The political economy of saving the planet

Abstract

This paper advances a broad program to move the global economy onto a viable climate stabilization path—a trajectory that is consistent with the CO₂ emissions reduction targets established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The overarching project is straightforward: to achieve the IPCC emissions reduction targets, and to accomplish this in a way that also expands decent job opportunities and raises mass living standards for working people and the poor throughout the world. This overarching aim is captured within the idea of a Global Green New Deal. As I use the term, the Global Green New Deal, includes four major features: phasing out global fossil fuel consumption by 2050; clean energy investments, averaging about 2.5 percent of global GDP per year, including both public and private investments; just transition support for workers and communities that are currently dependent on the fossil fuel industry; and phasing out deforestation and industrial agriculture, to be replaced with afforestation and sustainable agricultural practices. This paper focuses on the first three issues, related to the operations of the global energy system. The main topics covered are: Fossil Fuel Phase-out; Clean Energy Investment Program; Job Creation, Job Losses and Just Transition; Providing Cheap and Accessible Financing; and Ensuring Global Fairness.

Keywords:

• Zero global emissions
• climate stabilization program
• just transition

Introduction

Climate change necessarily presents a profound social, economic and political challenge in our present historical moment. This is for the simple reason that we are courting ecological disaster by not advancing a viable global climate stabilization project. There are no certainties as to what ultimately will transpire through allowing the average global temperature to continue rising. But as a basis for action, we only need to understand that there is a non-trivial possibility that the very continuation of life on earth as we know it is at stake.

The severity of the risks we face have been documented scrupulously for decades by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative global organization advancing climate change research. Thus, in its landmark October 2018 report titled Global Warming of 1.5^°C, the IPCC presented an unequivocal case for urgent action to fight climate change, along with specific goals for moving onto a viable climate stabilization path. The report emphasized the necessity of limiting the increase in global mean temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5 °C) above pre-industrial levels as of 2100. The previous climate stabilization target, of both the IPCC itself and a broader consensus of climate scientists, had been 2.0 °C. But the IPCC concluded that lowering the target to 1.5 °C will substantially reduce the risks of heat extremes, heavy precipitation, droughts, sea level rise, biodiversity losses and corresponding impacts on health, livelihoods, food security, water supply and human security. ¹

The IPCC concluded in its 2018 report that to stabilize the global mean temperature of 2100 at 1.5 °C, global net carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions will have to fall by about 45 percent as of 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050. CO₂ is the most significant greenhouse gas contributing to climate change, accounting for about 74 percent of all greenhouse gases. Methane and nitrous oxide, the other two major greenhouse gases, contribute about 17 and 6 percent respectively to the greenhouse gas total.²

The IPCC followed up its 2018 analysis with three major installments of its Sixth Assessment Report, in August 2021, and February and April 2022. It then published its Synthesis for the Sixth Assessment Report in March 2023. The press release for its February 2022 study summarized the overall message of the Sixth Assessment Report as follows: “Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit.” Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC, further stated then that “This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction. It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”

What are “our actions today” that are most critical for advancing a viable global climate stabilization project? I would argue that the overarching project is straightforward: to achieve the IPCC emissions reduction targets, and to accomplish this in a way that also expands decent job opportunities and raises mass living standards for working people and the poor throughout the world. In my view, this overarching aim is captured within the idea of a Global Green New Deal. In other words, in my view, the Global Green New Deal is a climate stabilization program which fully recognizes that “people and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit.” As such, the Global Green New Deal presents a robust alternative to neoliberalism, the dominant economic policy framework throughout the world over the past 40 years. The prerogatives of big capital have been ascendent throughout the full neoliberal era. This has produced unprecedented increases in income and wealth inequalities throughout the world. For the first time throughout the entire era of industrial capitalism, average global temperatures have also risen steadily during the 40 years of neoliberal ascendency.

As I use the term, the Global Green New Deal, includes four major features. These are:

1. Phasing out global fossil fuel consumption by 2050;

2. Clean energy investments, averaging about 2.5 percent of global GDP per year, including both public and private investments;

3. Just transition support for workers and communities that are currently dependent on the fossil fuel industry; and

4. Phasing out deforestation and industrial agriculture, to be replaced with afforestation and sustainable agricultural practices.

In the interests of space, this paper focuses on the first three issues, related to the operations of the global energy system. This is because the global energy system—dominated at present by the production and consumption of fossil fuels to produce energy—is responsible for about 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and, thereby, climate change. CO₂ emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas alone produce about 75 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, while another 5 percent is caused mainly by methane leakages during extraction.³

Deforestation and industrial agricultural practices are responsible for most of the remaining roughly 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Though I do not examine the impacts of deforestation and industrial agriculture in this paper, I have reviewed them elsewhere, and have cited in this previous work the important literature on these questions.⁴ This paper is also focused on what are termed climate mitigation measures—i.e. policies to stabilize the climate within the 1.5 °C target by means of driving global emissions to zero. I do not consider in this paper climate adaptation policies—i.e. measures to protect people, the physical infrastructure and the environment against the effects of climate change that are ongoing and, indeed, rapidly worsening. Climate adaptation is, nevertheless, an equally important topic that deserves in depth treatment of its own.⁵

This paper includes five sections in addition to this introductory section. These include:

1. Fossil Fuel Phase-out;

2. Clean Energy Investment Program;

3. Job Creation, Job Losses and Just Transition

4. Providing Cheap and Accessible Financing; and

5. Ensuring Global Fairness.

This paper focuses on analytic and policy design questions within the Global Green New Deal framework, focusing, again, on the two fundamental goals of 1) achieving the IPCC’s emissions reduction targets; and 2) doing so in ways that expand decent job opportunities and raise mass living standards for working people and the poor throughout the world. Other authors have advanced alternative Green New Deal approaches, while still others have laid out related eco-socialist or degrowth frameworks for addressing the climate crisis. Some of these authors have presented criticisms of my approach in developing their own perspectives. There is not space here to engage directly with these alternatives or their criticism of my approach, other than to try to be as clear as possible in presenting, in summary form, my own research findings and proposals. I will just note that Kohei Saito, one prominent proponent of what he terms “degrowth communism” acknowledges that his interpretation of “Marx’s ecological project cannot be directly applied to today’s situation,” (2022, 247). By contrast, the aim of this paper, and of the research and policy design work undergirding it, is precisely to advance a global program that can be directly applied to today’s situation. We are facing a planetary emergency and time is short.⁶

Fossil fuel phase-out

To have any chance of moving onto a viable global climate stabilization path, the single most critical project at hand is straightforward. It is to phase out the consumption of oil, coal and natural gas, so that, by 2050 fossil fuel consumption for producing energy will have fallen to zero. CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuel energy sources will have then, correspondingly, also fallen to zero by 2050.

