Bracing for Climate Impact: Renewables as a climate change adaptation strategy

This IRENA Publication builds conceptual links between renewable energy and climate change adaptation. It illustrates the opportunities for well-designed climate adaptation yielded by renewable energy and the benefits of renewables-based adaptation and provides concrete examples of clean energy transitions to climate change adaptation.

 While energy use is a crucial ingredient of several adaptation strategies, this role of reliable, affordable, and modern renewable energy services in climate adaptation still lacks adequate acknowledgement in policymaking.

 The paper highlights, in particular, the role of the renewable energy sector as a provider of ‘greener infrastructure’ which simultaneously fosters mitigation and adaptation efforts in other sectors.  According to the authors, this calls for streamlining renewables into the decision-making and planning processes of adaptation projects.

This paper focuses on three main topics:

• The strategic role of renewables in climate change adaptation and in mitigation-adaptation synergies.
•  The planning and financing of adaptation measures based on renewable energy.
• The way forward for renewables-based climate adaptation solutions.

The paper also provides specific examples of how renewables can prevent or mitigate negative climate change impacts in the sectors of water; food, agriculture, and forestry; natural disaster response; health; as well as oceans, coasts, and small islands.