IEA Outlines $3 Trillion Green Recovery Plan to Help Fix Global Economy

The International Energy Agency has laid out a $3 trillion green recovery plan, offering governments around the world a “once-in-a-lifetime” roadmap to sustainably rebuild their economies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Sustainable Recovery report, published Thursday, is designed to present world leaders with cost-effective measures that could be implemented from 2021 through to 2023, CNBC reported.
It sets out three main goals: spurring economic growth, creating jobs and building more resilient and cleaner energy systems.
“As they design economic recovery plans, policymakers are having to make enormously consequential decisions in a very short space of time,” Fatih Birol, executive director at the IEA, said.
“These decisions will shape economic and energy infrastructure for decades to come and will almost certainly determine whether the world has a chance of meeting its long-term energy and climate goals.”
An unprecedented global public health crisis triggered by the Covid-19 outbreak means the world is experiencing its worst economic shock since the 1930s, the IEA said. It is having a profound impact on employment and investment across all parts of the economy, including energy.
The IEA has previously warned that it believes the coronavirus crisis has paved the way for the largest decline of global energy investment on record this year, with spending set to plummet 20%.
Last year, the global energy industry employed roughly 40 million people, but 3 million of those jobs have either been lost or at risk as a result of the pandemic, according to the report’s analysis.
The Sustainable Recovery plan is based on the assessments of over 30 specific energy policy measures and spans six key sectors: electricity, transport, industry, buildings, fuels and emerging low-carbon technologies.
The IEA believes the plan could save or create approximately nine million jobs a year over the next three years, which requires global investment of around $1 trillion annually over the next three years.