As of the most recent data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), global CO₂ emissions were at around 36 billion tons in 2021.⁷ This represents a roughly 70 percent emissions increase since 1990 and a 14 percent increase just since 2010. More to the point, according to the IEA’s estimates for future emissions under alternative realistic scenarios, emissions will fall barely at all by 2030 and will not come close to achieving the zero emissions target by 2050.

More specifically, in the 2022 edition of its World Energy Outlook, the IEA developed two scenarios for future CO₂ emissions levels based on what it considers to be realistic assessments of the current global policy environment. One is what the IEA terms a “Stated Policies Scenario.” This scenario “explores where the energy system might go without additional policy implementation.” It is based on taking “a granular, sector-by-sector look at existing policies and measures and those under development.” In short, this scenario aims to project what CO₂ emissions will be through 2050 if global policies remain basically fixed along their current trajectory. In this scenario, global CO₂ emissions will not fall at all by 2030 and will decline by only 13 percent, to 31.6 billion tons, by 2050. In short, assuming we take climate science seriously, this is nothing less than a doomsday scenario.

Under a second “Announced Pledges Scenario,” the IEA “takes account of all of the climate commitments made by governments around the world, including Nationally Determined Contributions as well as longer term net zero targets, and assumes that they will be met in full and on time.” Under this more aggressive scenario, the IEA projects that emissions will still fall by only 14 percent as of 2030, and that by 2050, the emissions level will be at 12.4 billion tons—i.e. still not close to achieving the zero emissions goal by 2050.

The IEA does also develop a scenario through which the world can reach zero emissions by 2050. The difference between the IEA’s Stated Policies and Announced Pledges scenarios relative to their Net Zero Emissions by 2050 scenario is what the IEA terms an “ambition gap.” The question for getting to zero emissions is therefore to figure out how to close this “ambition gap.”

Closing this ambition gap must, of course, recognize that people do still need to consume energy to light, heat, and cool buildings, to power cars, buses, trains, and airplanes, and to operate computers and industrial machinery, among other uses. As such, to make progress toward climate stabilization requires a viable alternative to the existing fossil-fuel dominant infrastructure for meeting the world’s energy needs. Energy consumption and economic activity more generally therefore need to be absolutely decoupled from the consumption of fossil fuels. That is, the consumption of fossil fuels will need to fall steadily in absolute terms, even while people will still be able to consume energy resources to meet their various demands.

As of 2021, total fossil fuel energy consumption amounted to 502 quadrillion British Thermal Units (Q-BTUs).⁸ As a matter of simple arithmetic, to bring fossil fuel consumption down to zero by 2050 would entail, in absolute figures, cutting consumption by average of about 19 Q-BTUs per year over 27 years, starting in 2024. This amounts to a 3.8 percent cut in fossil fuel consumption each year relative to the 2021 consumption level.

Economies can continue to grow—and even grow relatively rapidly, as in China and India—while still advancing a viable climate stabilization project as long as the growth process is absolutely decoupled from fossil fuel consumption. In fact, several European countries have managed over the past 20 years to absolutely decouple GDP growth from CO₂ emissions, including the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Czechia, and Romania. ⁹ These decoupling patterns hold both in terms of production levels as well as the more stringent standard of consumption levels—i.e. including in a country’s total emissions figure the emissions content of the goods that they are importing. This is a positive development, but clearly, to date, only a small step in the right direction.

Clean energy investment program

In fact, as a technical and economic proposition, it is entirely realistic to assume that a global clean energy infrastructure can supply close to 100 percent of global energy supply by 2050.¹⁰ By my higher-end estimate, it will require an average level of investment spending throughout the global economy of about 2.5 percent of global GDP per year, focused in two areas: 1) dramatically improving energy efficiency standards in the stock of buildings, automobiles and public transportation systems, and industrial production processes; and 2) equally dramatically expanding the supply of clean renewable energy sources—primarily solar and wind power—available at competitive prices relative to fossil fuels and nuclear power to all sectors and in all regions of the globe.¹¹

It is critical to recognize that, once investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy projects are installed and operating at scale, they will deliver significantly lower energy costs than our current fossil fuel-dominated system. Thus, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reports that, as of 2021, fossil fuel-generated electricity ranged between 5 – 15 cents per kilowatt hour within the high-income economies. By contrast, the global average costs for generating a kilowatt of electricity from existing utility-scale onshore wind, at 3.3 cents, or solar photovoltaic technology, at 4.8 cents, were already at the low end of the fossil fuel-generated electricity cost range.¹² In addition, according to recent research, the average costs of achieving a kilowatt hour of energy savings through efficiency investments is between 2.5 and 3 cents—i.e. roughly one-third the costs of even the midpoint figure for fossil fuel-generated electricity.¹³ It is therefore reasonable to assume that, even with existing clean energy technologies, electricity can be delivered now at approximately half the costs of fossil fuel-generated electricity.

This is without taking account of any policy incentives to support clean energy investments or, for that matter, any environmental costs from continuing to burn fossil fuels. Further, the costs of renewable electricity have been on a sharp downward trajectory. The average cost of electricity from solar photovoltaics, in particular, fell by about 80 percent between 2010 – 2020. These cost declines are likely to continue through ‘learning-by-doing’ as investment levels in clean energy scale up.

In calculating the total cost of the global clean energy investment project through 2050, I assume that the project begins in earnest 2024. The level of necessary investment would amount to about $2.6 trillion in 2024. Investment spending would then average about $4.5 trillion per year between 2024 – 2050. Total clean energy investment spending for the full-scale 27-year investment cycle 2024 – 2050 would amount to about $120 trillion.

