The Net-Zero Energy Transition

Governments, other jurisdictions, and corporates are making headlines with high ambition climate target announcements for the mid-century and the midterm. The implementation of these pledges now requires intensive and radical policy plans, and in this task the energy sector and the energy transition are of central importance.

In December 2020, an international group of think tanks working for the energy transition in major and emerging economies around the world came together to create the International Network of Energy Transition Think Tanks (INETTT). The INETTT founding members are from Europe (Germany and Poland), East Asia (Japan and the Republic of Korea), South-East Asia (Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey, Thailand, and Vietnam), Africa (South Africa), and the Americas (Mexico and Brazil).

As think tanks, our role in the policy process is to help prepare the path for robust decision making and policy implementation. INETTT’s members undertake to do research and to prepare policy “homework” in a proactive and strategic way that does not wait for policy-makers or industry decision-makers to be ready to seek solutions. Rather, we generate breakthrough analysis and major policy proposals and use these to accelerate debate into action.

Our proposals are fact-based, stress-tested, and designed to enable crucial breakthroughs. Our key tools are research and workshops with sector stakeholders for knowledge sharing. INETTT think tanks provide a trusted dialogue space where stakeholders share their questions, form new relationships, and contribute to our robust analyses. The politicians and business leaders making climate pledges are not making these announcements “out of the blue”.

Relatively few think tanks work on the energy transition – far fewer than focus on international relations, for example. For this reason, another key activity of the INETTT members is capacity-building work with the next generation of experts and decision-makers. By collaborating as a network, INETTT is able to support nationally based and locally specific work with group synergies, strategies, and tools, including a data platform that combines global datasets with local data sources. We can learn from each other’s successes. INETTT is also beginning to engage in international policy dialogues as a counterparty to intergovernmental institutions and platforms such as the International Energy Agency, the International Renewable Energy Agency, and
the Clean Energy Ministerial.