INETTT brief explores the role of climate finance in achieving just transitions
Experience from JETP initiatives
As countries ramp up efforts to meet global climate goals, a new INETTT brief explores a critical question: how can energy transitions in developing countries be made both fast and fair?
Energy systems must undergo rapid transformation to reduce emissions, support long-term development and ensure energy security. But such shifts come with short-term social and economic costs, particularly for workers, consumers and communities already facing challenges of equitable distribution. Without addressing these impacts, transitions risk being neither sustainable nor widely accepted.
This new INETTT brief, entitled Just energy transitions in developing countries: Experience from JETP initiatives, examines how just energy transition policies can help reconcile climate ambition with social equity. It focuses on the specific challenges and opportunities in developing countries, where balancing decarbonisation with poverty reduction, affordable energy access and historical injustices is essential.
A key focus of the brief is the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), a relatively new international financing mechanism designed to support developing countries in phasing out fossil fuels while protecting livelihoods and fostering inclusive growth. The brief reflects on early JETP experiences and emphasises the importance of transparency, accountability and country ownership in just transition financing.
As reaffirmed in the Paris Agreement, developed countries have a responsibility to provide support to developing nations. Adequate, just transition finance is crucial to avoid new fossil fuel lock-ins and serves as a means of climate justice, shifting resources from those most responsible for emissions to those most vulnerable to their effects.
The INETTT brief, written in close collaboration with experts from across the INETTT membership network, is a timely contribution to the global debate on how to fund and structure energy transitions that leave no one behind. It underlines that justice, inclusion and equity must be treated not as add-ons, but as core elements of effective climate policy.