These figures are for overall investment spending, including from both the public and private sectors. Establishing the right mix between public and private investment will be a major consideration within the industrial and financing policies framework. It is not realistic to expect that this can all be accomplished through private capitalist investments. But it is equally unrealistic to expect that public enterprises, on their own, can mount a project at this scale, and with the speed that is required. As a general proposition, it is reasonable to assume that that clean energy investments should be divided roughly equally—i.e. 50 percent public and private investment respectively on a global basis. For the first year of full-scale investment activity in 2024, this would break down to $1.3 trillion in both public and private investments. A major part of the policy challenge will be to determine how to leverage the public money most effectively to create strong incentives for private investors, large and small, while also maintaining tight regulations over their activities. We return to these and related financing issues in Section 5.

Raising energy efficiency levels will generate “rebound effects”—i.e. energy consumption increases resulting from lower energy costs. But such rebound effects are likely to be modest within the context of a global project focused on reducing CO₂ emissions and stabilizing the climate. Among other factors, energy consumption levels in advanced economies are close to saturation points in the use of home appliances and lighting—i.e. we are not likely to clean dishes much more frequently because we have a more efficient dishwasher. The evidence shows that consumers in advanced economies are likely to heat and cool their homes as well as drive their cars more when they have access to more efficient equipment. But these increased consumption levels are usually modest. Average rebound effects are likely to be significantly larger in developing economies. But it is critical that all energy efficiency gains will be accompanied by policies that will both discourage fossil fuel consumption and support clean energy investments. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy will allow higher levels of energy consumption without leading to increases in CO₂ emissions. It is important to recognize, further that different countries at comparable levels of development presently operate at widely varying levels of energy efficiency. For example, Germany presently operates at an efficiency level roughly 30 percent higher than that of the United States. Brazil is about 40 percent more efficient than South Africa.¹⁴ There is no evidence that large rebound effects have emerged as a result of these high efficiency standards in Germany and Brazil relative to those of United States and South Africa.

Are natural gas, nuclear, and carbon capture clean energy sources?

There is widespread support for the position that natural gas, nuclear energy and carbon capture technologies offer viable alternatives for reaching a zero global emissions economy. We consider the claims below, addressing each alternative technology separately.

Natural gas

There are large differences in the emissions levels resulting through burning oil, coal, and natural gas respectively, with natural gas generating about 40 percent fewer emissions for a given amount of energy produced than coal and 15 percent less than oil. It is therefore widely argued that natural gas can be a “bridge fuel” to a clean energy future, through switching from coal to natural gas to produce electricity. Such claims do not withstand scrutiny. At best, an implausibly large 50 percent global fuel switch to natural gas would reduce emissions by only 8 percent. But even this calculation does not take account of the leakage of methane gas into the atmosphere that results through extracting natural gas through fracking. Recent research finds that when more than about 5 percent of the gas extracted leaks into the atmosphere through fracking, the impact eliminates any environmental benefit from burning natural gas relative to coal. Various studies have reported a wide range of estimates as to what leakage rates have actually been in the United States, as fracking operations have grown rapidly. A recent survey paper puts that range as between 0.18 and 11.7 percent for different specific sites in North Dakota, Utah, Colorado, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania. It would be reasonable to assume that if fracking expands on a large scale in regions outside the U.S., it is likely that leakage rates will fall closer to the higher-end figures of 12 percent, at least until serious controls could be established. This then would diminish, if not eliminate altogether, any emission-reduction benefits from a coal-to-natural gas fuel switch.¹⁵

Nuclear energy

Nuclear power does generate electricity without producing CO₂ emissions. But it also creates major environmental and public safety concerns, which only intensified after the March 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan and still more, after Russia seized control of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants in the early stages of its 2020 invasion of Ukraine. Nuclear disasters at both Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia became active threats immediately. At the least, the war compromised the security systems that operate to protect both sites. The fact that both sites became combat zones meant that they were more vulnerable to attacks from non-state actors, including terrorist organizations of any variety. Even on a strictly cost basis, the average cost of generating a kilowatt of electricity from nuclear technology is, similar to fossil fuels, currently about twice as high as that from renewables.¹⁶

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)

The term encompasses a wide range of specific measures. Of these, to date, there is only one such technology that has been proven to be effective and safe. That is to plant trees. More specifically, I refer to afforestation—i.e. increasing forest cover or density in previously non-forested or deforested areas. Reforestation, the more commonly used term, is one component of afforestation. Afforestation works for the simple reason that living trees absorb CO₂. This is also why deforestation releases CO₂ into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

The big question with afforestation is, realistically, how large can its impact be as a means of counteracting ongoing CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels? One careful study by Lawrence et al. (2018) concludes that afforestation could realistically reduce CO₂ levels by between 0.5 and 3.5 billion tons per year through 2050. As noted above, current global CO₂ levels are at about 40 billion tons. If the estimate by Lawrence and coauthors is even approximately correct, it follows that afforestation can certainly serve as a complementary intervention within a broader climate program. But afforestation cannot bear the major burden of clearing the atmosphere of CO₂ if we continue to burn fossil fuels to any significant extent.

Beyond afforestation are a range of advanced technologies that aim to capture emitted carbon and then either store it in underground reservoirs for all time or recycle and reuse it as a fuel source. However, none of these technologies are close to being capable of operating on a commercial basis at scale. This is despite the fact that, for decades, the fossil fuel companies have had huge incentives to make these technologies work. In fact, in the final drafting of the 2023 IPCC report, fossil fuel producing countries lobbied hard to feature carbon capture technologies as a major climate solution. Nevertheless, the IPCC report concluded that global rates of carbon capture deployment are “far below” what is needed for any viable climate stabilization project. The IPCC emphasized that “Implementation of carbon capture and storage faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological, environmental and sociocultural barriers.” ¹⁷ It is also important to recognize that the dangers of carbon leakages from flawed transportation and storage systems will only increase to the extent that CCS technologies are commercialized and operating under an incentive structure in which maintaining safety standards will reduce profits.

Renewable energy challenges: intermittency, mineral supply and land use

Three major sets of challenges arise in building a high-efficiency/renewable-energy dominant global energy infrastructure. These concern the issues of 1) intermittency with solar and wind energy; 2) mineral requirements as inputs in building the clean energy infrastructure; and 3) land-use requirements for renewables, especially solar and wind. I briefly consider these in turn.

