The effectiveness of national energy policy will be decisive for achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Emissions from the production and consumption of energy need to reduce significantly, but government commitments in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) fall short of the action required.
About half of the NDCs submitted do not include actions to reduce energy emissions and, when included, actions may not reflect all energy emissions or be consistent with national energy policies. This paper by Andrew Scott, Leah Worrall and Sejal Patel looks at how four specific developing countries are aligning their energy policies with their NDCs, or missing key opportunities to do so, and they raise questions about how governments could do things differently.