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.

IPCC WG1 Sixth Assessment Report: Code Red for Humanity

In early August 2021, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Working Group I report, Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis. This was the first installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which will be completed in 2022. The assessment is based on improved data on historical warming, as well as progress in scientific understanding of the response of the climate system to human-caused emissions.

Key messages of the Report

• Human activities affect all major climate system components, with some responding over decades and others over centuries.
• The evidence is clear that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the main driver of climate change, even as other greenhouse gases and air pollutants also affect the climate.
• Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900. Averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming. 
• In the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions. 
• For 1.5°C of global warming, there will be increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons. At 2°C of global warming, heat extremes would more often reach critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health. 
• Climate change is bringing multiple different changes in different regions – which will all increase with further warming. These include changes to wetness and dryness, to winds, snow and ice, coastal areas and oceans. For example:

• Climate change is intensifying the water cycle. This brings more intense rainfall and associated flooding, as well as more intense drought in many regions.
• Climate change is affecting rainfall patterns. In high latitudes, precipitation is likely to increase, while it is projected to decrease over large parts of the subtropics. Changes to monsoon precipitation are expected, which will vary by region.
• Coastal areas will see continued sea level rise throughout the 21st century, contributing to more frequent and severe coastal flooding in low-lying areas and coastal erosion. Extreme sea level events that previously occurred once in 100 years could happen every year by the end of this century.
• Further warming will amplify permafrost thawing, and the loss of seasonal snow cover, melting of glaciers and ice sheets, and loss of summer Arctic sea ice.
• Changes to the ocean, including warming, more frequent marine heatwaves, ocean acidification, and reduced oxygen levels have been clearly linked to human influence. These changes affect both ocean ecosystems and the people that rely on them, and they will continue throughout at least the rest of this century.
• For cities, some aspects of climate change may be amplified, including heat (since urban areas are usually warmer than their surroundings), flooding from heavy precipitation events and sea level rise in coastal cities.
• Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.
• Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach. However, strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases would limit climate change. While benefits for air quality would come quickly it could take 20-30 years to see global temperatures stabilize.

For the first time, the Sixth Assessment Report provides a more detailed regional assessment of climate change, including a focus on useful information that can inform risk assessment, adaptation, and other decision-making, and a new framework that helps translate physical changes in the climate – heat, cold, rain, drought, snow, wind, coastal flooding and more – into what they mean for society and ecosystems.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “The Working Group's report is nothing less than a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable…. The internationally agreed threshold of 1.5°C is perilously close.  We are at imminent risk of hitting 1.5°C in the near term.  The only way to prevent exceeding this threshold is by urgently stepping up our efforts and pursuing the most ambitious path.”