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Harvard Kennedy School’s Growth Lab debuted an interactive online tool — dubbed “Greenplexity” — to help countries identify opportunities for green growth at the United Nations’ COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Friday.
The tool, which includes data for more than 140 countries, is designed to help policymakers identify their capacity to produce components of technologies — such as electric vehicles and wind power — that enable a shift away from fossil fuels.
Policymakers and the public can then use that information to determine how to invest in industries that will fuel economic growth while supplying global “green value chains.”
Timothy P. Cheston, Growth Lab’s senior manager for applied research, said he hopes Greenplexity will help policymakers discuss emissions reduction as an opportunity, rather than as a burden.
“A lot of the COP negotiations, in asking countries to reduce their own emissions, are essentially asking developing countries — who were not responsible for the heat that’s in the air today or causing the climate crisis initially — are now being asked to forgo their future growth in order to help the world fight climate change,” Cheston said.
The COP29 summit, which is slated to conclude this Friday, is supposed to focus on securing commitments from rich governments to ramp up “loss and damage” funding for low-income countries. But the leaders of major carbon emitters — including the United States, China, Russia, France, and Germany — have chosen to sit the conference out. And negotiations in Baku so far have centered on emissions reductions, not climate finance.
“That is a conversation that’s not bringing everyone to the table,” Cheston said.
Instead of haggling over emissions reductions, Greenplexity focuses “on the other side of the coin, which is the supply for what the world needs to decarbonize,” he said.
The research team sifted through U.S. Department of Energy and International Energy Association reports to find the products that feed into green supply chains, then mapped that information to international trade data. After that, the researchers and digital development team consulted with early users to craft a tool that would be easy for policymakers to interpret.
Growth Lab director Ricardo Hausmann said Growth Lab had worked with governments worldwide — including in South Africa, Namibia, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan — on projects using the same approach as Greenplexity. The new platform, he said, “transformed those insights and the theory into a tool that anybody can use.”
Greenplexity is funded in part by the government of Azerbaijan.
Hausmann, an HKS professor, added that he hopes Greenplexity will help governments figure out how to plan for a “relocation of industrial activity” amid a global energy transition.
“The decarbonizing world will want to use green energy, but green energy is very hard to move,” Hausmann said — meaning that the centers of industry may move toward regions that produce green energy.
Hausmann and Growth Lab research director Muhammed A. Yildirim said they hope Greenplexity will help governments think about their country’s ability to participate in global green supply chains, not just domestic ones.
“Our guiding principle is, we modify John F. Kennedy’s proverb,” Yildirim said. “Ask not what you can do to decarbonize yourself, but ask what you can do to decarbonize the world.”
