The global economy is on an unjustifiable pathway which is indicating that major changes will be necessary to form sustainable paths. In this context, during September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has implemented Sustainable Development Goals (referred as SDG) and their attached goals and targets.
The SDGs are the outlined pathways to acquire a better as well as sustainable future for the world. These goals address the development challenges we face, related to climate, poverty, inequality, environmental deprivation, wealth, justice and peace. The SDGs interrelate to each other in a way that we can achieve each of SDGs and associated targets by the era 2030 (Sustainable Development Goals, 2018).
Therefore, in this essay, role of energy in SDGs as well as identification of the key energy issues as well as challenges that are probable in attaining SDGs will be discussed. Moreover, possible optimum solutions for overcoming those challenges will be drawn with the help of this discussion.
The concept of sustainability has been amended to address diverse challenges, vacillating from the sustainable cities planning to sustainable livings, and sustainable fishing to sustainable agriculture (Sachs, 2012). Sustainable development is a ground breaking concept that can transform the pathway nation’s act on an international level as well as on national level. On the other hand, because of its multi-purpose nature, ideal goals, and bendable interpretations, a standard definition of this concept is yet to be established. Thus, devising a succinct definition is a prior challenge, and secondly realistically applying those definitions to any nation worldwide is another challenge (Bass & Dalal-Clayton, 2012).
Sustainable development is a pathway or method, which we use in all the areas of the world such as health, education, energy, climate control or environmental development. This concept is used in all above sectors to evolve novel strategies and methodologies in order to ensure rich as well as enough availability of conventional and non-conventional resources in all areas of human needs. In whole, sustainable development is a concept that denotes various national to global energies to endorse an optimistic vision of a world in which each and every basic human need can be fulfilled without abolishing or irretrievably degrading the natural resources (Lu et al., 2015).
Sustainable use of energy as well as energy conservation is needed, if we require achieving SDGs. From all 17 SDGs, it is clear that each goal of SDGs strictly require energy for the proper implementation as well as achievement of needed requirements aiming to fulfil targets. There will be no development without running the engine of growth through energy input (Kaygusuz, 2012). Energy is very critical component and sustainable as well as right use of energy by the future and present community will provide the opportunity to them of becoming part of global progress. As per the facts, 1 billion public all over the world still live without any access to daily electrical energy. Additionally, around 781 million humans in 2016, or we can say that 39 per cent of the whole world’s population, cannot even access clean fuels as well as technologies for cooking and basic activities (Birol, 2018).
As per the goals 1 and 2, poverty and hunger are to be vanished by 2030. Cost effective sources of energy impact the socio-economic lifestyle and wellbeing of global communities directly (United Nations Development Programme, 2018). If we can make available heating, fuel and lighting energy sources everywhere from the urban areas to rural outskirt areas, then it will change the entire wellbeing of the world communities. To remove hunger issue, food production is to be optimized through sustainable agriculture by using renewable energy technologies while farming for producing food.
Similarly, we can find the energy role in each and every sector of SDGs. For an example, goal 3 and 4 of SDGs focus on education and health, and if the global health need to be improved then efficient energy apparatus, initiatives and renewable energy projects will directly impact our global health in order to achieve world health targets by 2030. Fossil fuels replacement with renewable energy sources will help reducing harmful gaseous emission like CO2, which deteriorate human health in all way. Moreover, for achieving goal 4, education performance can be achieved through promoting rural electrification. If there is no adequate electricity and lighting in rural areas then this bridge gap will adversely affect the nation’s education following global education (United Nations, 2018).
In order to achieve goal 5 and 6 of water sanitation and gender equality, appropriately fulfilling the energy requirements is mandatory. As the cooking energy deficiency affecting women entrepreneurs as well as school girls in their total development, hence this energy poverty divide must be taken seriously to stop the search for cooking fuel in rural areas. Water sanitation and hygiene is important because water is life. To produce energy water is required and conversely, ensuring global water sanitation in domestic as well as industrial use requires energy. As the all water treatment plants in all industries are run through electricity only so we need to use renewable energy fuels to save future safe water (United Nations Development Programme, 2018).
Goal-7 from the SDGs clearly focusing on world Energy requirements, ensuring reliable, affordable, and modern access to global energy for all will be achieved through electrification progress, specifically in Load dispatch centres (referred as LDCs), as well as industrial energy efficiency improvements. Additionally, current research and policy debates depicting that national priorities as well as policy ambitions need to be more reinforced to fire the globe on track of meeting the energy targets of 2030 (Watson et al., 2010).
Goal-8, of the SDGs aims to grow the global sustainable energy sector worldwide. With using newly invented non-conventional energy sources and executing innovative energy projects, world economies can reach on the supreme heights.
