks rely on to build a pipeline of transactions to finance.

Lack of awareness or prioritization: Building owners may not be aware of energy efficiency opportunities, or they may not prioritize these opportunities if they don’t adequately understand the costs and benefits.

Five Key Ways City Climate Funds Can Address Barriers

While these barriers have traditionally held back energy efficiency financing, the public and private sector alike have a massive opportunity to capture a $290 billion opportunity in net present value in commercial buildings alone available from energy savings—while also creating better indoor and outdoor environments, improving the value of real estate assets, and enabling more competitive and vibrant city centers.
City-specific funds provide five key ways to address these barriers:

1. Access to alternative and innovative financing:

City climate funds can provide building owners with more than capital. They offer innovative financing products that address multiple barriers. Importantly, these funds can provide financing approaches that:

• Address landlord-tenant split incentives by shifting repayment obligations to the tenants who benefit from the landlord’s investment in energy conservation measures.
• Absorb performance risk through tools like energy services agreements in which the building owner only pays for actual energy reduction.
• Tie debt to property ownership/tenancy through on-bill repayment mechanisms or property assessed clean energy.
• Provide off-balance sheet solutions to allow building owners to avoid additional debt at the corporate level.
• Reduce upfront costs, including installation, due diligence, and financing costs, in order to improve project economics.

For example, the Sustainable Melbourne Fund has implemented environmental upgrade agreements, which allow tenants to contribute to the repayment of the efficiency investment through savings on their utility bill. The energy savings performance agreement model developed by TAF in Toronto allows building owners to pay none of the upfront cost of the efficiency investment and to receive 10 percent of the savings for 10 years (with 90 percent going to TAF) and 100 percent thereafter.

2. Technical support: The NYCEEC provides technical assistance in addition to financing. This in-house technical expertise allows NYCEEC to assist with energy audits and technical assessments, providing building owners who lack this technical expertise with much needed support in evaluating which projects to undertake.
3. Simplification: As a centralized resource, city climate funds can reduce complexity and be a hub for information on available incentives, rebates, green building certification, regulation, and economics that is tailored for the local market. This valuable local resource helps reduce information gaps for building owners for whom dedicating time and human capital to energy efficiency may not be a top priority.
4. Aggregation and standardization: A city climate fund can aggregate many small projects with similar characteristics to reduce overall financing costs as well as drive standardization of documentation and deal structures. The narrow geographic focus of these funds makes this type of aggregation easier.
5. Mobilization of private investment: City climate funds have demonstrated success in mobilizing private investment alongside the funds’ capital. By structuring energy efficiency loan products and undertaking technical due diligence, city funds open up a path to participation for market lenders with little expertise in the relevant technologies and their performance. For example, the London Green Fund brought in private investors such as local banks to achieve its targeted GHG reduction goals.

In addressing these barriers, city climate funds are able to meet existing demand for energy efficiency projects and, by their very presence, can spur increased demand for these measures. The availability of financing structures targeted to the local market, buoyed by other forms of relevant support, can provide the resources and motivation necessary to encourage building owners to undertake energy efficiency projects—and perhaps to be more ambitious in their efficiency targets.

RMI’s Sustainable Finance program stands ready to support cities, building owners, and impact investors seeking to establish innovative mechanisms that transform energy efficiency retrofit projects into bankable opportunities that revitalize buildings, create healthier work environments, and help cities meet their climate goals. Stay tuned for a forthcoming Insight Brief on additional opportunities for cities to drive climate leadership starting with the built environment, and the financing mechanisms that are unlocked by thinking and acting big on climate.

Department of Energy Announces $34 Million for Innovation Building Technologies Research and Development/RNN

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $34.5 million in funding to support building technology research and development (R&D). Buildings are the single largest energy-consuming sector in the U.S. economy, representing approximately 75% of the nation’s electricity use and 40% of its total energy demand, resulting in Americans spending nearly $400 billion each year to power homes, offices, schools, hospitals, and other commercial and residential buildings.

The Energy Department’s Building Technologies Office (BTO) is issuing two funding opportunities: Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) 2018 and Solid-State Lighting Research. These funding announcements will further the Administration’s goal to drive U.S. technology leadership in solid-state lighting as well as develop innovative energy saving technologies, systems, tools, and models that could lead to significant reduction in building energy consumption by supporting innovative research in several topic areas.

