Sustainable energy is at the heart ofthe global development and climate change agenda. Reachingthe targets set by the United Nation’s SustainableDevelopment Goal 7 (SDG7) will require a rapid increase inenergy access, renewable energy and the efficient use ofexisting energy resources. Public debate centers on securingadequate finance to meet these global targets, but evidencedemonstrates that policy can often be a prerequisite formobilizing finance. RISE 2018 demonstrates that progress onsustainable energy outcomes has often been preceded bylong-term efforts to strengthen policy and regulatoryenvironments. Precisely because policy matters, it isimportant to track how well countries are doing in creatingthe regulatory environment needed to accelerate achievementof sustainable energy goals. RISE provides such a globalscorecard which summarizes countries’ regulatoryenvironments. It does so by tracking the adoption ofgood-practice policies with respect to energy access, energyefficiency, and renewable energy at the country level as ofDecember 2017, scoring them on a scale from 1 to 100, andclassifying the strength of a country’s policy environmentaccording to a “traffic light” system with green foradvanced, yellow for intermediate, and red for early stage.Poor creditworthiness of utilities undermines thesustainable energy agenda. Power utilities are among thecentral actors in the energy sector in most countries, andtheir financial health is critical for the viability ofinvestments across the sustainable energy agenda. As of2016, however, only about half of all power utilities metseveral basic creditworthiness requirements. Moreover,performance on almost all dimensions of credit-worthinesshas deteriorated since 2012. The situation is particularlyacute in low-access countries, where the number of utilitiesmeeting basic creditworthiness criteria has dropped, fallingfrom 63 percent in 2012 to 37 percent in 2016. Goodinstitutions and enforcement are also necessary elements toachieve sustainable energy results. Adopting good practicepolicies will not yield results without strong institutionsand consistent enforcement. RISE 2018 has incorporated proxyenforcement indicators to provide some sense of the level ofattention that countries are giving to enforcement issues.
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