Clean Energy and Earth Observation

This topical overview analysis was carried out by the M&E and Impact Assessment activity, under the European Space Agency’s Global Development Assistance (GDA) program. Which is a global partnership to mainstream the use of Earth Observation (EO) into development operations, implemented in cooperation with major international financial institutions. To foster adoption and accelerate impact, GDA focuses on targeted Agile EO Information Development (GDA AID) applied to thematic priority sectors; one of these sectors is clean energy.

This report outlines the main issues, the status of clean energy in the development sector, and the resulting relevance and opportunities for the Space for IDA cooperation framework. This report informs international financial institutions of the potential use of EO data to develop and implement clean energy interventions and strategies and outlines existing initiatives and practices for clean energy already in place in international financial institutions. Specifically, it includes:

• Background on clean energy, its definition, and an overview of the new trends.
• A detailed portfolio of the various clean energy programs implemented by ESA’s partner institutions, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
• The value of EO for clean energy, including its main characteristics and potential uses for development operations.
• Key learnings that will help facilitate the mainstreaming of EO into the clean energy development assistance operations.