Growing the green agenda at the Mexican G20

Can the G20 transform its economies to maximize the efficient and equitable use of resources while meeting the challenge of ensuring economic stability and growth?

The 2012 Business 20 (B20) Green Growth Task Force strongly believes that the answer is yes. The Task Force, a unique multistakeholder group of leading banks, clean-energy companies, international financial institutions and NGOs, has worked for the past several months to develop an “Action Agenda” for green growth, to be delivered to G20 governments on 17 June. The recommendations are designed to crack a key challenge: attracting private sector financing for green growth by setting the right policy frameworks and through innovative public-private partnerships that target public support to leverage private investment.

To do this, the 2012 B20 Green Growth Task Force calls for action in five areas, listed below (the B20 recommendations and actions will be posted at http://b20.org this week):

• Promoting free trade in green goods and services to accelerate green infrastructure technology deployment; encourage competition, innovation and faster job creation; and reduce prices.
• Achieving robust pricing on carbon that is high and stable enough to change behaviours and investment decisions
• Ending inefficient fossil fuel subsidies and redirecting a portion of them to support energy access and other public priorities.
• Accelerating low-carbon innovation to underpin the deployment of innovative resources and energy-efficient solutions.
• Dramatically increasing efforts to pool public funding to leverage private investments, by scaling up risk mitigation and co-investment funding structures.

There is a strong indication from the Mexican Chair that these recommendations will be well received and acted on, as Green Growth is a priority topic for this year’s G20. The G20 Development and Finance Working Groups have also been receptive to these recommendations.

During the course of the week leading up to the Mexican G20 Summit, the World Economic Forum looks forward to hosting a dialogue on this blog about these recommendations, and I am delighted to welcome several of our Task Force members – leading CEOs and international organization heads – to offer their thoughts about the recommendations above. This coming weekend, during the Summit, the B20 Task Force and the Mexican G20 Presidency will make an important announcement about a new model to address the green growth challenge. Watch this space…

Author: Thomas Kerr is the Director of Green Growth and Climate Change Initiatives at the World Economic Forum

Image: Wind turbines are seen in La Ventosa February 7, 2012.