Technology Innovation in the Energy Sector and Climate Change: The Role of Governments and Policies

This chapter focuses on the importance of technology innovation in the energy sector that has been responsible for more than two-thirds of the global CO2 emissions in 2020, highlighting the clear link between energy and climate. Climate change is undoubtedly the main challenge of the twenty-first century. For this reason, the energy sector will face a dual challenge: tackling the impact of rising temperatures, on one hand, which will affect the entire energy value chain, and changing its mode of operation, on the other, investing in mitigation. The global energy system will need to undergo a clean energy transition, whereby sources of energy that emit GHG are replaced by increasingly cleaner sources. The next decade is all that is left to effectively limit the climate crisis, and technology innovation will play a crucial role in this context. Specifically, the chapter describes the role of governments in technology innovation, the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the energy transition policies, and the importance of the international cooperation on innovation in the energy sector, with a particular focus on the G7/G8 and G20 experiences.