BENEFIT 2018 will fund up to $19.5 million for approximately 15-25 cost-shared projects focused on early-stage R&D to enable the development of novel technologies that can improve efficiency, reduce the energy costs of the nation’s buildings, and facilitate interaction with the electricity grid. Under this funding opportunity, BTO is interested in six topic areas:

• Topic 1 – Advanced Separation Technologies for Building Energy Efficiency
  Development of Innovative separation technologies, such as membranes and ad/ab-sorption technologies, capable of significantly improving building energy efficiency in HVAC, water heating and appliances, and building envelope applications.
• Topic 2 – Advanced Building Materials
  Development of smart, tunable, and highly insulating building envelope materials to enable significant reductions in cooling and heating loads.
• Topic 3 – High-Performance Windows
  Development of highly insulating R7 to R10 window technologies, as well as advanced coatings for dynamic glazing.
• Topic 4 – Novel Approaches for Cyber-physical Systems in Buildings
  New and enhanced synergies at the nexus of building energy modeling and Sensors and Controls that together cover portions of the building cyber-physical space.
• Topic 5 – Integration Research of Advanced Commercial Energy Efficiency Packages
  Testing of next-generation building systems and equipment that improve efficiency across two or more building end uses in real-world operating conditions.
• Topic 6 – Advancements in Natural Gas and Other Fuel-driven Equipment
  Innovative solutions that significantly improve the energy efficiency of natural gas and other fuel-driven equipment and achieve a coefficient of performance of greater than 1.0.

Concept papers for BENEFIT are due no later than June 8, 2018 and full applications are due August 23, 2018. BTO will host a webinar for this funding opportunity on May 8, 2018 (register here).

The second funding opportunity, Solid-State Lighting (SSL) Research, will fund up to $15 million for  approximately 10-15 cost-shared projects to conduct early-stage, innovative research to drive further breakthroughs in solid-state lighting technology. This funding will accelerate the development of high-quality light-emitting diode (LED) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) products with the potential to reduce lighting energy use for American families and businesses and to enhance U.S. global competitiveness. Under this funding opportunity, BTO is interested in four topic areas:

• Topic 1 – Core Technology Research for LEDs, OLEDs, and Cross-Cutting Lighting Research
  These projects will develop innovative advancements in the underlying science for SSL technology, demonstrating scientific principles, technical application, and application benefits related to physiological impacts of light and light utilization efficiency.
• Topic 2 – Proof-of-Concept and Prototype Development for LEDs and OLEDs
  These projects will pursue early-stage research to contribute to the development of SSL prototypes as well as advanced proof-of-concept SSL materials, devices, and luminaires. Research in this area will focus on high-efficacy LED prototypes, advanced LED lighting, LED power electronics, OLED light engines, OLED prototype lighting platforms, and OLED panel light extraction and utilization.
• Topic 3 – Advanced Fabrication R&D
  These projects will focus on the underlying chemical and physical aspects of SSL fabrication, exploring LED advanced fabrication approaches, OLED substrate and encapsulation fabrication, and OLED panel fabrication.
• Topic 4 – Innovative Lighting in a Limited Mock Field Application
  These projects will assess innovative lighting system solutions in limited mock field application settings. The technical resources and data sets developed will ultimately help researchers refine or refocus early-stage research and development of SSL-based devices, luminaires, and systems.

Full applications for SSL are due June 18, 2018. BTO will host a webinar for this funding opportunity on May 7, 2018 (register here).

For Tomorrow's Show: Elon Sustainability

We welcome Elaine Durr, Director of Sustainability for Elon University, to our program on Wed.  Join us as she talks live with us from 1-2p, ET.



Elon Sustainability

Sustainability explores the dynamic interconnections among environmental, social and economic systems in order to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Sustainability is an institution-wide effort and a key objective of the Elon Commitment strategic plan. Elon’s success in achieving its sustainability goals largely depends upon every member of the campus community taking an active role.

From operations to educational programs, sustainability is integrated throughout campus and campus life. Elon's environmental sustainability efforts are guided by the Sustainability Master Plan.

Elon is a STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System) participant. The STARS program measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education.

Campus Initiatives: Overview

Here is a quick overview of programs associated with some of Elon’s sustainability initiatives. This list is not comprehensive. Click on Campus Initiatives on the left sidebar to explore in more detail the many ways sustainability is addressed in each area.

