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Unpacking COP28 Commitments to Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency
Mar 4, 2024
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai in December 2023, 198 nations agreed on the world’s first global stocktake — a comprehensive assessment of global emissions reduction progress. The stocktake noted that more efforts are required to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and called on these nations to triple renewable-energy capacity and double energy-efficiency improvements by 2030.
In this paper, we outline opportunities by assessing the quality of renewable-energy and energy-efficiency technology patents held by constituents of the MSCI ACWI Investable Market Index (IMI). This analysis may help investors identify sectors and issuers that could be well positioned to leverage growth opportunities in these zero- and low-emitting technologies. In addition, we explore the current fuel mix and capacity targets of constituents of the utilities sector1 in the MSCI ACWI IMI to identify companies that have committed to increasing renewable-energy capacity by 2030. Our analysis of low-carbon patents, fuel mix and renewable-energy targets may help investors measure their portfolio exposure to opportunities in low-carbon technology.
Analysis of renewable-energy- and energy-storage-patent quality
Notes: We analyzed the quality scores of low-carbon patents for constituents of the MSCI ACWI IMI across GICS sectors. We calculated the market-cap-weighted average of their low-carbon-patent scores. Data as of Jan. 5, 2024. Source: MSCI ESG Research
1. Sectors are defined according to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®). GICS is the global industry classification standard jointly developed by MSCI and S&P Global Market Intelligence.
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Research authors
- Kenji Watanabe, Vice President, MSCI Research
- Anthony Chan, Vice President, MSCI Research
- Kuldeep Yadav, Vice President, MSCI Research
- Siyao He, Associate, MSCI Research
- Sylvain Vanston, Executive Director, MSCI Research
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