Publication: Did the 2022 global energy crisis accelerate the diffusion of low-carbon technologies?
Loading...
Date
2024-05-20
ISSN
Published
2024-05-20
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper develops measures of the diffusion of a comprehensive range of low-carbon technologies in 35 countries from 2019 to 2022 using text analysis of job postings and earnings calls transcripts. It documents a rapid acceleration in the diffusion of low-carbon technologies in 2022, driven by technologies related to renewable energy, vehicles, thermal performance, and electrical generation and storage. Rapid growth occurred in three quarters of the countries studied and 228 of 300 subnational regions, although was fastest in Europe. Hiring for roles related to low-carbon technologies in these 35 countries doubled between 2019 and the end of 2022, for example. It studies the role of the global energy crisis in triggering this accelerated technology diffusion, focusing on 16 mainly advanced economies. It finds that establishments in countries that had a higher pre-crisis dependence on imports of natural gas, and were thus more exposed to the price shock, differentially increased hiring for low-carbon technology related roles from March 2022 onwards. Within more exposed countries, establishments with a higher pre-crisis energy intensity also saw a differential increase in hiring relative to less energy intensive ones.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Bastos, Paulo; Greenspon, Jacob; Stapleton, Katherine; Taglioni, Daria. 2024. Did the 2022 global energy crisis accelerate the diffusion of low-carbon technologies?. Policy Research Working Paper; 10777. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41567 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Geopolitics and the World Trading System(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-23)Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their trade policy choices. Now heightened geopolitical rivalry seems to have undermined the WTO. A simple transposition of the previous rationalization suggests that geopolitics and trade cooperation are not compatible. The paper shows that this is only true if rivalry eclipses any consideration of own-country well-being. In all other circumstances, there are gains from trade cooperation even with geopolitics. Furthermore, the WTO’s relevance is in question only if it adheres too rigidly to its existing rules and norms. Through measured adaptation to the geopolitical imperative, the WTO can continue to thrive as a forum for multilateral trade cooperation in the age of geopolitics.Publication Innovative Financial Instruments and Their Role in the Development of Jurisdictional REDD+(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-08)Achieving global net zero carbon emissions requires stopping deforestation and making full use of tropical forests as carbon sinks. Market instruments for the sale and purchase of emission outcomes coming from Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation framework programs could play a very significant role in achieving this goal. The development of these markets has been insufficient so far: their scale as of today is much lower than what would be required to generate meaningful resources for the countries that host tropical forests, and the quality of existing instruments is generally insufficient to allow a scaling up in demand. However, efforts to improve the transparency and integrity of these instruments are accelerating, particularly around jurisdictional Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation framework programs. In parallel with these efforts, innovations in financial instruments suited for the framework’s carbon markets are also taking place, but their scale is limited so far. This paper looks beyond the current state of the framework’s carbon markets to consider a set of innovative financial instruments that would allow completing the infrastructure of emissions trading, enhancing its utility for both issuers and buyers of carbon credits in the framework’s jurisdictional programs. The paper shows how a combination of forest carbon bonds, where countries sell forward (or commit) their emission reduction outcomes, as well as call and put options can be used to de-risk and encourage early investment in jurisdictional Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation framework programs. To quantify the value of these innovations, the paper evaluates the potential scale of these instruments for the case of Brazil. The estimates suggest that the amounts that could be mobilized would represent a critical contribution to effective forest conservation. The proposed instruments and methods can be used by other tropical nations that are prepared to implement a large-scale jurisdictional program. Although the paper acknowledges that the current state of carbon markets would still not allow their deployment in the short term, the conclusion is that these instruments have significant potential, and their future development could be an important contribution to the establishment of successful markets for the conservation of tropical forests.Publication Disentangling the Key Economic Channels through Which Infrastructure Affects Jobs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)This paper takes stock of the literature on infrastructure and jobs published since the early 2000s, using a conceptual framework to identify the key channels through which different types of infrastructure impact jobs. Where relevant, it highlights the different approaches and findings in the cases of energy, digital, and transport infrastructure. Overall, the literature review provides strong evidence of infrastructure’s positive impact on employment, particularly for women. In the case of electricity, this impact arises from freeing time that would otherwise be spent on household tasks. Similarly, digital infrastructure, particularly mobile phone coverage, has demonstrated positive labor market effects, often driven by private sector investments rather than large public expenditures, which are typically required for other large-scale infrastructure projects. The evidence on structural transformation is also positive, with