Intermittency

Intermittency refers to the fact that the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow 24 hours a day. Moreover, on average, different geographical areas receive significantly different levels of sunshine and wind. As such, the solar and wind power that are generated in the sunnier and windier areas of the globe will need to be stored and transmitted at reasonable costs to the less sunny and windy areas. In fact, these issues around transmission and storage of wind and solar power will not become pressing for many years into the clean energy transition, probably until the mid-2030s This is because fossil fuels, along with nuclear energy will continue to provide a baseload of non-intermittent energy supply as these energy sectors proceed toward their phase out while the clean energy industry rapidly expands. Fossil fuels and nuclear energy now provide roughly 85 percent of all global energy supplies. Even with a phase out to zero by 2050 trajectory, with fossil fuel supply cut on average by 19 Q-BTUs per year, fossil fuels will continue to provide the majority of overall energy demand through about 2035. Meanwhile, fully viable solutions to the technical challenges with transmission and storage of solar and wind power—including around affordability—should not be more than a decade away, certainly as long as the market for clean energy grows at the rapid rate that is necessary. For example, IRENA (2019) estimates that global battery storage capacity could expand between 17 – 38-fold as of 2030.

Mineral requirements

Building a global clean energy infrastructure will entail a massive expansion in demand for the set of minerals that are used intensively in clean energy technologies. The IEA (2021b) estimates that demand for minerals needed in clean energy technologies will rise six-fold in order to meet the 2050 zero-emissions target (see also Hund et al. 2020). Some of the most heavily required minerals include lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel. Several rare earth minerals will also experience heavily increasing demand, including tellurium, used for solar cell production and neodymium, used in producing wind turbines and electric vehicles.

Short-term supply shortages will likely emerge with some of these minerals as demand for them expands rapidly. But none of the likely shortages should be insurmountable. One solution will be to greatly expand the industry for recycling the needed metals and minerals. At present, average recycling rates for these resources are below 1 percent of total supply. By contrast, recycling rates for aluminum throughout the world is at around 75 percent. Increasing recycling rates by even relatively modest amounts will make a substantial contribution toward overcoming supply shortages.¹⁸

In addition to recycling, opportunities will also emerge to economize on the level of minerals and metals necessary to produce solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, as production technologies improve along with the rapid expansion of the industry. Substitute materials can also be developed for those materials that remain in short supply. What happened with neodymium provides a valuable recent case in point. When the world price of neodymium peaked in 2010, producers found ways to economize on its use or eliminate it altogether as a necessary material. Demand for neodymium rapidly fell by between 20 - 50 percent as other materials were found to be adequate substitutes.¹⁹

Beyond these considerations are the equally critical issues relating to where, and under what conditions, these required minerals will be extracted (IEA 2021b). To begin with, the majority of deposits of the key minerals are located in the global south Thus, over 50 percent of all lithium deposits are located in the so-called “lithium triangle” of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia (Ahmad 2020). Nearly 50 percent of all cobalt deposits are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with another 12 percent in Indonesia and the Philippines. Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines account for 44 percent of all nickel deposits, while South Africa and Brazil account for 61 percent of all manganese deposits.

The rapid expansion of mining in these regions creates conditions for both significant positive as well as negative impacts. The positive possibilities include the employment creation, infrastructure investments and export earnings that could result through the large-scale expansion of the respective regions’ mining operations. On the negative side, the major expansion of these mining operations will almost certainly create harmful environmental impacts. For example, in the Chile/Argentina/Bolivia lithium triangle, approximately 500,000 gallons of water are needed to produce one ton of lithium through the particular ‘brine pumping and solar evaporation’ extraction technique deployed there. This alters the natural hydrodynamics of the region and reduces the availability of water for local communities (UNCTAD 2020).

It will also always be an open question as to how large a share of the export revenues generated by these mining operations will accrue to the host country governments or local enterprises. This will depend on the terms established between the respective countries’ governments and local enterprises vis a vis the multinational corporations who obtain concessions to develop and operate the mines. Unless the local governments and enterprises succeed in gaining favorable terms, the profits from these mining operations will then mostly be repatriated back to the shareholders of the multinational firms, thereby replicating a pattern of corporate imperialism that has deep historical roots.²⁰ The rapid expansion of the mining operations can also increase countries’ vulnerability to familiar ‘resource curse’ patterns. This could include an overvalued currency which then would reduce the competitiveness of other exports, particularly manufactured goods. It could also invite excessive rent-seeking and corruption through competition over the distribution of the mineral rents generated by these projects.²¹

For at least the past decade, China has established dominance within the global supply chain associated with critical renewable energy minerals, through the actions of both the Chinese government and private multinational firms. But it is too early to evaluate how China’s power here will impact the longer-term conditions in the respective host countries, It is also too early to know whether China will be able to maintain this level of control as global mining activity expands rapidly. Beyond the specific issues regarding China’s impact, it is more generally the case that ensuring that the citizens of the host countries benefit from the expansion of mineral operations in their respective economies, and that the environments in these countries do not become ravaged in the process, will require concerted and effective political mobilization.

Land-use requirements

The issue of land use requirements is frequently cited to demonstrate that building a 100 percent renewable energy global economy is unrealistic. But these claims are not supported by evidence. Thus, Prentiss (2015, 2019) finds that the U.S. economy could run entirely on clean renewable energy sources by 2050 or earlier. Her arguments can be readily generalized to the global economy.

Specifically, Prentiss shows that well below 1 percent of the total U.S. land area would be needed through solar and wind power to meet 100 percent of U.S. energy needs. Most of this land use requirement could be met, for example, by placing solar panels on rooftops and parking lots, then operating wind turbines on about 7 percent of current agricultural land. Moreover, the wind turbines can be sited on existing operating farmland with only minor losses of agricultural productivity. Farmers should mostly welcome this dual use of their land, since it provides them with a major additional income source. At present, the U.S. states of Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota all generate more than 30 percent of their electricity supply through wind turbines. The remaining supplemental energy needs could then be supplied by geothermal, hydro and low-emissions bioenergy. This particular scenario includes no further contributions from solar farms in desert areas, solar panels mounted on highways or offshore wind projects, among other supplemental renewable energy sources. However, if handled responsibly, all of these options are also viable possibilities.

