ABSTRACT
The Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS) highlights the fact that private investments are necessary to complement government funds for transitioning to low-carbon economies as pledged by 195 countries and their INDCs at COP21 and the UN’s SDGs in 2015. The first Green Transition Scoreboard was released during the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009, with a total of US $1.2 trillion. The green transition is well underway, as documented by the myriad of trend points documented in this paper. Our figures are updated twice a year and the GTS model proposes that if the annual increase tracked so far of at least US$1 trillion in these private investments, that these funds will continue the rapid scaling of renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and efficiency) and their lower costs will out-compete fossilized energy and nuclear power. This process is shifting the global economy into the next evolutionary stage I have termed the Solar Age. Our definition of green technologies is very strict: no nuclear, no clean coal, and only biofuels grown from algae on saltwater. Our current GTS explores “Ending Externalities: Full-Spectrum Accounting Facilitates Transition Management” (Henderson, 2016).
Keywords: economic transition, global trends, private investment, capital expenditures, renewable energy
1. INTRODUCTION
The GGKP has tracked the watershed agreements of 2015 between the 195 member countries of the United Nations, which are now accelerating the global transition from the fossil-fueled Industrial Era to the Solar Age. The Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS), launched in 2009, has documented this global transition as the next stage of human socio-technical evolution. Examples of these transitions are now underway from local to global scale, as described in the GTS. Some pioneer macro-projects such as the Club of Rome’s DESERTEC Industrial Initiative (Dii) launched in 2009 encountered roadblocks, including the financial crisis of 2008. Others, such as the energy efficient “Industrial Ecology” model pioneered by the City of Kalundborg in are now working models of macro-efficiency. Even deeper transition management is that of Janine Benyus and her Biomimicry Institute and B 3.8 consulting firm helping companies redesign their products and processes since the 1990s (Scanlon, 2016).