some notable exceptions, such as studies that find no significant impact on structural transformation in rural India in the cases of electricity and roads. Even with better market connections, remote areas may continue to lack economic opportunities, due to the absence of agglomeration economies and complementary inputs such as human capital. Accordingly, reducing transport costs alone may not be sufficient to drive economic transformation in rural areas. The spatial dimension of transformation is particularly relevant for transport, both internationally—by enhancing trade integration—and within countries, where economic development tends to drive firms and jobs toward urban centers, benefitting from economies scale and network effects. Turning to organizational transformation, evidence on skill bias in developing countries is more mixed than in developed countries and may vary considerably by context. Further research, especially on the possible reasons explaining the differences between developed and developing economies, is needed.Publication Economic Consequences of Trade and Global Value Chain Integration(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2025-04-04)This paper introduces a new approach to measuring Global Value Chains (GVC), crucial for informed policy-making. It features a tripartite classification (backward, forward, and two-sided) covering trade and production data. The findings indicate that traditional trade-based GVC metrics significantly underestimate global GVC activity, especially in sectors like services and upstream manufacturing, and overstate risks in early trade liberalization stages. Additionally, conventional backward-forward classifications over-estimate backward linkages. The paper further applies these measures empirically to assess how GVC participation mediates the impact of demand shocks on domestic output, highlighting both the exposure and stabilizing potential of GVC integration. These new measures are comprehensively available on the World Bank’s WITS Platform, providing a key resource for GVC analysis.Publication Labor Market Scarring in a Developing Economy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-08)This paper estimates the magnitude of labor market scarring in a developing economy, a setting that has been understudied by the labor scarring literature dominated by advanced economies. The paper assesses the contributions of “stigma” versus “lost human capital,” which cause earnings losses among displaced workers relative to non-displaced workers. The findings indicate that job separations caused by plant closings result in sizable and long-lasting reductions in earnings, with an average decline of 7.5 percent in hourly wages over a nine-year period. The estimate for one year after a plant closing is larger, at a decline of 10.8 percent. In a common sample, after controlling for unobserved, time-invariant individual characteristics, the impact of a plant closing declines from 11.9 to 8.2 percent. These results imply that stigma in the labor market due to imperfect information about workers (captured by unobservable worker characteristics) accounts for 30.8 percent of the average earnings losses, whereas lost employer-specific human capital explains the remaining 69.2 percent. The paper explores the effects of job separations due to plant closings on other labor market outcomes, including hours worked and informality, and provides estimates across genders and levels of education.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Firm Networks and Global Technology Diffusion(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-13)This study examines the role of multinational firms and global value chain linkages in the cross-country diffusion of emerging technologies. The analysis combines detailed information on the near-universe of online job postings in 17 countries with data on multinational networks and firm-to-firm linkages from 2014 to 2022. Online job postings are utilized to investigate how jobs related to emerging technologies spread through firm networks. The findings show that emerging technology jobs are highly concentrated within multinational firms and their supply chains. Approximately one third of all emerging technology job postings during this period come from Fortune 500 firms, their affiliates, buyers, suppliers, or innovation partners. Although the locations where these technologies originate exhibit a higher prevalence of technology job openings, this advantage diminishes over time as diffusion accelerates in wealthier and geographically closer countries and regions. The study highlights the significant role of firm-to-firm linkages in technology diffusion, with some linkages proving more influential than others. Firms that were previously buyers or innovation partners of establishments in technology-originating locations experienced faster growth in jobs related to these technologies. Moreover, relationships outside corporate boundaries play a particularly critical role, and these connections are influential beyond the factor of geographical distance.Publication Greening Global Value Chains : Innovation and the International Diffusion of Technologies and knowledge(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05)Using novel data on patents, trade of equipment goods, and foreign direct investments and insights from the economic literature, the paper seeks to lay out the state of knowledge on the role of innovation and the diffusion of technologies in the greening of global value chains as well as some of the main policy issues. A special emphasis is put on developing countries -- distinguishing emerging economies and least-developed countries -- and on climate-mitigation technologies. Emerging economies are already reasonably well integrated in the global economy. As a consequence, technologies flow in through the imports of capital goods and local investments by multinational enterprises owning technologies. Pushing further technology transfer requires strengthening intellectual property rights, lowering barriers to trade and investments and improving technological absorptive capacities. In contrast, their role in innovation is limited. Standard tools of innovation policy - public research and