It is true that conditions for renewable energy production in the United States are more favorable than those in some other countries. Germany and the UK, for example, have population densities 7 – 8 times greater than the U.S. and also receive less sunlight over the course of a year. As such, these countries, operating at high efficiency levels, would need to use about 3 percent of their total land area to generate 100 percent of their energy demand through domestically produced solar energy. Using cost-effective storage and transmission technologies, the UK and Germany can also import energy generated by solar and wind power in other countries, just as, in the United States, wind power generated in Iowa could be transmitted to New York City. Any such import requirements are likely to be modest. Both the UK and Germany are already net energy importers in any case. Taking a global perspective, the most critical point with respect to Prentiss’s calculations focused on the U.S. is that, in terms of both population density and the availability of sunlight and wind to harvest, average conditions for renewables throughout the globe are much closer to those in the U.S. than to Germany and the UK.

As one individual country case, the situation in Greece is useful in demonstrating how land use issues with respect to renewable energy development can be managed either poorly or well.²² In fact, land use for renewable energy projects has been controversial in Greece for several years. This is primarily because wind turbines have already been erected in environmentally sensitive areas such as mountaintops and pristine ecological sites. These installations are scarring the impacted land areas and contributing to biodiversity losses. In addition, locating renewable energy projects in such locations is likely to undermine the vitality of Greece’s tourism industry. Tourism accounts for roughly 18 percent of the country’s total GDP.

It is therefore critical to demonstrate the viability of an alternative renewable land-use strategy for Greece. My coauthors and I have developed a series of scenarios through which Greece can supply 100 percent of its energy needs with renewables by 2050 while creating minimum impact on undeveloped or agricultural land areas. In one specific case, we show how the 100 percent renewable energy requirement by 2050 can be met while locating renewable installations on a total of 709 km² of land, which amounts to only 0.5 percent of Greece’s total land area. Crucially, within this scenario, we show that renewable installations would need to be located on only about 0.2 percent of Greece’s roughly 88,000 km² of agricultural and undeveloped areas. We also exclude altogether the roughly 37.000 km² of forests and woodland shrub areas of land cover in Greece. As with the U.S. case described above, the key to minimizing solar and wind installations on environmentally sensitive sites is to maximize installations on the full range of available artificial surfaces, including commercial, industrial, and residential rooftops, along roadways and rail lines, at airports, sports and leisure facilities and at mineral extraction sites.

Job creation, job losses and just transition

Job creation

The idea that building a clean energy economy should be a source of job creation should be intuitive, even though it is frequently portrayed exactly the opposite—i.e. as a job killer. This is because building the green economy necessarily entails building—it means large-scale new investments to dramatically raise energy efficiency standards and equally dramatically expand the renewable energy supply. Spending money on virtually anything will create jobs. The relevant question should then be how many jobs get created through building a green economy, and correspondingly, how many jobs will be lost through the phase out of the fossil fuel infrastructure.

There are two distinct channels through which a clean energy transition creates jobs. The first will be through an investment spending channel that will apply to all countries undertaking the clean energy transition. The second will be through an energy import substitution channel. This, of course, will apply only to countries that are presently net energy importers.

For countries that are large-scale fossil fuel producers, the shift away from fossil fuels to clean renewables and energy efficiency will also entail a significant decline in employment opportunities in these countries’ fossil fuel industries. For this set of countries, net job creation occurs through their clean energy investment project when spending a given amount money on clean energy investments creates more jobs within the country than spending the same amount of money on fossil fuel production. Coworkers and I have researched this situation for several countries in this category, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and the United States. We have found that for a given level of spending, the percentage increase in job creation ranges from about 75 percent in Brazil to 250 percent in Indonesia. This increase in net job creation through two factors: a higher level of labor intensity through clean energy investments relative to fossil fuel investments; and a higher level of domestic content for a given level of expenditure.²³

With respect to the energy importing economies, the impact of the clean energy transition will provide a further boost to employment through the import substitution channel. Considering the case of South Korea, my coauthors and I have estimated that the clean energy investment level necessary to produce a zero emissions economy by 2050 will generate between 800,000 − 1.2 million jobs per year. This is equal to between 3 – 4 percent of Korea’s overall labor force. Of this total, about half of the overall job creation will result through substituting domestically-produced renewable energy for fossil fuel imports, increasingly so as South Korea’s renewable energy production capacity expands.²⁴

Even while job creation will occur through clean energy investments, there is still no guarantee that the jobs being generated through clean energy investments will provide decent compensation to workers. Nor will these jobs necessarily deliver improved workplace conditions, stronger union representation or reduced employment discrimination against women, minorities or other underrepresented groups. But the fact that new investments will be occurring will create increased leverage for political mobilization across the board—for improving job quality, expanded union coverage and more jobs for underrepresented groups.

Of course, countries that are heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports as a share of GDP will face greater challenges in matching the expansion of job increases with the job losses resulting from the fossil fuel industry phase out. At the same time, the overall body of evidence suggests that countries endowed with large-scale fossil fuel resources do not necessarily end up better off in terms of growth and employment opportunities than resource-poor countries. A significant factor here is, as mentioned above, the “resource curse” phenomenon. As one case in point, the resource curse helps to explain why the nine countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that have been oil exporters for relatively long time periods—Angola, Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Nigeria—have not, in general, performed better than the rest of the continent in expanding economic well-being and reducing poverty. Thus, for heavy-dependent fossil fuel exporters, the clean energy transition will create conditions under which economies can grow and expand employment opportunities through diversification.²⁵

Job losses and just transition²⁶

There is no question that workers and communities throughout the world whose livelihoods depend on people consuming oil, coal, and natural gas will lose out in the clean energy transition. Just transition policies for these workers and communities are certainly justified according to any standard of fairness. But they are also a matter of strategic politics. Without such adjustment assistance programs operating at a major scale, the workers and communities facing retrenchment from the clean energy investment project will, predictably and understandably, fight to defend their communities and livelihoods. This in turn will create unacceptable delays in proceeding with effective climate stabilization policies.

Focusing on the fossil fuel industry dependent workers, I would argue that, as a first principle, the aim of such policies should be, simply, to truly protect them against major losses in their living standards. To accomplish this, the critical components of a just transition policy should include three types of guarantees for the workers: 1) a guaranteed new job; 2) a guaranteed level of pay with their new job that is at least comparable to their previous fossil fuel industry job; and 3) a guarantee that their pensions will remain intact regardless of whether their employers’ business operations are phased out. Just transition policies should also support displaced workers in the areas of job search, retraining and relocation. These forms of support are important but should be understood as supplementary. This is because, in themselves, they are not capable of protecting workers against major losses in their living standards resulting from the fossil fuel industry phase out.