Programs

Creating a More Sustainable Workplace. This Program is offered by the Office of Sustainability, in partnership with the Office of Leadership and Professional Development. Participants learn about Elon’s sustainability program and how they can be a Sustainability Leader in their office.

Don't Trash It! This campaign diverts unwanted, usable items from the landfill. Clothing, housewares and other gently used items are collected during student move-out and donated to local non-profit organizations.

Earth Week. Elon celebrates Earth Day every April with Earth Week, a series of sustainability-related events sponsored by different student organizations and the Office of Sustainability. Elon has hosted a number of nationally recognized speakers in previous years including Annie Leonard, Anna Lappé and Colin Beavan (No Impact Man), Hunter Lovins, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Dani Nierenberg, Eileen Claussen and Dr. Robert Bullard.

Phoenix Cup. A series of competitions in the fall and spring aimed at reducing our ecological Phoenix footprint.

Pledge. Help reduce our collective impact on the environment by commiting to three simple, positve changes in your own life.

Sustainability Faculty Scholars. This program supports faculty who are interested in incorporating the principles of sustainability into their courses.

Sustainability Research Scholars. Students who perform research related to sustainability at Elon University are eligible to apply for a $1,000 grant.

Share the Ride NC. Elon has an online rideshare community to facilitate carpooling. Members of the Elon community can post a ride and be matched with other Elon community members heading in the same direction.

Zipcar. Students, faculty and staff can become Zipcar members for access to on-demand cars by the hour or day. It's an affordable, self-service car rental with vehicles parked on campus. 

84% of Massachusetts Residents Want the Freedom to Choose Clean Energy/RNN

Public support and public outcry for change can move mountains.  That is exactly what we need to combat the worse affects of climate change.  Here we see the Sate of MA garnering citizen support for clean energy.

Not a surprise, then, that MA has one of the best clean energy plans in the country, and is getting flooded with investment dollars in renewable projects.  And the good news for those investors--the returns are great.

A new poll shows that Massachusetts residents overwhelmingly want to be able to choose their energy supplier, choose clean energy, and want more renewable energy in the Massachusettspower system. The poll commissioned by CleanChoice Energy, a renewable energy company providing 100% clean electricity, was conducted by SurveyUSA. SurveyUSA interviewed 550 Massachusetts adults who rent or own their home, pay their utility bills, and have at least some input on the household choice of their utility company. Support for clean energy choice cut across the typical partisan divide with both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agreeing that they want to be able to choose clean energy. To date, CleanChoice Energy has helped Bay Staters reduce air and carbon pollution by 142 million pounds by switching to 100% renewable energy.

Highlights from the new survey:

• 84% of Massachusetts residents want to be able to choose clean, renewable energy as a source for their home.
• 83% of Bay Staters want to be able to choose who provides their electricity.
• 74% of Massachusetts residents would be interested in 100% of their electricity being renewable energy if provided the option.
• 81% of residents want the right to choose an alternative provider even if their city or town has selected a provider through a municipal aggregation program.
• Bay State residents overwhelmingly support the Renewable Energy Service Company (RESCO) model for clean energy delivery (77%), more than rooftop solar (48%) and other home efficiency products and smart thermostats (68%)....

MORE AT RENEWABLE NOW.com:  https://www.renewablenownetwork.com/84-of-massachusetts-residents-want-the-freedom-to-choose-clean-energy/

There’s a Climate Bomb Under Your Feet

This is a great follow up to a story we ran earlier this week that equally profiled the importance of soil to our general environmental conditions.

There’s a Climate Bomb Under Your Feet

Soil locks away carbon just as the oceans do. But that lock is getting picked as the atmosphere warms and development accelerates.

ByEric Roston

Long before most people ever heard of climate change, scientists divided a patch of Harvard University-owned forest in central Massachusetts into 18 identical 6-meter by 6-meter squares. A canopy of red maple and black oak trees hangs there, looming above the same stony soil tilled by colonial farmers. Rich in organic material, it was exactly what the researchers were looking for.
They broke the land up into six blocks of three squares each. In every block, one square was left alone, one was threaded with heating cables that elevated its temperature 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above the surrounding area. The third square was threaded with cables but never turned on, as a control.

