Carbon dioxide emission prices in the 2020s will not be high enough to deliver stable demand for renewable hydrogen, concludes German think tank Agora Energiewende and Guidehouse. Even with a tripling of prices in the EU emissions trading system (ETS) to €200/tonne, additional support will be necessary for a “considerable period of time”. To ramp up the market for green hydrogen, the report recommends: carbon contracts for difference in industry; an aviation quota; auctions for combined heat and power plants; measures to encourage markets for decarbonised materials; and hydrogen supply contracts.

The pipeline of 13,000 renewable energy projects across 50 countries could create up to 10 million direct and indirect green jobs, says EY-Parthenon. Renewables can be particularly effective in creating jobs outside of urban economic centres, especially when a deliberate effort is put into strengthening local supply chains. The pipeline represents $2 trillion in investment opportunities for one terawatt (TW) of generation capacity and could avoid 2.5 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions. Over 90% of the required investment for an accelerated renewables deployment can be provided by the private sector.

The Clean Energy Futures project finds that President Joe Biden’s clean energy plan would benefit the economy by $637 billion while costing $342 billion over 30 years. It would generate estimated present value health benefits of $1.13 trillion because of cleaner air, especially in minority communities, bringing the estimated present value net benefits to $1.43 trillion by 2050. The researchers were from Harvard and Syracuse Universities, the think tank Resources for the Futures and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Biden is calling for 80% clean energy by 2030 including a clean energy standard (CES) for utilities.