Among major high-income economies, just transition policies for workers have recently been enacted within the European Union, Germany and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom. Such initiatives are still mainly at the proposal stages in the U.S., Japan, Canada. But even in the cases of Germany, the UK and the European Union, these policies remain mostly limited to the areas of job search, retraining and relocation support. In other words, in none of these cases have policies been enacted that provide workers with the guarantees they need.

To obtain a sense of what a much more robust just transition program would look like, I have developed with coworkers illustrative programs for eight different U.S. states and for the U.S. It will be useful to consider specifically the case of West Virginia, since it is one of the most fossil-fuel dependent state economies in the U.S. As such, West Virginia provides a highly challenging environment in which to mount a generous just transition program.

Of course, as elsewhere, it is critical that the just transition policies for West Virginia would be one component of an overall clean energy transition program for the state. Under the overall program, fossil fuel production will fall by 50 percent as of 2030 and clean energy investments will make up the difference in the state’s overall energy supply. We estimate that the clean energy investments in West Virginia will generate an average of about 25,000 jobs throughout the state through 2030.

What about the job losses from the state’s fossil fuel industry phase-out? There are presently roughly 40,000 people employed in West Virginia’s fossil fuel industry and ancillary sectors, comprising about 5 percent of the overall West Virginia labor force. But it is critical to recognize that all 40,000 workers are not going to lose their jobs right away. Rather, about 20,000 jobs will be phased out by 2030 as fossil fuel production is cut by 50 percent. This averages to a bit more than 2,000 job losses per year. However, we also estimate that about 600 of the workers holding these jobs will voluntarily retire every year. This means that the number of workers who will face job displacement every year is in the range of 1,400, or 0.2 percent of the state’s labor force. This is while the state is also generating about 25,000 new jobs through its clean energy transformation.

In short, there will be an abundance of new job opportunities for the 1,400 workers facing displacement every year. We estimate that to guarantee these workers comparable pay levels and intact pensions, along with retraining, job search and relocation support, as needed, will cost about $42,000 per worker per year. This totals to an average of about $143 million per year. This is equal to about 0.2 percent of West Virginia’s overall level of economic activity (GDP). In short, generous just transition policies for all displaced fossil fuel workers will definitely not create major cost burdens, even in such a heavily fossil fuel dependent state as West Virginia.

For the other seven U.S. states that we have examined, the costs of comparable just transition programs range between 0.001 and 0.02 percent of the state’s GDP. For the U.S. economy overall, the just transition program’s costs would total to about 0.015 percent of GDP—i.e. one-tenth to one-twentieth of what the West Virginia program would cost relative to the overall economy’s size. In short, providing workers with robust just transition support amounts to barely a blip within the U.S. economy. It is almost certainly the case that similarly robust just transition programs in other high-income economies would generate comparable results.

Providing cheap and accessible financing

Current funding levels

According to the October 2022 preliminary estimate by the Climate Policy Initiative, global climate financing amounted to between $850 - $940 billion in 2021.²⁷ This represented an increase of between 28 − 42 percent relative to their 2019/2020 figures of $653 billion. The 2019/2020 figure was in turn a 15 percent increase over 2017/2018. The Climate Policy Initiative estimates that global climate financing increased at an average rate of 7 percent per year between 2011 – 2020. Over this full period, public and private sources have each contributed about half of the total funds supplied. Clearly, considering the funds provided by both the public and private sectors, there have been major gains in recent years in mobilizing large-scale financing in support of a viable climate stabilization project.

At the same time, the level of total funding provided needs to be understood relative to the financing requirement of channeling roughly 2.5 percent of global GDP toward clean renewable and energy efficiency investmnts—i.e. the level of clean energy investment needed to successfully build a zero emissions global economy by 2050. Even the preliminary 2021 figure of $940 billion is only about one-third of the $2.6 trillion figure—equal to about 2.5 percent of global GDP—that I have estimated as being needed as of 2024. Moreover, this $940 billion figure includes investment spending on adaptation as well as for mitigation. My $2.6 billion estimate was for mitigation investments only, in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Further, of this total funding level, we need to focus especially on the public funding that high-income countries are providing for low-income countries. This level of public support has not been close to adequate, even relative to the modest commitments the high-income countries have made to support developing countries climate stabilization programs. That is, in 2009, the high-income countries pledged to provide $100 billion in annual support for climate-related investments in poor countries. Between 2015 – 2020, 35 high-income countries reported providing an overall average of $36 billion per year, only one-third of the $100 billion annual pledge. The most recent 2020 figure is higher, at $83 billion. Still, these figures almost certainly significantly overestimate the level of funding flowing into either effective mitigation or adaptation investments, given that countries can claim virtually anything as constituting “climate finance.” Thus, according to a 6/1/23 Reuters story, “Italy helped a retailer open chocolate and gelato stores across Asia. The United States offered a loan for a coastal hotel expansion in Haiti. Belgium backed the film ‘La Tierra Roja,” a love story set in the Argentine rainforest. And Japan is financing a new coal plant in Bangladesh and an airport expansion in Egypt.” As Reuters reports, “although a coal plant, a hotel, chocolate stores, a movie and an airport expansion don’t seem like efforts to combat global warming, nothing prevented the governments that funded them from reporting them as such to the United Nations and counting them toward their giving total.”²⁸

It is obvious that a serious system of monitoring is necessary as one necessary step, but only one step, toward moving significant financial resources into legitimate climate projects in developing economies. What is needed more generally is to establish a framework for climate financing that can both mobilize sufficient levels of funding as well as establish that the financing burdens are distributed fairly.

A global financing framework

In principle, it should not be especially challenging to finance the global Green New Deal. To begin with, as of 2020, the Financial Stability Board estimates that the total value of global financial assets was $469 trillion.²⁹ The $2.6 trillion that I am proposing to channel into clean energy investments as of 2024 amounts to 0.6 percent of this total financial asset pool. We can assume that the overall global financing requirement would be divided equally between public and private sector financing sources, as has been the actual rough pattern with the flow of financing over the past decade. We would therefore need to raise about $1.3 trillion in 2024 from public sector sources, 0.3 percent of total global financial assets in 2020.