Furthermore, for achieving rest of the SDGs like industrialisation, removing inequality energy production, conservation as well as proper consumption is mandatory (Pearce et al., 2013). One of the SDGs is about making all cities and human lifestyle safe, sustainable and resilient that cannot be possible without framing of strict energy policies by the country’s government. Goal-15 and 16 are about environment and societal development; those are having safe and clean energy usage as their primary need for the execution (Sachs, 2012). Finally, SDG goal-17 is about global partnerships, and we know that if we want to implement global energy sustainability then any nation cannot fight alone. Additionally, global partnerships for energy exchange and balancing the consumption among global people will require energy challenges to be resolved.
Sustainable use of energy will definitely provide solutions to address poverty issue, ensure green development along with upcoming opportunities for a sustained prospect as well as world economic empowerment (Griggs et al., 2013). Here, sustainable use means adopting following pathways of SDGs implementation:
Train transportation
Rail is the foremost efficient way of transportation in terms of immediate as well as long term saving of fuel consumption; hence we should have it as the first priority while travelling.
Solar PV Rooftop
Solar farms and wind farms are required to be adopted for environmental reasons and their enhanced transmission capability.
Alternative vehicles
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology can be used to link renewable energy for totally displacing fossil fuels with the help of hybrid electric vehicles. We are required to build the electric vehicle charging platform as soon as possible to promote new V2G enabled vehicles.
SMART Grid
To carry all novel renewable power, a bigger, highly resilient, and smarter grid is needed. Thus, by using HVDC transmission and enhanced power security devices Smart grid is being evolved presently (Watson et al., 2010).
There are some major energy related issues that have already arisen and are likely to occur more adversely in future, as follows:
Efficiency
Most of the present efficiency gains are from conventional energy resources like thermal power, which is a biggest challenge to supply the electrical power demand of the world. On the other hand, if we will try to find the ways to gain efficiency from non-conventional energy resources then those gains will ultimately results into less coal as well as natural gas demand, which must be first priority of the global public (Nilsson et al., 2016).
Utility Scale Renewables
Solutions of the energy issues contain rooftop PV that is only capable to fulfil the short-term energy supply gap, while in the long run we will need PV to supply large base-load. Moreover, we will need larger solar power plants across the globe, and huge wind farms. Adopting geothermal as well as marine power will also be needed to majorly contribute in supplying public increased energy demand. Additionally, making renewable technologies commercially viable technologies is also an important challenge (Kaygusuz, 2012).
Conclusion
In conclusion, all SDGs are represented as an ‘action plan for people, planet and prosperity’ and they all need effective energy sustainability implementation. If these goals will be achieved successfully then it will transform our globe for the enhanced livelihood by 2030. Thus, energy has grown to the most prominence presently within universal debates and all of the SDGs are now focusing on energy sustainability. Therefore, it is very much important to recognise the vital role for energy contemplated within sustainability development goals and also address the challenges during achieving them by 2030.
References
Bass, S. & Dalal-Clayton, B., 2012. Sustainable development strategies: a resource book. London: Routledge.
Birol, F., 2018. Energy is at the heart of the sustainable development agenda to 2030. [Online] Available at: https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2018/march/energy-is-at-the-heart-of-the-sustainable-development-agenda-to-2030.html [Accessed 26 October 2018].
Griggs, D. et al., 2013. Policy: Sustainable development goals for people and planet. Nature, 495(7441), p.305.
Kaygusuz, K., 2012. Energy for sustainable development: A case of developing countries. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 16(2), pp.1116-26.
Lu, Y., Nakicenovic, N., Visbeck, M. & Stevance, A.S., 2015. Five priorities for the UN sustainable development goals. Nature, 520(7548), pp.432-33.
Nilsson, M., Griggs, D. & Visbeck, M., 2016. Policy: map the interactions between Sustainable Development Goals. Nature News, 534(7607), p.320.
Pearce, D., Barbier, E. & Markandya, A., 2013. Sustainable development: economics and environment in the Third World. LOndon: Routlegde.
Sachs, J.D., 2012. From millennium development goals to sustainable development goals. The Lancet, 379(9832), pp.2206-11.
Sustainable Development Goals, 2018. ENERGY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. [Online] Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/energy [Accessed 26 October 2018].
United Nations Development Programme, 2018. Goal 7: Affordable and clean energy. [Online] Available at: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-7-affordable-and-clean-energy.html [Accessed 26 October 2018].
United Nations, 2018. SDG 7: Affordable And Clean Energy. [Online] Available at: https://in.one.un.org/page/sustainable-development-goals/sdg-7/ [Accessed 26 October 2018].
Watson, R.T., Boudreau, M.C. & Chen, A.J., 2010. Information systems and environmentally sustainable development: energy informatics and new directions for the IS community. MIS Quarterly, pp.23-3
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