Advancing Affordable Access To Climate Technologies For Clean Transition And Sustainable Industrialization In Developing Countries

The clean transition towards the achievement of net zero is often constrained by inadequate finance and access to affordable climate technologies. While the G20 has been at the forefront of efforts to address the financial challenges, the generation and diffusion of climate technologies must also receive due attention. Climate technologies include those related to generating renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, low carbon alternatives to traditional products, and energy efficiency, among others. In the past, today’s high-income countries deployed industrial policies, including flexible intellectual property rules, to help support structural transformations. Many of those policies have since been sanctioned in multilateral trade fora. Nevertheless, these tools are essential for sustainable industrialization in a climate crisis and even high- income countries have begun to use them. This policy brief explores the literature of the relationship between intellectual property protection and innovation to understand how to foster the supply and diffusion of clean technologies for sustainable industrialization. The G20 leaders under the Brazilian Presidency can advance global consensus-building and action toward aligning global rules with recent research findings, leading national efforts to maximize existing policy flexibilities and supporting the development of new research to support policy making in the future.