That was 26 years ago. The purpose was to measure how carbon dioxide may escape from the earth as the atmosphere warms. What they found, published yesterday in the journal Science, may mean the accelerating catastrophe of global warming has been fueled in part by warm dirt. As the Earth heats up, microbes in the soil accelerate the breakdown of organic materials and move on to others that may have once been ignored, each time releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Extrapolating from their forest study, the researchers estimate that over this century the warming induced from global soil loss, at the rate they monitored, will be “equivalent to the past two decades of carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and is comparable in magnitude to the cumulative carbon losses to the atmosphere due to human-driven land use change during the past two centuries.”

Taking care of the planet’s soil is “critical for stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations”

The good news, however, is that the research community is now fully on the case. Over the past week, at least four high-profile papers largely funded by the U.S. government have contributed new evidence, observations, and insight into the role of soil and forests in the global carbon cycle—the flow of material in and out of land, air, life, and sea that’s currently broken and getting worse.

From a technical perspective, what they’re talking about here is plain old dirt. Ground. Loam. Land. Trees and leaves. From a practical perspective, it’s something different entirely. Soil is also cotton, corn, soybean, wheat, oranges, cattle, and the rest of humanity’s food and fiber. When it’s healthy, it grows most everything we need. It absorbs and retains moisture that might otherwise flood valleys where people live. It also absorbs and retains carbon that might otherwise be heating up the atmosphere.

The atmosphere gets all the attention in climate change, mostly because that’s where the warming happens. Even the oceans draw more concern than soil, especially when their warming temperatures help fuel massive storms and floods that kill humans and destroy communities. The seas hold 60 times more carbon than the atmosphere and absorb more than 90 percent of the heat that industrial pollution generates.

A worker labors near Jiande, Zhejiang Province, China.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

The soil, meanwhile, has been mostly ignored until lately. It’s both hugely influential on global warming and something humanity has a good deal of control over. The top 3 meters or so of earth store more carbon than the entire atmosphere and all plants combined. Taking care of the planet’s soil is “critical for stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations,” according to a synthesis by Stanford University’s Robert Jackson and five colleagues, published Thursday in Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution & Systematics.

Scientists aren’t going to resolve the global carbon cycle down to the last atom soon. What the Annual Review authors do point out, though, is that land use and agricultural practices can simultaneously trap carbon in soil—helping the fight against warming—and improving yields for all the things humanity’s swelling population will need in coming decades. Reducing tillage and fallow time, managing grazing better, planting more legumes, and other practices all help keep more carbon in the ground.
Back when the soil researchers were setting up their Harvard forest plots in 1991, Earth-system science and soil-health science were completely different fields. That’s been changing in ways that should be encouraged, according to another report, in Global Change Biology, also published Thursday. Binding scientists, policymakers, and land-owners together in conversation could have a significant effect on reducing global CO2, perhaps offsetting projected emissions from thawing permafrost in the rapidly melting, high-latitude Northern Hemisphere.

The authors tout as a hopeful example the International Soil Carbon Network, a scientific initiative designed to pool data and identify gaps in monitoring and knowledge. “Soils have entered an ‘anthropogenic state,’ with most of the global surface area either directly managed by humans or indirectly influenced by human activities,” they write.

Warming soil may set off a chain reaction of carbon emissions that “could be very difficult, if not impossible, to halt”

The hopeful calls for collaboration laid out in the Annual Review and Global Change Biology must nevertheless be tempered by the steady drumbeat of off-putting news from other parts of the Earth science research community.

Late last month, scientists from Woods Hole Research Center and Boston University published in Science an analysis of satellite data showing one of the most dramatic turnabouts in recent memory. Long thought of as sponges that suck in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, tropical forests may actually be a source of emissions. Deforestation is obviously an enemy of forests; what the authors found was that forest degradation—losing healthy patches here or there to human or natural causes—is more damaging to carbon-soaking capacity than previously believed.

A Shiwawaco tree falls after being cut in Inapari, Peru.

Photographer: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg

The Harvard forest study leaves readers on a similarly thought-provoking note. The research itself found that soil loses its carbon in pulses of microbial activity. Microbes feast away on organic matter in elevated temperatures, chewing it down to carbon dioxide and emitting it. Then the soil settles down to emission rates seen in unheated areas, the microbes having exhausted their food source. After a time, new microbes move into the heated patches and eat up harder-to-digest material, such as lignin, the stuff that makes wood hard. Then they, too, get sated and die off or move on, reducing emission rates with them.