For purposes of illustration, I propose three large-scale funding sources to support public clean energy investments.³⁰ Other approaches could also be viable. These three funding sources are: 1) a carbon tax, in which 75 percent of revenues are rebated back to the public but 25 percent are channeled into clean energy investment projects; 2) transferring 10 percent of funding out of military budgets from all countries, but primarily the U.S.; and 3) A Green Bond lending program, initiated primarily by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, but also including the People’s Bank of China, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the central banks of other high-income economies. Strong cases can be made for each of these funding measures. But each proposal does also have vulnerabilities, including around political feasibility. The most sensible approach is therefore to combine the measures into a single package that minimizes their respective weaknesses as standalone measures.

Carbon tax with rebates

Carbon taxes have the merit of impacting climate policy through two channels—they raise fossil fuel prices and thereby discourage consumption while also generating a new source of government revenue. At least part of the carbon tax revenue can then be channeled into supporting the clean energy investment project. But the carbon tax will hit low- and middle-income people disproportionately, since they spend a larger fraction of their income on electricity, transportation and home-heating fuel. An equal-shares rebate, as proposed by James Boyce (2019), is the simplest way to ensure that the full impact of the tax will be equalizing across all population cohorts.

Consider, therefore, the following tax-and-rebate program. Focusing, again, on 2024, we begin with a tax at a low rate of $40 per ton of carbon. Given current global CO₂ emissions levels, that would generate about $1.3 billion in revenue. Focusing on gasoline prices, a rule-of-thumb for estimating the impact of a carbon tax on retail prices is that every one dollar in a carbon tax will add about one cent to the retail price per gallon of gasoline. Thus, starting the tax at $40 per ton will add about 40 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline. As of mid-2022, the average retail price of gasoline globally was around $5.00, though there is substantial variation by country around this average price, due to differences in how gasoline is distributed and taxed in each country. Nevertheless, as an illustrative average only, the carbon tax of $40 per ton would increase the average global retail gasoline price as of 2022 by 8 percent.

If we then use only 25 percent of this revenue to finance clean energy investments, that amounts to roughly $325 billion for investment projects. The 75 percent of the total revenue that is rebated to the public in equal shares would then amount to $975 billion. This amounts to about $120 for every person on the planet, or nearly $500 for a family of four.³¹

Transferring funds out of military budgets

Global military spending in 2021 was at $2.1 trillion³². The U.S. military budget, at about $800 billion, accounted for nearly 40 percent of the global total. There are solid logical and ethical grounds for transferring substantial shares, if not most, of each country’s total military budget to supporting climate stabilization, if we take seriously the idea that military spending is fundamentally aimed at achieving greater security for the citizens of each country. But to remain within the realm of political feasibility, let us assume that 10 percent of global military spending will transfer into supporting climate security. The 10 percent transfer of funds would apply to all countries on a proportional basis. The full amount of funds generated would be roughly $200 billion.

Green bond funding by Federal Reserve and other central banks

It was demonstrated during the 2007-09 Great Recession and again during the 2020 – 2021 COVID lockdown that the Federal Reserve is able to supply basically unlimited bailout funds to private financial markets during crises. Thus, during the COVID lockdown between March 2020 and December 2021, the Fed purchased more than $4 trillion in financial assets from Wall Street firms—about nearly 20 percent of U.S. GDP—to prop up financial markets during the crisis. The policy interventions in other high-income countries followed broadly similar trajectories during the pandemic. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) described these measures as “unprecedented’ in “size and scope.” The BIS estimated that these interventions exceeded 30 percent of GDP in Germany and Italy, over 20 percent in Japan, and around 15 percent in the UK and France.³³

I would propose that the U.S. Fed supply $400 billion in Green Bond financing. This would amount to only 10 percent of its 2020 – 2021 bailout operations. The other large central banks could match these Fed injections, bringing the total level of support to $800 billion at initially, then rising annually with overall economic growth. This support from the Fed and other major central banks could be injected into the global economy through straightforward channels. That is, various public entities, such as the World Bank, could issue long-term zero-interest-rate bonds. The Fed, for example, would purchase these bonds. The various public entities issuing these bonds would then have the funds to pursue the full range of projects falling under the rubric of the global clean energy project.

In short, these three sources—revenues from the carbon tax, transfers out of military spending, and green bond financing from major central banks—can readily generate the roughly $1.3 trillion in public financing that I estimate will be needed in 2024 to finance clean energy investments at the level needed to achieve a zero emissions economy by 2050. Through the simple illustrative example here, we would generate approximately $300 billion from the carbon tax, $200 billion from transferring funds out of military budgets, and $800 billion through central bank green bond programs, to reach the $1.3 trillion total. The level of funding will then rise in proportion to the increases in global GDP between 2024 – 2050.

It will also be critical to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidy programs in all countries. According to estimates by Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker, the average level of global fossil fuel subsidies between 2011 – 2020 was about $630 billion.³⁴ However, through keeping retail energy prices low, such fossil fuel subsidies act as a form of general support for all energy consumers. Lower- and middle-income households are then benefitting from fossil fuel subsidies, along with of course, the fossil fuel corporations. The fossil fuel subsidies should be converted into clean energy subsidies that will then help lower-income consumers to pay for clean energy. But using the roughly $600 billion per year in redirected subsidy funds to directly support consumers’ clean energy purchases will also mean that the funds would not be available to directly finance clean energy infrastructure investments.

Ensuring global fairness

Where is all the money coming from and going to? We need to be able to answer this question clearly, to ensure that basic standards of fairness are built into the global Green New Deal. Three basic points need to be emphasized as background:

1. Starting with the early phases of industrial development under capitalism, what are now the globe’s high-income countries, including the U.S. Western Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia, are primarily responsible for loading up the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions and causing climate change. They therefore should be primarily responsible for financing the global Green New Deal.

2. Moving from this historical perspective to the present, high-income people in all countries and regions have massively larger carbon footprints today than everyone else. As documented in a 2020 Oxfam study, the average carbon footprint of people in the richest 1 percent of the global population, for example, is 35 times greater than the average emissions level for the overall global population.³⁵

3. The upfront investment costs of a global Green New Deal are real and substantial, at around 2.5 percent of global GDP annually, amounting, as discussed above, to about $2.6 trillion in 2024. But these investments will pay for themselves over time, through dramatically raising energy efficiency levels and providing abundant clean renewable energy at average prices that are at parity or lower today than fossil fuels and nuclear, and falling.

