Climate Action in Energy Infrastructure to Support the SDGs : Mainstreaming Climate Activities across the Project Lifecycle

Sammanfattning: To mitigate and adapt to climate change, full-scale climate action requires vast investments in supporting infrastructure across all sectors. Among all infrastructure sectors, energy generation and distribution are the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 37% of the world’s combined emissions. The UN Paris Agreement along with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasise global attempts for climate action. This study builds upon the conceptualization of the connections between energy infrastructure, climate action, and sustainable development. It does so by providing a comprehensive and systematic mainstreaming of activities related to climate mitigation and adaptation into the energy sector lifecycle, supporting sustainable development. The method consisted of a document analysis to identify common themes of climate action in energy infrastructure development, followed by a scientific extension to align the themes to the infrastructure lifecycle and provide a basis for mainstreamed climate action. This resulted in a list of mitigation and adaptation activities across the lifecycle of an infrastructure project. Two renewable energy projects were used to integrate the results into a practical context and demonstrate potential SDG target synergies. The results showed that integrated climate action in the energy infrastructure lifecycle can influence the achievement of SDGs, which is supported by the theory of climate compatible development. One way of mainstreaming climate action is by implementing the proposed list of activities to harness synergies between climate action and sustainable development, which is facilitated by the proposed lifecycle perspective to climate action throughout an energy project. Specific correlations between climate action and SDG outcomes is hard to distinguish due to unique conditions surrounding a project. Still, as demonstrated by the case studies, implementing multiple climate activities influences achievement of several SDGs. Studying the connections provides significance as a perspective on the possible harmonisation between climate action and sustainable development in energy infrastructure.