Facilitating Climate Solutions

Our Thriving Climate Program is dedicated to the facilitation and implementation of solutions that contribute to the goal of reducing GHG emissions to net zero worldwide by 2050. We bring expertise and project management skills to execute projects that address the urgency of the climate crisis - our projects are action oriented and solutions based.   The technology and know-how exist to transition to a low carbon economy and we believe that through a combination of strategies we can make significant, timely progress in this fight. 

Below are some current Thriving Climate Program projects:

California-China Carbon Markets Linkage
SGA staff and experts have convened a working group with the California Air Resources Board; China’s National Development & Reform Commission (NDRC); Tsinghua University; UC Berkeley; and the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA to design a roadmap for the California and Chinese cap-and-trade systems to facilitate the creation of one larger marketplace for the reduction of carbon pollution using market mechanisms. The further goal is to align this unified system with other global carbon markets to ultimately put a price on carbon in the majority of the world’s economy by 2025.

Clean Energy Access Fund
CEAF was designed to bring clean and affordable energy systems to underserved and vulnerable communities around the world, especially in collaboration with First Nations and indigenous regions. The first project was implemented in Fiji with the creation of a trust fund, managed by the Fijian government and from which remote island communities can borrow funding to replace dirty diesel micro-grid generators with clean, renewable solar/battery systems, repaying the costs from fuel/maintenance savings. When loans are repaid, funding is made available to other communities. The first project in Fiji was completed and SGA is now securing new funds and new government partnerships to expand the program to the Gujarat state of India and in sub-Saharan Africa. We are also working with the non-profit ReVolv to implement similar innovative financing (leveraged with crowd-funding) in North America for projects at community centers, schools, churches and other non-profit organizations. One of our projects was recently completed in Oakland, CA.

Click here for more details.

R20 Project Sourcing
SGA works with the R20 Regions of Climate Action “100 Climate Solutions” campaign to help sub-national governments adopt the policies to incentivize renewable energy, energy efficiency, and waste reduction strategies. We then help local governments publish projects on the R20 platform where technology and finance partners can evaluate and implement these critical climate solutions at scale.

“Scaling Up: From Local to Global Climate Action” and “Climate Finance: A Status Report and Action Plan”
As an example of one of SGA’s major accomplishments was our role in assuring the inclusion of sub-national governments into the discussions at COP21 in Paris. To illustrate that focusing on sub-national work is practical and timely (and under a mandate from COP21 President Laurent Fabius), we co-authored a report that highlighted key low carbon projects underway. “Scaling Up: From Local to Global Climate Action” amply demonstrated that sub-national action on climate change is already surpassing national efforts in scope and ambition, providing important templates for others to follow. Scaling up locally successful technologies and projects has often been stymied by a lack of adequate “climate” finance. In his role as host of COP21, French President Francois Hollande identified climate finance at scale as a key barrier to a more ambitious global climate agreement and therefore requested R20 to form a Climate Finance Advisory Committee that would analyze such efforts to date and propose an action plan to the global investment community for the future based on R20’s experience with actual project development and finance. SGA undertook this project for R20 and was the primary author of “Climate Finance: A Status Report and Action Plan,” which gives tangible, concrete examples of how to expedite the transition to a low carbon economy based on proven technologies and projects all over the world, such as those described in “Scaling Up”.  SGA’s focus has and continues to be serve as the intermediary that will ensure the acceleration of implementing these aforementioned climate resilient projects.

Link to “Climate Finance: A Status Report and Action Plan” Click Here.

Link to “Scaling Up: From Local to Global Climate Action” Click Here.