Scientists have long been concerned that once humans kicked off warming of the atmosphere and seas, other parts of nature will take what we've begun and run with it. Some things are in our control—land use, pollution from fossil-fuel combustion. A global pulse in microbial carbon-munching, however, they write, “could be very difficult, if not impossible, to halt.”

Chinese Manufacturer’s Subsidiary Announces 3 Megawatt Smart Wind Turbine Prototype In Texas/RNN

The international side of the renewable business continues to boom, with amazing leadership, on solar and wind, coming out of China.  This dove tails well with the story we ran yesterday on ISO's garnering more and more of their power for utility co's coming from local sources--like this wind farm.

Again, good news on the technology, energy, environment and economy sides.

Goldwind Americas, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd., announced  that it has completed the installation of its GW 3MW(S) Smart Wind Turbine test unit at the UL Advanced Wind Turbine Test Facility located at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas. The scalable 3-megawatt test turbine has an assembled hub height of 130 meters and a blade tip height of 199.2 meters, making it the tallest wind turbine in the United States.

Developed by Goldwind, the onshore GW 3MW(S) prototype features scalable rated capacity of up to 3.57 MW and a rotor diameter of 136 meters. The platform’s structured design maintains Goldwind’s Permanent Magnet Direct Drive (PMDD) turbine technology and incorporates attributes from the GW 1.5 and GW 2.5 MW platforms, including industry-leading availability and performance. Goldwind utilized LM Windpower for the supply of the blades and Broadwind Energy for the supply of tower components, all of which were transported by Anderson Trucking Service. Wanzek Construction, based out of West Fargo, ND, led the project’s construction.

“The installation of Goldwind’s 3S prototype serves as an important milestone for Goldwind Americas and its global strategy to commercialize Goldwind’s turbine technology in the U.S. and abroad. The scalable 3-megawatt wind turbine, named Best in Class by Windpower Monthly, underscores Goldwind’s dedication to the continuous innovation of its product offerings,” says David Sale, chief executive officer of Goldwind Americas.

The GW 3MW(S) features Scalable capacity, Smart turbine controls, and a Structured design. It was officially launched in October 2016 at the China Windpower Exhibition, with the first prototype in China grid-connected in January 2017 in Zhangbei Grassland, Hebei Province, China.

Reinhard Sander, vice president of engineering and technology for Goldwind Americas adds, “The newest model in Goldwind’s portfolio of turbines continues to push the technology envelope and define what is possible in the wind industry. This allows our customers to maximize project economics with a larger nameplate design at a greater hub height, while benefiting from the scalability and adaptability of the 3 MW-plus platform.”

This is the first prototype Goldwind has installed and tested outside of its headquarters in China. The U.S.-based prototype will be fully commissioned and testing will commence by May 2018.

To learn more about Goldwind’s 3MW(S) Smart Wind turbine, visit goldwindamericas.com/GW3S.

UN Chief Calls for More Clean Energy Investment/RNN

We love when government, of any kind, sends out a call of action around sustainability.  The UN has done just that, and we are happy to share this directive with you.

Calling for a new energy revolution to address the challenge of climate change, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, in remarks at the Austrian World Summit in Vienna today, that the world must build on a great many solutions that already exist or are in the pipeline.

“In the past decade, prices for renewables have plummeted and investments are on the rise,” he said. “Today, a fifth of the world’s electricity is produced by renewable energy. We must build on this.”

He said the world is seeing a groundswell of climate action.

“It is clear that clean energy makes climate sense. But it also makes economic sense. Today it is the cheapest energy. And it will deliver significant health benefits. Air pollution affects nearly all of us, regardless of borders.”

The Secretary-General encouraged businesses, governments and civil society organizations to disclose climate risk, divest from fossil fuels and forge partnerships that will invest in low-emissions resilient infrastructure.

“We need to do this from the biggest cities to the smallest towns.  The opportunities are tremendous.”

He said some 75 per cent of the infrastructure needed by 2050 still remains to be built.

“How this is done will either lock us in to a high emission future or steer us towards truly sustainable low-emissions development. There is only one rational choice.”

SEE MORE AT RENEWABLE NOW.com