Within this overall framework, how well do the financing proposals I have sketched above measure up in terms of global fairness?

First, under the simple tax-and-rebate proposal, everyone on the planet receives a $120 rebate. For the average person in the U.S., this $120 will provide tiny 0.2 percent boost to their income. But for the average person in, say, Kenya, this additional $120 will raise their income by roughly 6 percent.

The impact of transferring 10 percent of all global military spending, provided on a proportional basis relative the current military budgets within each country, will also be strongly egalitarian. This is because, starting with the U.S., military spending levels of the high-income countries are much higher in absolute amounts than those of middle- and low-income countries.

The Green Bond financing proposal will not take money out of anyone’s pocket. It rather involves the world’s largest central banks effectively printing money as needed. This would be just as they did during both the 2007 − 09 global financial crisis as well as the COVID recession, except on a far more modest scale than the largesse that the central banks showered on Wall Street and global financial elite twice within the little more than a decade. To be clear, I am not suggesting that the US Fed or European Central Bank should rely on this policy—what is technically known as “debt monetization”—on a routine basis. But we need to be equally clear that this is a fully legitimate option that the two major central banks have in their toolkit, and that this option should indeed be brought into action as needed under crisis conditions. Note here that the funds will be generated by the central banks of high-income countries, but then distributed globally on an equitable basis, to underwrite the clean energy investment projects at scale in all regions of the globe.

Public investment banks in all regions, but especially in low-income countries, will then serve as primary conduits in moving specific investment projects forward. The public investment banks will be financing both public and private sector clean-energy projects, along with mixed public-private projects. We cannot know what the best mix should be between public and private ownership with any specific project in any given country. There is no point in being dogmatic and pretending otherwise. But, in all situations, we do need to stick with a basic principle: that with the private-sector projects, it is not reasonable to allow private firms to profit at rates that they have gotten away with under 40 years of neoliberalism. If private firms are happy to accept large public subsidies to support their clean energy investments, they then also need to be willing to accept limits on their profitability.

As should be clear, the global Green New Deal project that I have outlined here will not replace capitalism with socialism. In fact, this variant of a global Green New Deal project will actually need to take root and flourish within the interstices of capitalism. We do not have the luxury of postponing a viable climate stabilization program until the uncertain time at which socialism will have been established worldwide as the prevailing social system. But the Green New Deal will end of the 40-year reign of the neoliberalism era within capitalism, because the Green New Deal will have enabled the principles ecological sanity and egalitarianism to gain ascendancy over capitalist acquisitiveness.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 One recent study providing details of the issues at stake is Lenton et al. (2023). They find that allowing the global mean temperature to rise by 2.7 °C between 2080 – 2100 could leave one-third of the global population exposed to “unprecedented heat.” Reducing global warming from 2.7 to 1.5 °C would result in a five-fold decrease in the population exposed to unprecedented heat.

2 https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions

3 https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions#by-gas-how-much-does-each-contribute-to-total-greenhouse-gas-emissions

4 Chomsky and Pollin (2020).

5 I discuss climate adaptation in Chomsky and Pollin (2020, 96–100) and cite some important recent literature on the issue. But the need for further research, and especially robust policy initiatives, on adaptation is growing rapidly, as the impacts of climate change are becoming more severe more rapidly than most analysts had been projecting.

6 For various perspectives on the Green New Deal, degrowth and ecosocialism, see, e.g. Mastini, Kallis, and Hickel (2021), Adj (2021) and Huber (2022). See also a 2019 debate between Schor and Jorgenson 2019b) and myself (Pollin 2019b) and a 2022 Boston Review forum featuring an essay by Soper (2022) with responses by Ghosh (2022) and myself (Pollin et al. 2022a). My own more detailed perspectives on degrowth and ecosocialism are in Pollin (2018) and Chomsky and Pollin (2020). Meaney (2022) presents an excellent survey of alternative perspectives on these issues.

7 https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022

8 https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world

9 https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling

10 An excellent reference on the overall set of issues in this section is Jacobson (2023).

11 Pollin (2020) presents the full derivation as to how I generated these estimates. It is notable that the 2021 study by IRENA, World Energy Transitions Outlook reached almost the identical figure for average annual spending to reach a 1.5 °C stabilization point by 2050: they estimate an average of $4.4 trillion per year as opposed to my own average figure of $4.5 trillion per year (100). The IEA’s cost estimate for their Net Zero scenario is also close to my figure, at an average of $5.1 trillion per year through 2050 (IEA 2021a).

12 https://www.irena.org/publications/2022/Jul/Renewable-Power-Generation-Costs-in-2021

13 https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/cost-saving-electricity-through; https://www.aceee.org/blog/2018/12/renewables-are-getting-cheaper-energy; https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/cost-saving-electricity-multi-program

14 These figures refer to the most recent data on total energy consumption in these respective economies relative to their GDP. That is, their energy intensity ratios—(aggregate energy consumption/GDP). Figures on aggregate energy consumption are from: https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world. GDP figures are from: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator

15 See Alvarez et al. (2012), Romm (2014), Howarth (2015), and J. Peischl et al. (2016).

16 See Pollin (2022b).

17 https://www.ft.com/content/4a8610a7-d929-4989-a2da-9014412e23c2

18 See Valero et al. (2018).

19 This development is documented in van Exter et al. (2018).

20 See, e.g. the classic work by Girvan (1976) as well as Tanzer (1981).

21 See, e.g. Shaxson (2007).

22 See the detailed discussion in Pollin et al. (2023).

23 These findings are summarized in Pollin (2015).

24 See Pollin et al. (2022).

25 See Pollin (2016).

26 The findings in this section are summarized in Pollin (2023).

27 https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2021/

28 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/climate-change-finance/

29 https://www.fsb.org/wp-content/uploads/P161221.pdf

30 This approach is developed in Pollin (2020) and summarized in Chomsky and Pollin (2020).

31 Azad and Chakraborty (2019) develop a more complex rebate structure, that rewards residents of countries according to the emissions levels of each country.

32 https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2022/world-military-expenditure-passes-2-trillion-first-time

33 See Pollin and Epstein (2021).

34 https://fossilfuelsubsidytracker.org/

35 https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621305/bn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf