The current global economic development aspirations coincide with intensifying climate risks, growing geo-political adversities, and shrinking carbon space. For several countries, progress on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is slow, energy demand is rising, and their fiscal bandwidth is stressed as they strike a balance between cleaning up their energy mix and maintaining the affordability of energy supplies for large proportions of their populations (UN 2022, Carbon Tracker and CEEW 2021, Ghosh, A., Ganesan, K. 2015). For the world to achieve a net-zero future, solar and wind power capacities must grow 20 and 11 times between 2020 and 2050, respectively (IRENA 2022, IEA 2021a). With the rise in the share of variable renewable energy (RE) in the electricity systems, storage solutions must see a massive growth. And, for the hard-to-abate sectors, green hydrogen ecosystem must be scaled up rapidly.
The rapid adoption of RE will not only help decarbonise the electricity systems but also help realise the desired impacts of the SDGs. However, a speedy and risk-proof transition to RE will only be possible if countries can secure access to uninterrupted and affordable supply chains of key technologies.