development, public support to private research and development, better access to finance - should develop. But studies also suggest that governments should introduce more stringent environmental policies with proper enforcement at home to go beyond the adoption of foreign technologies. The situation of least-developed countries is very different: they do not import green technologies and low barriers to trade and foreign direct investment or strict intellectual property rights are unlikely to trigger technology transfer. In these countries, the focus should be on building technological capacities.Publication Climate Change and the World Bank Group : Phase II - The Challenge of Low-Carbon Development(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010)The first volume of Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) series (IEG 2009) examined World Bank experience with the promotion of the most important win-win (no regrets) energy policies, policies that combine domestic gains with global greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. These included energy pricing reform and policies to promote energy efficiency. This second phase covers the entire World Bank Group (WBG), including the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). It assesses of interventions, from technical assistance to financing to regulatory reform. This project-eye view of activities pertains to all the action areas of the Strategic Framework on Development and Climate Change (SFDCC). The third phase will look at the challenge of adaptation to climate change. The WBG's resources, human and financial, are small compared to the task at hand. The International Energy Agency estimates that developing and transition countries need $16 trillion of energy sector investments over 2008-30 under 'business as usual' operations, plus an additional $5 trillion to shift to an ambitiously low-carbon path. Much more is needed for sustainable land and forest management and for urban transport. So a prime focus of this evaluation is how the WBG can get the most leverage, the widest positive impact on both development and climate change mitigation, from its limited resources.Publication Accelerating Climate-Resilient and Low-Carbon Development(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11-24)The objective of this transport component of the broader Africa Climate Business Plan (ACBP) is to begin to mainstream climate benefits into the World Bank’s transport program for Sub-Saharan Africa, the better to assist African countries in bringing their climate change efforts to scale. It is a first step towards mainstreaming responses to the climate challenge into transport programs in Africa, and it represents the first time the Transport & ICT GP has produced a work plan for its investment and technical assistance operations that takes into account the content of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and attempts to align World Bank support to the goals stated therein. The transport work plan under this Africa Climate Business Plan will consist of up to $3.2 billion in investments and technical assistance over the 2016-2020 period – including $2.8 billion in World Bank funds. Those investments will help to make progress on two strategic objectives: (1) improving the resilience of African transport infrastructure to climate change by defining four pillars of resilient transport; and (2) improving the carbon-efficiency of transport systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.Publication Low-Carbon Development : Latin American Responses to Climate Change(World Bank, 2010)Climate change is already a reality. This is evidenced by the acceleration of global temperature increases, the melting of ice and snow covers, and rising sea levels. Latin America and the Caribbean region (LCR) are not exempt from these trends, as illustrated by the changes in precipitation patterns that are already being reported in the region, as well as by observations of rising temperatures, the rapid melting of Andean tropical glaciers, and an increasing number of extreme weather events. The most important force behind climate change is the rising concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the earth's atmosphere driven mainly by manmade emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. Because of inertia in the climate system, the planet is likely to continue warming over the twenty-first century, and unless emissions are significantly reduced, this process could accelerate, with potentially very serious consequences for nature and mankind. There is still, however, a high degree of uncertainty regarding the specific drivers, timing, and impact of global climate change, as well as about the costs and efficacy of actions aimed at either mitigating it or dealing with its physical and economic impacts. As a result, it is very hard, at this point, to unambiguously determine economically efficient emission pathways for which the benefits of actions to mitigate climate change will exceed the costs of those actions. Despite these problems and uncertainties, there is increasing evidence suggesting that urgent action is needed in order to alter current emission trends so as to avoid reaching GHG concentration levels that could trigger large and irreversible damages. Negotiations are under way and are scheduled to be concluded in 2012 with a new agreement on a way forward. At the same time, individual countries are also considering how to respond in their own domestic policy to the challenges of climate change. LCR governments and civil society should be well informed about the potential costs and benefits of climate change and their options for decisions that will need to be made over the next decades as well as the global context in which these decisions must be taken. At the same time, the global community needs to be better informed about the unique perspective of the LCR, problems the region will face, potential contributions the region can make to combat global warming, and how to unlock the region's full potential so as to enable it to maximize its contribution while continuing to grow and reduce poverty. This report seeks to help fill both these needs.