Supporting USAID’s Climate Change and Low-Emission Development Goals
Energy efficiency supports USAID’s Climate Change and Development Strategy and helps mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Energy efficiency is a key component of USAID’s Climate Change and Development Strategy (2012–2016) which outlines three Strategic Objectives (SO) that together contribute to the goal of climate-resilient, low-emission development.
USAID Climate Change and Development Strategic Objectives
- SO 1
- Accelerate the transition to low-emission development through investments in clean energy and sustainable landscapes
- SO 2
- Increase resilience of people, places, and livelihoods through investments in adaptation
- SO 3
- Strengthen development outcomes by integrating climate change in Agency programming, learning, policy dialogues and operations
Under Strategic Objective 1, energy efficiency is an important part of investing in clean energy and supports a key intermediate result (IR 1.1), “establish foundation for low carbon energy systems.” Energy efficiency displaces energy generation sources that produce greenhouse gases (GHG) and other harmful emissions and is widely viewed as a low-cost option for achieving energy demand reductions. It can ease the need for future traditional power generation projects that require extensive capital investments by directly reducing energy demand growth. In these ways, USAID’s other strategic objectives of climate resilience and integration are also positively impacted by energy efficiency.
Energy efficiency can also support Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS). LEDS are development plans that promote sustainable economic growth while reducing GHG emissions over the medium and long term. Over half of the world’s GHG emissions result from the combustion of fossil fuels to generate electricity, supply heat or move vehicles. Unlike many other techniques that focus on the generation of cleaner electricity or heat, energy efficiency can provide the benefit of reduced GHG emissions on a near zero net cost basis. Indeed, energy efficiency is often referred to as the “the first fuel in the race for a sustainable energy future” due to its low cost compared to investments in traditional energy sources. Energy efficiency can help many countries with constrained generating capacity reach and power more individuals while using the same level of generation.
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