Global Frameworks

Resources and skills are unevenly distributed across the world and are not often at the places where they are most urgently needed. Energy access, energy security and climate change are global challenges and therefore have no economic and efficient solutions within national boundaries. This underlines the role of trade in goods and services and makes the global frameworks and rules that govern it an essential building block of the global public good.

Nationalistic solutions that lose sight of the global picture and the need for a
coordinated and collaborative approach delay the necessary international policy convergence. The resulting highly uncertain investment framework makes infrastructure investments unnecessarily risky and we will all pay the risk premium as part of higher energy prices and further delay in climate change mitigation. Critical issues in this context include defining “green goods and services”, the legitimacy of “border tax adjustments” to avoid carbon leakage, or the promotion of technology transfer to developing countries. In the interest of our sustainable energy future the World Energy Council promotes dialogue and develops constructive proposals on these issues.