United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently came out with a prescription of sorts, to mitigate climate change by accelerating the ongoing critical energy transition.

Expectedly, it’s about significantly increasing Renewable Energy (RE) technology deployment, but he goes further to enunciate broad pillars globally for policymakers on the broad work streams needed to increase the deployment. Of course, there are massive barriers to each, but what stands out is that these difficult work streams each need to be pursued.

His first work stream, or “ask” is to make RE technology a public good. This is tough, given that IP has been arrived at by years of investments in solar, wind, and energy storage technology, first by western firms and labs, and in the last fifteen years, by Chinese firms- especially in solar. As we speak, billions of dollars are also being poured into perfecting storage technologies. IP owners are not going to give up their rights just like that. Guterres does not provide any plan for how these firms can be compensated for sharing their IPs.

Read the full story in the Times of India