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Economic Recovery(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-06)World Bank Group President David Malpass spoke about the world facing major challenges, including COVID, climate change, rising poverty and inequality and growing fragility and violence in many countries. He highlighted vaccines, working closely with Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF, the World Bank has conducted over one hundred capacity assessments, many even more before vaccines were available. The World Bank Group worked to achieve a debt service suspension initiative and increased transparency in debt contracts at developing countries. The World Bank Group is finalizing a new climate change action plan, which includes a big step up in financing, building on their record climate financing over the past two years. He noted big challenges to bring all together to achieve GRID: green, resilient, and inclusive development. Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, mentioned focusing on vulnerable people during the pandemic. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, focused on giving everyone a fair shot during a sustainable recovery. All three commented on the importance of tackling climate change.Publication Media and Messages for Nutrition and Health(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has experienced rapid and significant economic growth over the past decade. However, poor nutritional outcomes remain a concern. Rates of childhood undernutrition are particularly high in remote, rural, and upland areas. Media have the potential to play an important role in shaping health and nutrition–related behaviors and practices as well as in promoting sociocultural and economic development that might contribute to improved nutritional outcomes. This report presents the results of a media audit (MA) that was conducted to inform the development and production of mass media advocacy and communication strategies and materials with a focus on maternal and child health and nutrition that would reach the most people from the poorest communities in northern Lao PDR. Making more people aware of useful information, essential services and products and influencing them to use these effectively is the ultimate goal of mass media campaigns, and the MA measures the potential effectiveness of media efforts to reach this goal. The effectiveness of communication channels to deliver health and nutrition messages to target beneficiaries to ensure maximum reach and uptake can be viewed in terms of preferences, satisfaction, and trust. Overall, the four most accessed media channels for receiving information among communities in the study areas were village announcements, mobile phones, television, and out-of-home (OOH) media. Of the accessed media channels, the top three most preferred channels were village announcements (40 percent), television (26 percent), and mobile phones (19 percent). In terms of trust, village announcements were the most trusted source of information (64 percent), followed by mobile phones (14 percent) and television (11 percent). Hence of all the media channels, village announcements are the most preferred, have the most satisfied users, and are the most trusted source of information in study communities from four provinces in Lao PDR with some of the highest burden of childhood undernutrition.Publication Education, Social Norms, and the Marriage Penalty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-16)A growing literature attributes gender inequality in labor market outcomes in part to the reduction in female labor supply after childbirth, the child penalty. However, if social norms constrain married women’s activities outside the home, then marriage can independently reduce employment, even in the absence childbearing. Given the correlation in timing between childbirth and marriage, conventional estimates of child penalties will conflate these two effects. The paper studies the marriage penalty in South Asia, a context featuring conservative gender norms and low female labor force participation. The study introduces a split-sample, pseudo-panel approach that allows for the separation of marriage and child penalties even in the absence of individual-level panel data. Marriage reduces women’s labor force participation in South Asia by 12 percentage points, whereas the marginal penalty of childbearing is small. Consistent with the central roles of both opportunity costs and social norms, the marriage penalty is smaller among cohorts with higher education and less conservative gender attitudes.Publication Remarks at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-12)World Bank Group President David Malpass discussed biodiversity and climate change being closely interlinked, with terrestrial and marine ecosystems serving as critically important carbon sinks. At the same time climate change acts as a direct driver of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss. The World Bank has financed biodiversity conservation around the world, including over 116 million hectares of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas, 10 million hectares of Terrestrial Protected Areas, and over 300 protected habitats, biological buffer zones and reserves. The COVID pandemic, biodiversity loss, climate change are all reminders of how connected we are. The recovery from this pandemic is an opportunity to put in place more effective policies, institutions, and resources to address biodiversity loss.Publication Global Regulations, Institutional Development, and Market Authorities Perspective Toolkit (GRIDMAP) - Framework and Methodology(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-05)GRIDMAP--the Global Regulations, Institutional Development, and Market Authorities Perspective Toolkit--provides emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) with a “Minimum Package” of policies to build markets that are trustworthy, safe, and competitive. The “Minimum Package” sets out essential regulatory provisions, institutional arrangements, and implementation and enforcement needed for those markets to thrive. GRIDMAP will provide modules focused on various subjects of market regulation, such as consumer protection and data markets.