Bracing for Climate Impact: Renewables as a Climate Change Adaptation Strategy

In August 2021, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) released a report “Bracing for Climate Impact: Renewables as a Climate Change Adaptation Strategy.”

The impacts of climate change are being seen with increasing frequency and intensity around the world. Climate change mitigation (action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) remains vital but is just one of the two main pillars of climate change response. The critical importance of the second pillar, adaptation (action to adjust to and protect against the impacts of climate change), has gained significant recognition in recent years, and an increasing flow of finance to adaptation activities is being seen at the international and national levels. Many climate adaptation strategies require considerable energy use, yet the role of reliable, affordable and modern renewable energy services in climate adaptation is not widely acknowledged in policy making or practice.

This report discusses the benefits of renewables-based adaptation and illustrates the importance of renewable energy within an integrated mitigation-adaptation approach to climate action. The key messages of the three main areas explored in the report are:

1. Strategic role of renewable energy in climate change

adaptation and in mitigation-adaptation synergies

• Renewable energy can significantly contribute to climate change adaptation and create opportunities for innovative practices to address climate change. Renewables-based adaptation solutions promote mitigation and reinforce adaptation efforts synchronously across many sectors. As a versatile energy resource, renewables can serve a broad range of adaptation needs and provide benefits that other resources cannot deliver. 
• Renewables allow implementation of energy-intensive adaptation solutions – such as air conditioning, desalination and irrigation – with net-zero emissions. 
• Distributed renewable energy solutions (technologies that provide power outside a central grid) can create a resilient energy system, and therefore support vital adaptation measures, for the most vulnerable communities. 
• Renewables can also deliver non-energy services that contribute to climate adaptation. This multifunctionality enables renewable energy technologies to provide additional forms of resilience to climate change. For instance, the multipurpose nature of hydropower and bioenergy technologies is well recognised, and their non-energy services have been used in real adaptation projects, such as solar shading (e.g. honey production under solar panels to improve food security) to reduce evaporation on agricultural land; use of byproducts from biogas facilities to make organic fertiliser; and water harvesting from hydropower dams. 

2. Planning and financing for renewables-based adaptation

• Many countries recognise renewable energy as a synergistic mitigation-adaptation measure and incorporate it into their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and long-term development strategies under the Paris Agreement. Of the 190 countries that had submitted NDCs by the end of 2020, 64 (34%) had incorporated renewable energy into the adaptation component. 
• Although most of those countries describe renewable energy as an adaptation measure for the energy sector (diversifying energy mix and increasing the resilience of the sector), its use for adaptation in other sectors, such as water, food and agriculture, is also frequently mentioned. 
• Climate finance provided and mobilised for adaptation activities has significantly increased, rising to USD 16.8 billion in 2018 and accounting for 21% of total climate finance, up from 17% in 2016. However, a considerable amount of adaptation finance remains untapped, and renewables-based adaptation could be a prime candidate for these funding opportunities. For instance, the Green Climate Fund has been mandated since 2014 to deliver half its portfolio to adaptation projects, and in 2019 the World Bank announced it would boost its adaptation financing to USD 50 billion by 2025, ensuring that over half its climate finance will go to adaptation. Projects involving renewable energy for adaptation are gaining ground: they already compose around 42% and 60% of projects for adaptation in the financial aid of the Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund, respectively.

3. The way forward for renewables-based climate adaptation

solutions

• A holistic approach needs to be taken to integrate renewable energy into the climate change adaptation process at all levels of upstream and downstream decision making. This integrated and holistic approach would help identify the contribution of renewable energy to adaptation, promote synergies with mitigation and sustainable development, and maximise the overall benefits of renewable energy while minimising trade-offs.
• A clear framework provides a strong basis for climate adaptation; it is therefore critical that countries establish a clear climate rationale, based on the best available science, through which renewable energy technologies can be embedded in adaptation policies, programmes and projects. A cross-sectoral approach is essential, and a range of stakeholders should be engaged from the early stage to identify synergies, avoid conflict, decrease implementation costs, and significantly improve project success.
• Renewables may contribute more than one adaptation, mitigation or sustainable development objective, while producing greater impact with fewer resources.
• Renewable energy options must be integrated into short- and mid- to long-term decision-making and planning processes to mainstream, structure and scale up renewable energy adaptation projects. This integration can be best realised by (i) creating an enabling environment for private investors to catalyse private financing and supplement public spending, (ii) ensuring the engagement of finance ministries in adaptation planning, and (iii) engaging international climate finance.

As climate risks keep changing with time, and multiple sectors interact with one another, projects should include continually evolving processes for monitoring, learning and managing changes. Good practice-based policy, monitoring and evaluation will generate lessons learnt and present practical solutions for clean energy deployment in different sectors.